This book examines the relationship between the late eighteenth-century free fantasy for keyboard, and the contemporary arts of picturesque landscape gardening and of painting. Its importance lies in the value of understanding the full cultural circumstances in which a work of art is created. The arts in every period draw their inspiration and content from common sources, events and experiences. Individual genius and creativity are the channels through which the spirit of the times receives its expression. If we understand and appreciate the background against which a work is created, then we will gain in our understanding of it as an individual creation.

The free fantasy was not an eighteenth-century invention. Frescobaldi's toccatas epitomize the keyboard fantasy in all but name. Metrically free, apparently improvised, full of strong contrasts of material and surprising harmonic twists and turns, the composer's intention was to express the variety and changeability of human emotion. As in contemporary Italian vocal monody, the music's evocation of these feelings and emotions is intended to recreate these sensations and experiences in the listener's mind.

The keyboard fantasy runs as an evolutionary line throughout the Baroque era. In the second part of the eighteenth century, its emotional content, previously implicit, becomes explicit and descriptive. The principal proponent of this development is, of course, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. One should not, however, assume that his keyboard fantasies are merely illustrative, programme music. Although Bach would certainly claim that a kaleidoscopic variety of changing, emotional Affekts lie at the heart of his works, their content and formal structures depending on a purely musical logic and grammar. The discussion on the free fantasy in the Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments certainly demonstrates this, as does Bach's objection to the fashionable recitation of Hamlet's soliloquy as an accompaniment to the c-minor Fantasy from the Essay's collection of Probestücke.

One especially significant and important characteristic of the late 18th century free fantasy is its relationship to contemporary sonata form. This owed its origins primarily to J. S. Bach's sons. The form, with its opposition and final reconciliation of contrasted groups of musical ideas, had at its centre a brief free fantasy section usually based on material drawn from the exposition. As the form's potential began to be realized, the fantasy or development section grew in scale and musical significance. Eventually, a clear distinction between the two forms of free fantasy and a sonata containing a fantasy section became virtually lost. In Beethoven's work we see a perfect synthesis of strictly musical and formal logic and emotional expression. The link between the mature sonata form, originating in keyboard music, and contemporary symphonic orchestral music is obvious.

Annette Richard develops her theme of the free fantasy in a set of exemplary essays, using throughout the terminology contrived by eighteenth century apologists and critics of the art of English landscape gardening. The relevance of these references might not at first be obvious to us, but their use is entirely justified and explained in the book. Landscape gardening in England, made possible largely by the enclosure acts, drew its inspiration from Classical literature. The owners of great country estates, educated in the Classics, transformed great tracts of land into Arcadian landscapes alive with echoes of ancient pastoral verse. In making Virgilian gardens around their new Palladian mansions, they saw themselves as the true heirs of Greek and Roman civilization. Their tastes were guided by painters and poets, as well as by their own experience of the Italian countryside seen during the Grand Tours undertaken to complete their educations.

Seen by foreign travellers and visitors, the English garden was recognized as a great, native art form. Strongly identifying the style with the Enlightenment, many continental landowners began the construction of their own picturesque landscape gardens. 'English Gardens', sometimes on a prodigious scale, became fashionable all over Europe.

At the time, it was understood that these great landscape gardens took on some of the qualities of music, even of the free fantasy. Not intended to be taken in at a single glance, they were to be travelled through by a number of carefully designed routes. On this journey, the walker would arrive at a succession of carefully contrived viewpoints, buildings, memorials and ornaments, all intended to inspire different emotions and sensations. In a single walk, these might range from a sublime prospect of a distant landscape, to a deeply shaded valley with a cascade of water tumbling over broken rocks, then to a monument to friendship in which the plinth of a classical urn might be carved with a dedicatory verse. The viewer in this journey experienced a succession of emotions and poetic and philosophical associations in exact parallel to the sensations generated by hearing a free fantasy. The parallel becomes even stronger on the realization that in these landscape gardens, the dimension of time has been added to the experience, the very dimension through which music must necessarily move.

Strangely, music and the world of sound are seriously lacking in specialized descriptive terms. We must instead often use visual terms and experiences to make up this deficiency. Here is the great strength of Annette Richard's book. The argument, by constant reference to parallel, contemporary visual arts rich in aesthetic and literary associations, is vividly illuminated and explained. The reader gains an easy insight and understanding into a complex musical and intellectual world. Players gain an immensely useful and valuable tool in developing informed and sensitive performances of music, which stands at the centre of our art.

Highly recommended.

Derek Adlam