Six Keyboard Sonatas and an Ode

Sonatas with a Twist

Af Lisbeth Ahlgren Jensen

Hardenack Otto Conrad Zinck (1746–1832), like many musicians working in Denmark in the late 18th century, was born in the German-speaking region of Husum in Schleswig. He came from a musical family and, together with his brother Bendix Friedrich, was taught the fundamentals of music by their father, including flute, violin, and keyboard.

Around the age of twenty, Zinck travelled to Hamburg, where, following further musical study, he became a church singer under the direction of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. He participated in major oratorio performances and distinguished himself as a flute virtuoso. It was also in Hamburg that he married his singing pupil, the French-born Susanne Elisabeth Pontet.

In 1777, both husband and wife were appointed to the court orchestra of the Duke of Schwerin in Ludwigslust: H.O.C. Zinck as principal flautist and chamber musician, and his wife as a singer. During this period, Zinck began composing, strongly inspired by C.P.E. Bach, whose treatise Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments) not only offered technical instructions but also contained six sonatas for keyboard. In 1786, the Zincks performed at a concert at the Royal Danish Theatre, and in 1787 they relocated permanently to Copenhagen. There, H.O.C. Zinck was appointed singing master as part of ongoing reforms to the theatre music, while his wife was shortly afterwards named court singer. Their son, Ludvig Zinck, would also enjoy a long association with the Royal Danish Theatre as singing master and composer.

Musical Education
Zinck’s work was deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas regarding music’s ennobling effect on the individual. His pedagogical skill was evident in numerous initiatives: he founded Denmark’s first opera choir and a public singing academy, and, as organist at Vor Frelsers Kirke, editor of the authorised Choralmelodier (1801), and music teacher at Blaagaards Seminarium, he exerted a lasting influence on Danish church and school music – a legacy later continued by his great-grandson, Thomas Laub. Moreover, he was an engaged and reflective music writer, articulating his ideas on musical education in both German and Danish.

Zinck’s compositions include several sets of sonatas and variation works for keyboard, sonatas for one and two flutes, songs with piano accompaniment to Danish and German texts, the singspiel Selim and Mirza (text by P.A. Heiberg, 1790), and occasional cantatas composed during his tenure in Schwerin and for various events in Copenhagen. The keyboard sonatas recorded here were published in Hamburg in 1783, their popularity attested by the fact that no fewer than 294 subscribers signed up for the edition. Of these, 60 were resident in Berlin and 56 in Hamburg. In Denmark, there was only one subscriber: court and palace organist Hans Hinrich Zielche, who, however, took six copies, perhaps with a view to resale.

The sonatas open with a lengthy preface in which Zinck describes his background and rather dubious experiences with teachers in Hamburg: one evaluated his work through a wine bottle, another lingered far too long over archaic church modes and a third dismissed the very lesson he had taught the previous day. Frustrated by the lack of learning, Zinck resolved to pursue further study independently, particularly through the publications of C.P.E. Bach, which he referred to as his ‘silent teacher.’

The Six Sonatas
On the creation of the keyboard sonatas, Zinck explains that the musical material arose from specific emotional states – gentle, agitated, malevolent or joyful. Overwhelmed by such moods, he would throw himself at the keyboard to give musical expression to his feelings. However, he recognised that music without words could not fully convey specific emotions familiar to the listener. This led him to consider whether annotations for the individual pieces might make them more intelligible and rewarding. In the sixth and final sonata, he put this idea to the test.

Each sonata’s three movements are highly individual in type, yet all reflect Zinck’s joy in performance and his enthusiasm for the expressive possibilities of the keyboard. He even composed a tribute to the instrument, ‘An das Clavier’, in both German and Danish, opening with:

‘Deliciously sounding clavier! / Nothing delights me more / than your sweet play of strings. / You are all I could wish for – / cheerful jest and solemn thought / in my quiet solitude.’

In the allegro of the first sonata in C major, there is no sharp contrast between the main theme, secondary theme, and connecting passages. A lively flow is achieved through imitation and repetition of motifs at new pitches or in inversion, culminating in an accelerating triplet passage that propels the music dynamically forward. The subsequent grazioso movement features a richly ornamented melody in the dominant key, both in major and minor. The finale is a cheerful presto in 12/8 time, dominated by broken staccato chords alternating with a more lyrical motif in parallel thirds.

The second sonata in F major exhibits the most striking motivic and harmonic contrasts. After both the main and secondary themes have been developed in the modulation section, the main theme is omitted from the recapitulation. The following slow movement, Cantabile e sostenuto in D major, inhabits a completely different sonic world, with the key distant from the home key of F. The upper and middle voices each carry independent melodic lines. The final movement is a rondo, whose theme recalls Haydn’s sonatas of the same period. The ritornello is itself both modulatory and rhythmically varied, often displacing the melody from the downbeat and juxtaposing even and uneven subdivisions (triplets). A surprising effect occurs when the theme is inserted a semitone above the expected tonic, leading to a passage in G-flat major before modulating back to F major in a dazzling finale of arpeggios.

In the third sonata in A major, the two rapid outer movements share similar thematic material, while the middle movement provides contrast. The transition from the allegro to the gentle 6/8 Andante più tosto is conveyed via an imaginative passage marked with a fermata, while the following motifs alternate between a rapid, breathless figure and a calm, chordal, ornamented theme. The movement undergoes modulations through several keys before resolving on an A major chord.

The fourth sonata in C minor opens with a Moderato e legato movement, largely formed as melodic ‘tone anchors’ in a sinuous flow. Contemporary critic C.F. Cramer described the melody as a long earthworm wriggling from side to side, yet also a challenge for the fingers with its awkward stretches. He interpreted it as the expression of a man troubled in spirit, unable to free himself from melancholy. It is followed by a calm Andante grazioso in C major with a richly ornamented melody, while the final movement unusually consists of a solemn minuet in C minor with a trio in C major.

The Allegro con brio of the fifth sonata in G major, with its scalar passages and rapid note values, anticipates a stormy and virtuosic execution. A tense, modulatory cadence leads directly into the introspective middle movement, Un poco adagio in E-flat major. This contains one of the collection’s few examples of an Alberti bass, which, together with the graceful, ornamented melody, could easily be mistaken for a work by a Viennese classicist. The movement flows directly into a playful Rondo vivace , characterised by unexpected pauses and striking contrasts in dynamics.

In the sixth sonata, Zinck reveals what was on his mind during composition: he had been angry and irritated about something when he sat at the keyboard to vent his feelings. The opening four bars bear a striking resemblance to a melody he had previously written for the poem ‘Kain am Ufer des Meeres’ (‘Cain by the Seashore’) by Count F.L. zu Stolberg-Stolberg. The poem depicts Cain’s brutal murder of his brother Abel and his anxiety-ridden self-reproaches as he flees to the seashore, haunted by visions of vengeful furies, his brother’s pale spectre, and the bloody club. Even without knowledge of this programme, it is clear that powerful forces are at play. The key throughout is D minor, but in the brief middle movement, Adagio con espressione , there are cadences in several distantly related keys and frequent shifts between major and minor. As with the opening movement, the adagio does not resolve on the tonic, underlining the music’s unresolved character. The concluding Presto furioso is a veritable chase, flowing seamlessly into a vocal piece. Zinck leaves it to the performer to decide whether to conclude the keyboard movement with the written D minor cadence, or to skip the final bar and continue directly into the prelude of ‘Kain am Ufer des Meeres.’

This unusual device caused a stir. C.F. Cramer called it a novel and bold idea to transition directly from an instrumental to a vocal work, though he doubted it would become a trend. The concept reflects Zinck’s experimental approach and his wish to ‘put it to the test’ as to whether revealing the inspiration of the music added value – a question he asked his subscribers to judge in the preface.
 

© Lisbeth Algren Jensen, 2025

Lisbeth Ahlgren Jensen is a Danish musicologist who has, among other things, written on female composers in Denmark and contributed to recording projects. She has edited the Carl Nielsen Edition and authored a biography of Denmark’s first professional musicologist, Hortense Panum.
 

Notes

By Mads Damlund

For many years, I have wished to record the music of H.O.C. Zinck on the clavichord – the instrument that, in Zinck’s time, was most commonly found in the homes of the upper middle class, and for which the music was originally composed. At the end of the 18th century, the clavichord was the natural instrument for the so-called ‘Empfindsamer stil’ or ‘Sensitive Style,’ allowing the composer’s innermost emotional states to be expressed unfiltered. Its sound is not powerful, yet it fills a domestic space with an intimate and immediate presence. The instrument’s simple, yet highly responsive, mechanism offers endless possibilities for phrasing, expression, and dynamic nuance – subtleties that are inevitably lost when the music is transferred to the modern piano. Playing and listening to Zinck’s sonatas on the clavichord gives a remarkable sense of closeness to the music, as if one were present in the same room as the composer while it was being created.

The clavichord used for this recording was built in 2024 by Martin Kather in Hamburg. It is unbound and freely constructed after models by David Tannenberg, with a range of FF–g´´´ (+EE/DD).