(from It. suonare: ‘to sound’).
A term used to denote a piece of music usually but not necessarily consisting of several movements, almost invariably instrumental and designed to be performed by a soloist or a small ensemble. The solo and duet sonatas of the Classical and Romantic periods with which it is now most frequently associated generally incorporate a movement or movements in what has misleadingly come to be called Sonata form (or ‘first-movement form’), but in its actual usage over more than five centuries the title ‘sonata’ has been applied with much broader formal and stylistic connotations than that.
From the 13th century onwards the word ‘sonnade’ was used in literary sources simply to denote an instrumental piece, as for example in the Provençal 13th-century Vida da Santa Douce: ‘Mens que sonavan la rediera sonada de matinas’. In a mystery play of 1486 the phrase ‘Orpheus fera ses sonnades’ occurs as a stage direction. Cognate usages appear to be the ‘sennets’ called for in Elizabethan plays and the term ‘sonada’ found in German manuscripts of the same period for trumpet calls and fanfares, a later manifestation of which were the more extended Turmsonaten (‘tower sonatas’) of the 17th and 18th centuries. In El maestro (1536) Luys Milán referred to ‘villancicos y sonadas’, including among the latter pavans and fantasias. Gorzanis gave ‘sonata’ as the actual title for passamezzos and paduanas in the first book of his Intabolatura di liuto (1561), and it is similarly employed in later collections of lute music. The rapid development of instrumental music towards the close of the 16th century was accompanied by a plethora of terms which were employed in a confused and often imprecise manner. ‘Sonata’ was one of them, although it was nearly always applied to something played as opposed to something sung (‘cantata’).
3. 19th century after Beethoven.
SANDRA MANGSEN (1), JOHN IRVING (2), JOHN RINK (3), PAUL GRIFFITHS (4)
(ii) Origins and early development.
(v) Performing practice and dissemination.
In the 17th century title-pages often used the term ‘sonata’ generically to cover all the instrumental pieces in a volume, which might well contain no single work actually called ‘sonata’; there are no sonatas, for example, in Buonamente’s Il quinto libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, corrente, e ariette (Venice, 1629). As a genre label, the term competed with others (especially canzone and sinfonia, but also capriccio, concerto, fantasia, ricercar, toccata) that were applied to individual pieces difficult to distinguish from sonatas, even in the works of an individual composer within a single printed volume. Only after mid-century did ‘sonata’ finally displace its competitors as the most appropriate term for such instrumental works.
For Brossard (Dictionaire, 1703) the sonata was ‘to all sorts of instruments what the cantata is to the voice’, and was designed ‘according to the composer’s fancy’, free of the constraints imposed by dance, text or the rules of counterpoint. Brossard categorized sonatas as da camera or da chiesa, a division that has informed much later commentary; however, the former term, while it appeared on title-pages more frequently than the latter, was rarely applied to specific sets of dance movements before Corelli’s op.2 of 1685. The mature Baroque sonata did acquire a set of more or less consistent attributes, even if copyists still wavered between ‘concerto’ and ‘sonata’ for a work borrowing something from each genre. By 1750 sonatas were independent pieces, usually in three or four separate movements, which could be heard not only in church and chamber, but in concert or as interval music at the theatre, where they might be played orchestrally rather than by the chamber ensembles for which they had originally been written. J.G. Walther’s concise definition (Musicalisches Lexicon, 1732) is accurate for his time, and indeed for much of the Baroque period: ‘the sonata is a piece for instruments, especially the violin, of a serious and artful nature, in which adagios and allegros alternate’. Here the use of the term and the development of the genre from Gabrieli’s Sacrae symphoniae (1597) to the galant sonatas of Scarlatti and Telemann will be traced. But discussion cannot be limited strictly to sonatas so called, since often enough what are (and were) recognizably sonatas appeared under labels referring to another genre (capriccio), or to the number of parts (solo, quadro), or even to proper names (Cazzati’s La Galeazza, 1648). The main concerns in what follows will be the origins and stylistic development, sociocultural functions, performing practices, dissemination and reception of the sonata and its near relatives. (For more comprehensive lists of composers, arranged by chronology and geography, see NewmanSBE, 4th edn.)
The instrumental canzona, which had grown in Italy from instrumental arrangements of imported chansons, has usually been regarded as the most significant precursor of the Baroque sonata. The similarities between many early sonatas and contemporary canzonas are undeniable: sectional structure defined by contrasts in metre and tempo, reliance on imitative contrapuntal texture, and immediate repetition or final recapitulation of the opening section. For Michael Praetorius sonatas and canzonas were so intimately related that he cited the ‘canzonas and sinfonie of Giovanni Gabrieli’ in his description of the sonata, and noted that ‘sonatas are composed in a stately and magnificent manner like motets, but the canzonas have many black notes and move along crisply, gaily and fast’ (Syntagma musicum, iii, 1618, 2/1619). Although there have been many attempts to distinguish between the two genres, composers and publishers seem to have used the terms interchangeably. Both the generic meaning of ‘sonata’ (e.g. Tarquinio Merula’s Canzoni overo sonate concertate per chiesa e camera, 1637), and the close relation between the two genres (e.g. in Cazzati’s first two volumes of instrumental works, Canzoni, 1642, and Il secondo libro delle sonate, 1648) help to explain this interchangeability. Moreover, local usage may have varied: Montalbano, born in Bologna but working in Palermo, published a set of sinfonias in 1629 that might well have been termed ‘sonate concertate’ had they and he been in Venice with Castello. Even a composer’s occupation and training are relevant, since organists tended to write canzonas, while virtuoso cornett players and violinists more often produced sonatas. After 1620, however, the term canzone was used less and less, although its stylistic influence remained evident in the sonata’s fast imitative movements (actually labelled ‘canzona’ by Purcell).
The close relation between the canzonas and sonatas of the early Baroque is clearly reflected in Gabrieli’s two publications (1597, 1615) and in those of Gussago, Corradini and Riccio. Some early sonatas (Gussago, 1608), are indistinguishable from the most conservative of four- or eight-voice canzonas; others combine old and new features. Gabrieli left sonatas or canzonas for as few as three and as many as 22 parts, often grouped in two or more choirs. Their association with sacred vocal music (in Sacrae symphoniae), publication in Venice (which remained central to the dissemination of Italian instrumental music until Bolognese firms began to offer real competition in the 1660s), virtuoso upper parts and precisely specified instrumentation are all typical of the earliest sonatas. The Venetian polychoral style was influential even on works for small ensembles: in one of Nicolò Corradini’s sonatas (1624), pairs of unspecified treble and bass instruments engage in dialogue and join together at cadences just as they would in a double-choir canzona. Several canzonas for one to four instruments and basso continuo and a single ‘Sonata a 4’ from Riccio’s 1620 collection descend from the same tradition, although Riccio incorporated more modern elements (tremolo, virtuoso flourishes, precise instrumentation) than did Corradini. Buonamente (Sonate et canzoni … libro sesto, 1636) and Frescobaldi (Il primo libro delle canzoni, 1628) wrote similar pieces for one to six instruments. The modern scoring in few parts (for one to three instruments) often invoked the label ‘sonata’ in these pre-1650 prints; thus, Marini’s Sonate, symphonie, canzoni op.8 (1629) reserves ‘canzone’ for larger ensembles, but most composers made no such terminological distinctions. One might compare the instrumental works in few parts to Viadana’s Concerti ecclesiastici (1602), composed in response to the practice of performing four-voice motets as solos or duos with basso continuo. While evidence that canzonas a 4 were performed with such reduced forces is lacking (although many do survive as both organ and ensemble pieces), continuo players apparently provided the imitative entries ‘missing’ in the few-voiced pieces, whose model was still the multi-voice canzona (the entries are actually supplied by Montalbano in the continuo part to his solo sinfonias).
The ‘stil moderno’ sonatas of Dario Castello (1621, 1629), while still indebted to the ensemble canzona, are even more closely allied to vocal monody. Constructed of sharply contrasting sections, they often begin with an imitative ‘canzona’, and continue with an instrumental dialogue reminiscent of the polychoral idiom, but these sonatas also incorporate virtuoso solos or duets, candenzas, and ‘unmistakable manifestations of Monteverdi’s affections, especially the stile concitato’ (Selfridge-Field, 1975). Riemann was not alone in seeing incipient four-movement designs in Castello’s multi-sectional sonatas, but other scholars have rejected such analyses, arguing that predictability itself is ‘wholly incompatible with the essential spirit of the stil moderno sonata, which sought to overwhelm the listener in a wealth of conflicting emotions’ (Allsop, 1992). Castello’s inclusion of at least one solo as well as an earlier contrapuntal section is predictable enough, but the four-movement sonata favoured by later composers such as Vivaldi or Albinoni is rather far removed. Farina and Marini wrote sonatas comparable to those of Castello.
The late 16th-century diminution practices described by Bassano, among others, provided another important source of early sonata style, as in the variations constructed around a repeated melody or bass line by Salamone Rossi, Buonamente and, later, Uccellini. Such pieces were called sonatas (Rossi’s Sonata sopra l’aria di Ruggiero, Il terzo libro de varie sonate, 1613) or arias (Uccellini, 1642 and 1645), or simply carried the name of the borrowed tune (Buonamente’s Le tanto tempo ormai, 1626). A close relation, and one of the few sonatas involving voices, is the ‘Sonata sopra Sancta Maria’ from Monteverdi’s Vespers (1610), in which pairs of violins and cornetts weave a lively commentary around the sopranos’ repeated phrase ‘Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis’, supported by a quartet of bass and tenor instruments. Corelli’s ‘Ciacona’ (op.2, 1685) and ‘Follia’ (op.5, 1700), as well the virtuoso variations of Schmelzer, Biber and J.J. Walther, ultimately derive from the same source.
Rossi also used ‘sonata’ for several short binary pieces, which may have served as introductions to larger compositions; among his contemporaries ‘sinfonia’ was the more usual name for such works. Their trio scoring arose naturally enough from an identical disposition of voices and instruments in sacred and secular concerted music (e.g. Monteverdi’s Chioma d'oro for two sopranos, two violins and continuo). Often the two ‘solo’ instruments move in parallel 3rds, supported by a simpler bass; in some works such trios are juxtaposed with a larger force, as in Bernardi’s ‘Sonata in sinfonia à 4’ (1613). Sonatas ‘a due’ (for two solo instruments and basso continuo) and ‘a tre’ (for three soloists and basso continuo) make up most of the sonata literature for a century after 1620, although the earlier variety among solo instruments (ss, sb, bb, ssb, sss) was reduced after 1660 to a focus on the type for two trebles and continuo, and strings increasingly displaced other instruments (cornett, bassoon, trombone) found in the earliest sonatas. Compare Brossard’s recognition of the variety of sonata scorings in 1703 (‘We have Sonatas from one to seven or eight parts; but usually they are performed by a single Violin, or with two Violins and a thorough Bass for the Harpsichord, and frequently a more figured Bass for the Bass Violin’) with Rousseau’s focus on the soloist (Dictionnaire, 1768: ‘The Sonata is ordinarily made for a single instrument which recites, accompanied by a thorough bass’). Solos, more demanding than most duos and trios, were included in several early published volumes (by Castello, Farina, Biagio Marini and Montalbano), but by 1652 only Bertoli, Uccellini and G.A. Leoni had devoted entire collections to solo sonatas.
The foregoing discussion has concentrated on developments in Italy for good reason: while sonatas were composed before 1650 north of the Alps, it was Italian immigrants who were in the main responsible. Buonamente worked in Vienna for a time, as did Valentini and Bertali for much of their careers; Bernardi went to Salzburg; Marini left Venice for Parma and Neuburg, returning only late in his career; and Farina carried the Italian sonata and a virtuoso approach to violin playing to Dresden. These Italian immigrants far outnumbered the few native composers of sonatas (Kindermann, Johann Staden, Vierdanck); only after 1650 did many non-Italian composers begin to interest themselves in the genre, but those who did made technical demands equal to or greater than those in the Italian repertory.
Riemann argued that what he somewhat pejoratively called the ‘patchwork’ canzona (Flickwerk) of the early 17th century evolved into the sonata as the individual sections grew in length and were reduced in number, until by Corelli’s time they had achieved the status of separate movements. That much repeated view ignores the persistence of multi-sectional alongside multi-movement designs (e.g. in the sonatas of Uccellini, G.B. Vitali, Biber, J.J. Walther, Buxtehude), yet the observation is not unrelated to the mid-century repertory in which many sonatas do consist primarily of tonally closed, if brief, movements. Merula (who called his serious pieces ‘canzone’ as late as 1651, reserving ‘sonata’ for a few lighter works), Cazzati and Legrenzi favoured such three- or four-movement structures, although they shared no single pattern, and individual ‘movements’ are not always tonally closed. Legrenzi left three books devoted entirely to sonatas, and another that included sonatas and dances, published between 1655 and 1673. (A further collection, op.18, published c1695, is lost.) A clear division into separate movements (often including one in slow triple time), a focus on duos and trios, and precise specification of instrumentation are all evident in these collections. In some of the sonatas, the opening material returns at the end, as in the canzona; others differ from the ‘Corellian’ model only in their lack of an opening slow movement. In contrast to these ‘church’ sonatas, Legrenzi’s six chamber sonatas (op.4, 1656) are single movements in simple binary form; G.M. Bononcini used sonata da camera similarly, for an abstract single-movement work rather than a dance suite (op.3, 1669). Maurizio Cazzati, controversial maestro di cappella in Bologna (1657–71), published eight collections that include sonatas for duos, trios and larger ensembles; three from op.35 include trumpet, a hint of the later association between S Petronio and that instrument. The sonatas in his widely disseminated op.18 (1656) usually consist of four movements: duple-metre imitative, grave, fast triple metre and quick imitative finale. Tarquinio Merula favoured a similar plan: fugal opening, fast triple-time movement, slow movement and vigorous finale. Uccellini also moved away from the simple canzona model towards longer and more virtuoso sonatas, usually divided into three or four sections by changes of metre and tempo.
Cazzati’s pupil G.B. Vitali, and Vitali’s Modenese contemporaries Colombi and Bononcini, continued to focus on duos and trios in some ten volumes of sonatas published between 1666 and 1689. Already steeped in those traditions, Corelli had arrived by 1675 in Rome, where Colista, Stradella and Lonati composed sonata-like sinfonias, usually for two violins, lute and continuo. Since the Roman material circulated in manuscript, it has been somewhat underemphasized in most histories of instrumental music, but Corelli surely adopted the slow introductions (rare before the 1680s), strict fugal movements and triple-metre finales from his Roman colleagues. Despite the many references to Corelli’s sonatas (published 1681–1700) as normative, the four-movement model usually attributed to him (slow–fast–slow–fast) is present in only half of his published sonatas.
North of the Alps, Bertali’s ensemble sonatas, followed by the solo and ensemble sonatas of Schmelzer, Biber, J.J. Walther and Buxtehude, recall the drama and virtuosity of the Venetian stile moderno at a time when sonata composition in Italy had become more standardized. Their virtuoso solos incorporated multiple stops and athletic string crossings; moreover, they continuted to depend on sectional rather than multi-movement designs in which successive events are on the whole less predictable than they are in Corelli’s sonatas. They differ from the Italian models in other ways as well: virtuoso writing for the bass viol (Johannes Schenck, Buxtehude), greater interest in scordatura tunings (Schmelzer, Biber), and a continuing devotion to ensemble sonatas a 5 or more, reminiscent of Venetian polychoral style, but with even more demanding treble parts for cornett, violin or trumpet. The legacy of the ensemble sonata (and perhaps the continued cultivation of the viol) may help to explain the more demanding bass parts: when Corelli and his north Italian contemporaries were writing duos or trios in which the violone or cello was at best an optional inclusion, Buxtehude composed sonatas for violin and bass viol in which the instruments have equally virtuoso roles. (But it should be remembered that the solo cello sonata did emerge in Bologna at about the same time, in works of Domenico Gabrielli and others.) In addition, the Austrian and German composers devoted more energy than did the Italians to the sonata-suite, in which an abstract introductory movement is followed by a fairly standard set of dances; more than 20 such collections appeared between 1658 and 1698. Rosenmüller’s Venetian publication of such chamber sonatas (1667) had found no Italian imitators, despite a growing tendency to group dances by key rather than type. In the northern prints ‘sonata’ or ‘sonatina’ was the term most frequently attached to the non-dance preludial movement (Rosenmüller used ‘sinfonia’); especially well represented are Biber, Dietrich Becker, J.J. Walther and Schenck. A few native English composers wrote sonatas at mid-century, influenced by the national devotion to the viol and by their acquaintance with Italian and German sonatas. The latter they knew both at home (Jenkins was associated with the family of Francis North, who owned copies of works by Schmelzer, Colista, Cazzati, Stradella and Pietro Degli Antoni), and by virtue of their foreign employment (William Young in Austria, and Henry Butler in Spain). Henry Purcell’s two published sets of sonatas (1683, 1697), after ‘the most fam’d Italian Masters’, shared the growing English market with sonatas by Italian and German immigrants (e.g. Matteis, Finger, Pepusch).
After 1700, Italians continued to produce sonatas for both domestic and international markets; Vivaldi, Albinoni and the Marcellos in Venice, F.M. Veracini in Florence, Somis in Turin and Tartini in Padua were some of the main contributors. Moreover, such Italian émigrés as Locatelli in Amsterdam and Geminiani in London brought the latest sonata fashions to northern Europe. That most were violinists is telling, although the oboe, flute, cello and other instruments are also strongly represented in their collective output. In these volumes the four-movement plan finally dominates (although the third movement may not be tonally closed); the emphasis begins to turn towards the solo sonata (nearly three-quarters of Vivaldi’s sonatas, and all of Veracini’s are for one instrument and continuo); and the church-chamber distinction disappears. In Corelli’s ‘church’ sonatas, the final two movements are often dances (sarabanda, giga), but in many of Vivaldi’s sonatas the first two movements also employ binary forms. The keyboard, relatively neglected by earlier sonata composers, begins to receive some attention, especially from Domenico Scarlatti, who focussed on one-movement binary forms, some of which are paired in the sources. Other composers of keyboard sonatas (most in two or three movements) include Benedetto Marcello, Giustini, Durante and Platti.
According to Brossard, France was overrun with Italian sonatas early in the 18th century, and French composers soon began to contribute. Most notably these include Leclair l’aîné, preceded by Dornel and Blavet, and even Couperin, who wrote at least three sonatas in the 1690s (published much later as preludes to Les nations). Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre left a dozen sonatas for one or two violins and bass; six were published in 1707, but Brossard apparently copied two about 1695, making them among the earliest composed in France. Of special note in France is the ‘accompanied sonata’ (Mondonville, Rameau) in which the violin or flute accompanies the keyboard. The sonata for unaccompanied solo instrument is associated particularly with Austrian and German composers (Biber, Bach, Telemann), although Tartini may have intended some of his sonatas, published with a bass part, for violin alone (Brainard), and the Swedish composer Roman left about 20 multi-movement works of that type, most called assaggi. Some programmatic or narrative sonatas are also associated with composers in Austria or Germany (e.g. Biber’s Mystery Sonatas and Kuhnau’s Biblical Sonatas), but Couperin’s ‘grande sonade en trio’ Le Parnasse, ou L’apothéose de Corelli might also be mentioned.
18th-century Austro-German composers moved more and more towards the multi-movement design already standard in Italy, and played a central role in the mixing and merging of national styles that characterize the high Baroque sonata. Sonatas by Vivaldi, Fasch, Zelenka, Quantz and Telemann placed galant idioms (the ‘natural’ and immediately appealing melody of the Adagio) side by side with more traditional sonata styles (the fugues, whose value for Scheibe in the late 1730s lay chiefly in their contrast with the more expressive movements featuring accompanied melodies). Especially interesting are the new trios and quartets in which the basso continuo participates as a ‘real’ part. Some, composed ‘auf Concertenart’, borrow aspects of a typically Vivaldian concerto style; others borrow from the operatic aria or recitative, French dance and overture. If J.S. Bach’s sonatas (unaccompanied solos, and several works for one or two instruments with obbligato harpsichord or basso continuo) are better known today than are Telemann’s over 200 ensemble sonatas and solos, the situation was reversed in the mid-18th century. Quantity aside, there are parallels between the two composers: both juxtaposed and integrated national styles, and experimented with formal design and scoring; neither abandoned the traditional four movements for the newer three-movement fashion (as did Graun, Fasch, Tartini and Somis). Telemann is often dismissed as over-prolific, but his greater success in the 18th century may be attributable not only to his skill at marketing (he personally printed much of his instrumental music in didactic or encyclopedic collections), but to his serious exploration of the new trio and quartet in the ‘mixed’ style (combining various national styles) for which contemporaries praised him, and to his avoidance of the most old-fashioned elements of sonata style.
Elsewhere in Europe, sonatas circulated widely in manuscript, as well as in prints both imported and domestic; and musicians left home in search of a better living, taking their music along. Handel was only one of the many foreign musicians whose careers blossomed in London, where imitations of Corelli and the traditional trio sonata long remained fashionable. Handel’s contribution to the sonata, like that of Bach, represents but a small portion of his total output; however, it does include more keyboard sonatas (Bach preferred the keyboard suite), as well as traditional solos and trios aimed equally at the large amateur market and concert stage. A focus on Handel’s sonatas may have inhibited modern exploration of the many English sonata composers of the time (Babell, Boyce, Arne).
Over the 150 years of sonata composition before 1750, several trends are evident: the emphasis on counterpoint lessened; the texture became increasingly treble-dominated; multi-voice and polychoral sonatas gave way to duos and trios, which in turn yielded ground to solos and quartets; the early multi-sectional design grew to four or more separate movements, and then fell back to three or fewer; what distinction existed between church and chamber sonatas evaporated; instruments were more and more precisely specified and their parts became increasingly idiomatic; a focus on the violin grew stronger, and then was tempered by an interest in sonatas for a variety of other instruments; keyboard sonatas finally began to take their place in the repertory. As the sonata gained popularity outside Italy, its Italian and Austro-German elements were further enriched by a variety of national approaches to instrumental music, from the English division (Henry Butler) to the French emphasis on ornamental detail (Leclair). None of these changes occurred overnight, but they are evident enough when one compares sonatas from 1630 or 1700 with those from 1750. Moreover, by mid-century the function and aesthetic stature of the sonata had changed significantly.
Brossard (1703) noted that, while there are many kinds of sonatas, ‘the Italians reduce them to two types. The first is the sonata da Chiesa, that is one proper for the Church, … The second type is the Sonata which they call da Camera, fit for the Chamber. These are actually suites of several small pieces suitable for dancing, and all in the same scale or key’. The liturgical use of Baroque sonatas has been well documented (see Bonta, 1969): 17th-century ensemble canzonas and sonatas replaced the organ solos formerly heard at Mass, and solo violin sonatas were customary at the Elevation; from about 1690, concertos or orchestral performance of trio sonatas might be heard instead. Moreover, 17th-century church musicians may have adapted longer sonatas by performing isolated sections, a practice likely to have encouraged composers to construct independent movements.
Early collections mixing vocal and instrumental music had no need of the chiesa and camera labels; in sacred collections, sonatas and canzonas are usually found (Riccio), in the secular ones, dances and variation sonatas (Marini, 1620; Turini, 1621). Even purely instrumental collections were so clearly orientated that their uses would have been obvious to the purchaser: in Buonamente’s fifth and sixth books (1629 and 1636, cited above) both content and scoring suggest strongly that the former is a secular, the latter a sacred collection (Mangsen, 1990). Merula’s ‘per chiesa e camera’ (1637) was thus unusual both in its label and in mixing serious and lighter instrumental music in one volume. Such mixed volumes, as well as those dedicated to church or chamber, appeared throughout the century, usually without labels indicating function. The editions of Corelli’s ‘church’ sonatas (opp.1 and 3) are entitled merely Sonate a tre, whereas most editions of the chamber sonatas are actually labelled da camera. This in itself suggests what can be documented by other means, that serious instrumental music, even if conceived primarily for a liturgical context, was regularly heard elsewhere, possibly somewhat transformed: at meetings of the various academies, as domestic chamber music, in concert, and even in the theatre (as overture or interval music). The occasions for which such music was best suited (and where to store the parts) would have been obvious to the musician of the time.
Until 1700, at least in Italy, a sonata was assumed to be serious, and therefore suitable for church; da camera marked the special case. Brossard implied as much when, after describing the sonata da chiesa, he noted that ‘these are what they [the Italians] properly call Sonatas’. Chamber sonatas usually ‘begin with a prelude or little Sonata, serving as an introduction to all the rest’. The long tradition of such sonata-suites in Germany, as well as the growing use of binary movements in place of the more serious fugues (generally associated with sacred music), may explain why Walther (1732) included a separate entry for the church sonata (which merely gives the German equivalent), but not for the chamber variety; chiesa was for him the special case, camera the norm. Beyond title-pages and dictionaries, the dedicatees and collectors of printed volumes sometimes yield information about the music’s use: Telemann dedicated some of his printed volumes individually or collectively to amateurs, but professional musicians are also heavily represented on his subscription lists. Corelli’s church sonatas were dedicated to secular patrons, his chamber collections to clerics, perhaps contrary to expectations. But those expectations are probably too narrow, since some of the most significant collectors of sonatas for the chamber were members of the clergy (Franz Rost, Edward Finch).
Although some Baroque sonatas may boast a continuous performing tradition, nearly every aspect of their performance has changed since 1750, and even migration across borders within the Baroque era was often attended by marked differences in performance due to local practices. Thus performing practice of Baroque sonatas is intimately connected to matters of dissemination. 20th-century instruments and playing techniques, as well as ideas about pitch, tempo, ornamentation, continuo realization, dynamics and articulation all differ significantly from their Baroque antecendents; even reading from the composer’s autograph is no guarantee of a ‘correct’ performance, since the interpretation of ‘standard’ notational signs will also have changed. Only a few of these matters can be taken up here.
Many modern editors of Baroque sonatas suggest substituting one instrument for another, a practice with some historical foundation, but not sufficient to condone a completely ad libitum approach. While instruments were specified more and more exactly between 1600 and 1750, many sources, some tied directly to the composer, did give the performer a good deal of leeway. Leclair, for instance, indicated that some of his violin sonatas could be played on (and may even have been conceived for) the transverse flute, and he even provided alternate versions of some individual movements. Telemann offered several options for some of his ensemble sonatas, as in the viol and cello parts for the Paris Quartets. Some of J.G. Graun’s trio sonatas exist also as works for obbligato harpsichord and one treble soloist; and solo violin sonatas in score were no doubt played as keyboard solos. Italian prints from Rossi and Castello to Vivaldi frequently mention alternative instruments (violin or cornett, theorbo or violone) more or less equally suited to play a part. Even if no instruments were specified, however, it is unlikely that composers were indifferent to questions of instrumentation, or that no conventions operated among those who played such pieces.
Ornamentation was a concern even in the 18th century: an important selling-point for Roger’s edition of Corelli’s solo sonatas (1710) seems to have been the inclusion of the ornaments ‘as he played them’. Baroque soloists ornamented sonatas according to their ability and to such criteria as genre, national style, context and tempo. Some composers (Handel, Babell, Telemann) supplied ornamented versions of simpler lines, using smaller note heads, or additional staves, probably intended and still helpful as models. Some used particular phrases (affetti, ad libitum) or signs to encourage departures from the notated pitches. Ornamentation extended to improvisation in sections of sonatas by Colista, Guerrieri and others, who provided only the bass part over which a soloist was to invent a melodic line. Quantz, who included an ornamented Adagio in his flute tutor (1752), warned readers that both tempo and ornamentation should be adapted to suit the context. Mattheson cautioned against performing (and ornamenting) French pieces in the Italian style and vice versa; and Burney noted that (in his day) Corelli’s sonatas were ornamented more lavishly on secular occasions, and given a more restrained performance in church (General History, ii). The increasing density of the ornamentation supplied for Corelli’s solo sonatas in printed and manuscript sources offers one demonstration of the ways in which successive generations of performers embellished the same piece, perhaps slowing the tempo in the process.
When a sonata moves across significant boundaries of time and place, more extensive transformation may be expected. Thus, some English sources of Italian sonatas not only misattribute individual works, but alter the musical content, creating chamber sonatas from dances grouped loosely by key, or merging continuo and melodic bass parts. Spanish guitar transcriptions of Corelli’s sonatas simply delete sections whose realization on the guitar was impractical; sonatas in the Rost manuscript (F-Pn Rés.Vm7 653; see Rost, Franz) omit inner parts to produce trios from quintets. Availability of printed and manuscript copies of sonatas was ensured as agents in northern Europe imported Italian prints, visitors to the Continent returned to England with much sought-after volumes, and sonata prints from northern presses began to outnumber those from Italy. Sonatas remained throughout the period more likely to achieve publication than operas or other large-scale music (among important publication centres were Paris, London, Hamburg and Amsterdam), but manuscript dissemination was significant as well, especially outside Italy. Manuscript copies, to the degree that they were aimed at a smaller circle of players, yield information about local preferences in repertory and performing practice, in contrast to the homogenizing influence exerted by publication.
Rousseau’s quotation of Fontenelle’s remark ‘Sonate, que me veux tu?’ (Dictionnaire, 1768) suggests that, at the end of the Baroque era, sonatas were still less highly regarded than was texted music, at least in France. But by 1739 the ties of abstract instrumental music to narrowly defined social function had already weakened sufficiently for Mattheson to offer a new view of the sonata
whose aim is principally towards complaisance or kindness, since a certain Complaisance must predominate in sonatas, which is accommodating to everyone, and which serves each listener. A melancholy person will find something pitiful and compassionate, a senuous person something pretty, an angry person something violent, and so on, in different varieties of sonatas. (Der vollkommene Capellmeister, trans. Harriss, 466)
This picture of the sonata as personal and domestic, intended more for the individual player and a few listeners than for public ceremony or concert stage, is one associated more with the Classical period than with the Baroque. In fact Mattheson’s response to the modern sonatas of the 1730s, combined with the long shadow cast by Corelli, suggest a good deal of continuity in the 18th-century approach to the genre.
Because of the impossibility of establishing clear stylistic divisions between ‘Baroque’ and ‘Classical’ sonatas in the 18th century, and between ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic’ sonatas in the 19th century, the period covered in this section extends from about 1735 to about 1820, leading to some overlap between the three style periods.
Numerous definitions of the sonata, in generic, aesthetic and formal terms, were attempted during the Classical period. Earlier definitions such as Rousseau’s (Dictionnaire de musique, 1768) had described the sonata as ‘consisting of three or four movements in contrasting characters … to instruments roughly what the cantata is to voices’, mentioning also the respective roles of the soloist and accompaniment, as discussed above (§I, 1). Such definitions perpetuated the older, Baroque, concept of the sonatas da camera and da chiesa, although in Rousseau’s article there is the hint of an emerging awareness of the solo sonata as something distinct from the trio sonata.
J.A.P. Schulz, writing in 1775, defined the sonata as follows:
An instrumental piece [comprising] two, three or four successive movements in contrasting characters … in no form of instrumental music is there a better opportunity than in the sonata to depict feelings without words … [except for symphonies, concertos and dances] there remains only the form of the sonata, which assumes all characters and all expressions … . For instrumentalists, sonatas are the most usual and useful exercises, besides which, there are many examples, both easy and difficult for all kinds of instruments … . Since they require only one performer to a part, they can be played in even the smallest musical gatherings.
Schulz’s article, originally printed in volume ii of Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, was highly influential, being the basis of later definitions by Schubart (Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, written 1784–5; Vienna, 1806/R) and Koch (Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, iii, Leipzig, 1793, and Musikalisches Lexikon, Frankfurt, 1802/R).
Some writers sought literary analogies for the sonata. D.G. Türk’s Clavierschule (Leipzig, 1789) made a comparison between the sonata and the ode, specifically in so far as both depend for their effect upon the regulation of structure by adherence to a well-defined sequence of ideas. In this, Türk was perhaps influenced by Forkel’s likening of sonata form to the rules of oratory, expressed in the Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland (Leipzig, 1784):
one of the foremost principles of musical rhetoric and aesthetics is the careful ordering of musical figures and the progression of the ideas to be expressed through them, so that these ideas are coherently set forth as in an oration … according to logical principles … still preserved by skilled orators – that is, exordium, propositio, refutatio, confirmatio, etc.
Forkel’s comments impinge specifically upon first-movement Sonata form, a tacit acknowledgment that this movement was considered the most important within a sonata in the later 18th century. Definitions of sonata form by Koch, Portmann, Kollmann, Galeazzi and others differ in details and in terminology, but agree in the primacy accorded to tonal rather than thematic contrast. (Thematic contrast, often of a dramatic nature, was to gain ground in the sonata as developed by Beethoven, for example in the first movements of his opp.54 and 109.)
Clearly, the sonata signified many different things to 18th-century writers, varying according to the particular standpoint taken – formal, aesthetic or even national. In summary, a definition of the sonata genre as understood and practised in the Classical period might be a work in three (or, less commonly, four) movements, most often for piano solo or else for duo (violin and piano being numerically the most significant type), whose first movement was almost invariably cast in sonata form, perhaps preceded by a slow introduction (Beethoven, opp.13, 27 no.1 and 81a; Clementi, op.32 no.2), followed by a contrasting slow middle movement in a related key (often on the flat side of the ‘home’ tonic), episodic form and cantabile idiom, and a finale (most frequently a rondo – ‘too frequently’, according to Charles Burney – or sonata-rondo; see Rondo) that rounded off the work in a lighter vein. Minuet (or scherzo) and trio movements are sometimes found sandwiched between the slow movement and finale (as in many of Beethoven’s sonatas up to op.31). Frequently, mid-18th-century sonatas had featured a minuet as finale (Wagenseil, Štěpán, Haydn). In general, use of dance metres such as the allemande steadily declined in the Classical sonata, being mostly restricted to brief ‘topical’ allusions (to the minuet, for instance, at the opening of Mozart’s k570), although at times Beethoven openly specifies a dance topic (op.54, first movement).
Within such generalized schemes were myriad possible variations, as may be demonstrated by contrasting Haydn’s and Mozart’s attitudes to the sequence and number of movements in their sonatas. From his earliest efforts Mozart’s was a three-movement plan, most frequently fast–slow–fast, a procedure Koch regarded as standard in the final volume of his Versuch (1793). Such a succession was never so sacred to Haydn, however: the fifth of the ‘Esterházy’ sonatas, hXVI:25, is in two movements; hXVI:30 (1776) has no clearly separated slow movement, merely a link between the Allegro and the concluding Minuet. Of continuing significance throughout Haydn’s keyboard sonatas is the presence of the minuet, found in only two of Mozart’s sonatas (k282/189g and k331/300i). Two-movement sonatas (for instance, Haydn,hXVI:40–42, hXVI:52; Beethoven, opp.54, 78, 90, 111) were by no means uncommon. Neither were first movements in sonata form the infallible rule. In Haydn’s hXVI:40–42 (1784) only hXVI:41 conforms to that norm; hXVI:49 (1789–90) begins with a set of double variations, alternating major and minor modes, and marked ‘Andante con espressione’; Mozart’s k331/300i in A and Beethoven’s op.26 likewise begin with a set of variations; Rutini’s op.7 sonatas all begin with preludes, allowing the player to feel his or her way into the Affekt of the piece (or perhaps to become familiar with the instrument) before launching into the main business. Sonata form itself, as practised by pre-Classical and Classical sonata composers, was capable of infinite variety. All of Mozart’s first-movement expositions in the early set k279–83/189d–h and k284/205b (1775) are richly polythematic (particularly in the second-subject group), whereas Haydn’s roughly contemporary hXVI:21 and 26 are, by contrast, ‘monothematic’ in the sense that the first and second subjects begin almost identically, although additional melodic material is always introduced during the course of second-subject groups (hXVI:25 is an exception, containing at least nine distinct themes).
Sonatas were typically issued in printed sets of two, three or six works (e.g. Haydn’s hXVI:21–6 and 35–9 and 20; Mozart’s k301–6, 309–11 and 330–32; Beethoven’s opp.2, 10, 12, 27 and 102; and many of Clementi’s). As the Classical period wore on, however, the scale was expanding such that a single sonata could justify an opus number of its own, such as Mozart’s k533 or Beethoven’s opp.7, 22, 57, 96 and 106. Frequently dedicated to a prominent member of the aristocracy, the published sonata, whether singly or in a group, could secure widespread attention for the composer, as Leopold Mozart no doubt realized when arranging for some of his son’s early sonatas to be printed.
Sonatas for solo keyboard were to become the most significant type during the Classical period, although, in numerical terms, the sonata ‘with violin accompaniment’ (see below) was predominant. In 1821 Castil-Blaze noted that ‘the sonata suits the piano best of all, on which one can play three or four distinct voices at the same time … It is also on this instrument that it has gone furthest in its astonishing progress’ (NewmanSCE, 3/1983, p.94). Sonatas were also composed for violin (obbligato), cello (whose role as continuo bass was liberated by Boccherini and extended by Beethoven), flute (Séjan), clarinet (Vanhal), guitar (Sor), baryton (Haydn), horn (Beethoven) and organ (C.P.E. Bach). Duet sonatas were popular for domestic amusement, principally for four hands at one piano, such as those of J.C. Bach, Mozart and Seydelmann; other pairings included two violins (Pleyel), violin and viola (M. Haydn; Mozart) and bassoon and cello (Mozart). It is worth remarking also that sonatas originally conceived for one medium were transferable to others: Beethoven’s E major Sonata op.14 no.1 exists in a version in F for string quartet (Schwager, SM, xvi, 1987, pp.157–69).
The earliest extant collection of sonatas for piano (i.e. fortepiano) solo is Giustini's 12 Sonate da cimbalo di piano e forte detto volgarmente di martelletti (1732), although early examples of the instrument had been developed by Bartolomeo Cristofori by 1709. From the 1760s sonatas for keyboard began to appear in increasing number, among them examples published by Eckard in Paris in 1763 and 1764. The intended instrument is frequently ambiguous in mid-century sonatas. Often the designation is simply ‘clavier’, although internal evidence sometimes betrays the need for a touch-sensitive instrument: while the fortepiano is not specified on the title-page of J.C. Bach’s op.5, certain effects contained in that set are impossible to realize satisfactorily on the harpsichord (but performance on the clavichord remains a possibility). During the 1770s the alternative ‘cembalo o pianoforte’ was commonplace on title-pages; by the end of the century ‘clavecin’, ‘clavier’ and ‘cembalo’ are only rarely encountered.
During much of the Classical period the genre known as ‘accompanied sonata’ was very much in vogue. Early forerunners include J.S. Bach’s sonatas bwv1014–19, for violin with written-out keyboard parts (rather than realized figured basses), and Mondonville’s Pièces de clavecin en sonates avec accompagnement de violon, op.3 (1734), the latter almost exclusively in three movements but featuring fugal allegros and binary dance structures typical of the Baroque. The accompanied sonata was specially prevalent in France. In addition to Mondonville’s op.3 such sets as Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concerts avec un violon ou une flute et une viole ou un 2e violon were published (1741), soon followed by Guillemain’s Pièces de clavecin en sonates avec accompagnement de violon (1745), which includes in its preface the following remark:
my first thought had been to compose these works for keyboard alone, without any accompaniment … but, in order to satisfy the present taste, I felt unable to dispense with [the violin] part, which must be performed very softly so that the keyboard part may be easily heard. If desired, these sonatas may be played either with or without the [violin] accompaniment.
This
vogue reached its height in Paris during the 1760s and 70s in the published
sonatas of Schobert, Honauer, H.F. Raupach, J.F. Edelmann and Hüllmandel.
Mozart was acquainted with the work of the first three (arranging their music
in the pasticcio keyboard concertos k37, 39, 40 and 41)
and his own early efforts in the genre (k6, 7, 8 and 9)
may have been influenced by his discovery of Schobert and his Parisian
contemporaries while touring in 1763–4. Schobert’s work was especially popular,
it seems: a dozen sets of sonatas were published in Paris before his death in
1767. His Six sonates pour le clavecin … oeuvre XIV … les parties
d’accompagnements sonts [sic] ad libitum, originally printed in
Paris, appeared again in Amsterdam, published by Hummel, as Six sonates pour
le clavecin, avec accompagnement d’un violon … oeuvre quatrième. In this
latter form they were advertised in the 1770 fifth supplement to Breitkopf’s
thematic catalogue (‘Trii di Schobert a Cemb[alo] e Viol op.IV Amsterd[am]’).
In all such works the keyboard part was almost entirely self-sufficient, the
accompanimental role of the violin being restricted to thematic doubling in
3rds and 6ths, or the provision of anodyne background figuration derived from
‘Alberti bass’ patterns transferred to the middle of the texture, or else
harmonic ‘filling’ in the form of long, held notes, similar in function to
those often assigned, orchestrally, to the natural horn. This practice may have
had something to do with the gradual disappearance of the cello as a supporting
continuo instrument from the mid-century, combined with weakness of tone in
early fortepianos. Occasionally, as in some of Hüllmandel’s op.6 sonatas or
Clementi’s op.27 (1791), the violin part acquired greater individuality, even
parity with the keyboard. Solo keyboard sonatas (for example, Haydn’s hXVI:37 in D or Mozart’s k570 in B
) were sometimes reissued,
without the authority of the composer, as sonatas ‘with accompaniment for a
violin’, particularly in England (with violin parts devised by Burney), where
the fortepiano rather than the originally non-committal ‘clavecin’ is often
specified.
The
violin became an equal partner in the ensemble in Mozart’s duo sonatas from at
least the late 1770s. k454 in B, published in 1784 alongside two solo
sonatas, k333/315c and k284/205b,
is one such example, opening with an affective slow introduction. The
subsequent Allegro contains many moments of dialogue between the violin and the
piano’s right hand, a texture that was to become so important a trait in the
later Classical duo sonata, a memorable illustration being the opening of
Beethoven’s Spring Sonata in F op.24. Parity between the instruments is taken a
step further in Beethoven’s op.30 set: in the G major Sonata op.30 no.1 the
slow movement’s main theme is shared phrase for phrase between the piano and
violin towards the end of the movement. Nevertheless, the ‘accompanimental’
perception of the violin in such sonatas persisted into the early 19th century,
long after it had attained equal status with the piano: Beethoven’s Kreutzer
Sonata op.47 (1802–3) bears the designation ‘per il pian-forte ed un violino
obligato’ on its title-page.
Classical sonatas were known by a variety of generic titles. In England the term ‘lesson’ was commonplace (Samuel Arnold, op.7); elsewhere ‘solo’ in Italy (Giardini, op.16), ‘pièces de clavecin’ in France (Mondonville, op.3), ‘divertimento’ in Austria (Wagenseil, op.1, several of Haydn’s early sets) were common. The diminutive ‘sonatina’ was particularly associated with keyboard pedagogy and is most obviously linked with the name of Clementi (specifically the op.36 Sonatinas of 1797).
An awareness of the pedagogical connection is fundamental to a proper understanding of the Classical sonata. In 1789 Türk’s Clavierschule included a list of keyboard composers arranged according to the difficulty of their sonatas. Haydn recalled at the end of his life that he had once earned his living giving keyboard lessons, and his early sonatas arose for use in such a setting. Mozart’s letters from Mannheim in late 1777 indicate that the C major Sonata k309/284b was composed for Rosa Cannabich, whom he was teaching at the time. Its slow movement (Andante) calls for the utmost sensitivity to dynamic contrast, and a letter to his father of 14 November is valuable in linking the movement with specific pedagogic issues:
The Andante will give us the most trouble, for it is full of expression and must be played accurately and with the exact shades of forte and piano, precisely as they are marked. [Rosa] is smart and learns very easily. Her right hand is very good, but her left, unfortunately, is completely ruined … I have told her too that if I were her regular teacher, I would lock up all her music, cover the keys with a handkerchief and make her practise, first with the right hand and then with the left, nothing but passages, trills, mordents and so forth, very slowly at first, until each hand should be thoroughly trained.
Wagenseil, who was tutor to the imperial archduchesses in Vienna under Maria Theresa, probably designed his solo sonata sets specifically for the instruction of his royal pupils; in general, these are straightforward, technically undemanding pieces. The op.5 sonatas of J.C. Bach (1766) were certainly composed with a pedagogical end in view (the title-page trumpets the fact that Bach was ‘Music Master to Her Majesty and the Royal Family’), and it is instructive to approach a work such as the third sonata in the set from this perspective, the successive variations of its finale clearly being intended primarily for the demonstration, and eventual mastery, of different technical problems at the keyboard.
The ‘English’ Bach’s elder brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel, must be regarded as one of the most significant composers of ‘pedagogic’ sonatas (nearly all in three movements). He issued a number of sets, including the ‘Prussian’ (1742), ‘Württemberg’ (1744), six sets ‘für Kenner und Liebhaber’ (1779–87), and two sets of sonatas ‘mit veränderten Reprisen’ (1760, 1761) whose primary purpose was that of teaching material. Bach’s reputation covered most of Europe, and it has been suggested that the taste of his ‘public’ played a significant role in the design of his later sets (G. Wagner, Mf, xli, 1988, pp.331–48). His sonatas were frequently included in the keyboard anthology publications (Oeuvres mêlées) of Johann Ulrich Haffner during the 1750s and 60s. Haffner’s anthologies (12 volumes, each containing 6 sonatas) offered a wide selection of works by composers from every corner of musical Europe, and were hugely important in the formation of mid-18th-century ‘galant’ taste. Among the composers represented are, besides C.P.E. Bach (particularly works in the empfindsamer Stil replete with impassioned melodic and rhythmic gestures, recitativo declamation and recherché harmonies), Scheibe, Schobert, Benda, Eberlin, Adlgasser, Leopold Mozart (three of whose solo sonatas were published in this collection) and less well-known men such as Bernhard Hupfeld, Rachmann, J.F. Kleinknecht and Jan Zach. Haffner drew attention to each composer’s court appointment at the head of each sonata, such as the ‘Sonata Vta Composta dal Signor Henrico Filippo Johnsen, Organista della Corte, Direttore di Musica, ed Organista alla Chiesa di Santa Chiara, a Stoccolma’, found in volume iii of Oeuvres mêlées. Although Haffner was not the only publisher to issue such keyboard anthologies (see NewmanSCE, 3/1983, chap.4) he dominated the market that was opening up for sonatas that varied in their technical demands from the easy to the moderately challenging. Anyone owning a complete set of all 12 volumes about 1770 would have had access to a richly varied and comprehensive record of the early Classical sonata.
For
the most part, the ‘domestic’ and ‘pedagogic’ market for Classical sonatas was
female (C.P.E. Bach issued a set of sonatas specifically ‘à l’usage des dames’
in 1770). Talented female keyboard players were relatively plentiful in the
second half of the 18th century; they included Katharina and Marianna
Auenbrugger, to whom Haydn dedicated his six sonatas hXVI:35–9
and 20 in 1780. Indeed, the social etiquette of the age virtually dictated a certain
degree of keyboard proficiency for ladies: among aristocratic families, for
instance, ability in that direction could be important in attracting an
acceptable husband. During the 1780s several of Mozart’s Viennese pupils were
ladies from the higher echelons of society (Countess Thun, Countess Rumbecke).
Somewhat lower down the scale were Theresia von Trattner (wife of the prominent
bookseller and publisher, and dedicatee of the Fantasia and Sonata in C minor k475 and 457, published by Artaria in 1785), Barbara von Ployer
and Josepha Barbara von Auernhammer; the last two carved out successful careers
as performers. Therese Jansen (later Mrs Bartolozzi), a pupil of Clementi, was
yet another, to whom Haydn dedicated his famous E sonata hXVI:52 (and
perhaps also hXVI:50 and 51) in 1794.
Besides
its function as teaching material, the Classical sonata found a place within
the aristocratic salon, a forum that became increasingly popular during the
second half of the 18th century, especially in France and Austria. Such salons,
at which only the upper classes were normally present, were private affairs
usually given in the homes of counts and countesses, less frequently in the
homes of court officials such as L’Augier, the Viennese court physician, one of
whose meetings was attended by Charles Burney in 1772. It is only ocasionally
possible to recover any programme details of such private gatherings, such as
that at Hohen-Altheim, the country residence of Prince Kraft Ernst von
Oettingen-Wallerstein (1748–1802), on 26 October 1777, when Mozart performed
his sonatas in B k281/189f and D k284/205b.
The most famous of Viennese salons was that of Countess Wilhelmine Thun, a
staunch patron of Mozart’s during his early years in the capital, who lent her
fortepiano for the famous contest with Clementi before Emperor Joseph II on 24
December 1781. Clementi later noted that on this occasion he himself had played
his Sonata in B op.24
no.2. Mozart's record of the meeting describes Clementi in less than flattering
terms, noting that he was a mere technician, whose ‘star passages’ were 3rds
and 6ths. The association of Clementi’s sonatas with empty technical brilliance
(as in the op.2 set of 1779, for instance) highlights a weakness that Clementi
himself freely acknowledged, and it is noteworthy that Rochlitz, reviewing
Clementi’s sonatas opp.33 and 37 in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
in 1798–9, praised Clementi’s avoidance of exactly such passages, something
that was evidently regarded as a fingerprint of his earlier style. According to
Schindler, Beethoven owned almost all of Clementi’s works (he had little by
Mozart and nothing by Haydn), which he valued for their ‘lovely, pleasing,
fresh melodies [as well as] the well-constructed fluent forms’.
Throughout
much of the Classical period the solo sonata remained a domestic genre. Only
towards the end of the 18th century and in the early 19th did it become a
concert piece, typically issued with the title ‘Grande Sonate’, and that trend
was inextricably linked with the rise at the time of such virtuoso performers
as Beethoven, Hummel and Dussek. Mozart scarcely ever played his own sonatas in
public performances, preferring the concerto and variation genres as vehicles
for exhibiting his keyboard prowess. The rise of the ‘concert’ sonata is to
some degree linked with increasing length and advancing technical difficulty.
Beethoven’s sonatas, which cover virtually the whole of his career, tread a
steady path away from the kind of piece that could have been played by talented
amateurs. Works such as the Waldstein, ‘Appassionata’ and Hammerklavier sonatas
were only ever attainable by professional players, and also demanded a new kind
of listener, familiar with the intellectual demands of the other ‘public’
genres of symphony and concerto and featuring juxapositions of contrasting
themes and textures that demanded the listener’s active, rather than passive,
attention. In those respects, Beethoven’s middle- and late-period sonatas
(whether for solo piano or duo, such as the cello sonatas op.102) go far beyond
anything that had formerly been the preserve of the aristocratic salon. Also
notable in the later concert sonata is a tendency towards more expansive, at
times dramatic gestures in such turbulent movements as the first movement of
Beethoven’s sonatas op.31 no.2 (sometimes associated with Shakespeare’s Tempest:
see Albrecht, 1988) and op.57. A parallel strand is the studied introspection
of op.101 or the finale of op.111, an idiom that was to influence Schubert (in
the slow movement of the late B Sonata d960, for example).
During the mid-18th century the sonata was an important laboratory for stylistic change, from the late Baroque to the galant. The characteristics of the former may be summarized as including a continuously spun-out melody, featuring sequential writing and general avoidance of contrasting melodies, a tendency towards polyphony (whether ‘real’ or ‘implied’, as in some of J.S. Bach’s violin sonatas), and a relatively uniform harmonic rhythm. Some of these elements begin to break down in the sonatas of, for example, Domenico Scarlatti (especially as regards melodic and textural contrast). Scarlatti’s single-movement sonatas are closely related in outline to the familiar binary structure of the Baroque dance suite and are notable for a steady movement away from the patterned uniformity of Baroque rhetoric towards the more dynamic interplay of galant-style phrase articulation.
The galant idiom, which reached its peak during the 1750s and 60s, favoured a wholly different approach towards melody, which proceeded in short phrases of two or four bars, arranged in symmetrical patterns and closing with balancing imperfect and perfect (half and full) cadences along with a use of the 6-4 chord so extensive as to be almost a cliché. Characteristic of galant melody was its tuneful, lyrical quality, dotted rhythms (sometimes inverted as the ‘Scotch snap’), interruption of the prevailing flow by triplet quavers, affective use of rests and long appoggiaturas, contrast of dynamic and articulation. Textural characteristics include a marked absence of polyphony and especially of fugal imitation, tending instead towards a simplicity and transparency of presentation, generally confined to two strands, one for each hand. Variety of harmonic rhythm (a reaction against ‘turgid’ and ‘artificial’ late Baroque practice as identified by Scheibe in his critique of J.S. Bach’s music) was a fingerprint of the galant style, made all the more prominent by recourse to such accompaniment patterns as the Alberti bass. All in all, the emerging galant idiom, found in the work of J.C. Bach, Boccherini, Galuppi, Rutini, Sammartini and Schobert, and in early Haydn and early Mozart, captured a deliberately cultivated superficiality of utterance.
The
‘high’ Classical style has been described by William Newman as ‘the peak at
which the ideal and most purposeful co-ordination of Classic style traits
obtained’ (NewmanSCE, 3/1983, p.124). Among its features are a clearer
sense of individuality and originality in the handling of the elements of the
Classical language than in the galant idiom. This expresses itself most
obviously in thematic terms – a striking opening such as that of Haydn’s hXVI:52 or Mozart’s k457 – although such
opening gambits as the opposition of a forte unison statement (often
triadic) and a piano chordal answer (Mozart’s k309/284b
and k576, for instance) is not infrequent. Other
fingerprints of the high Classical style include the reintegration of
counterpoint with periodic phrasing (Haydn, hXVI:47;
Mozart, k533, k570); audacious form
schemes (as in Mozart’s k311/284c, whose
exposition themes are reversed in the recapitulation); wide-ranging tonal
schemes, leading to expansion of movement length (Haydn, hXVI:50
in C, hXVI:52; Mozart, k570;
Beethoven, op.2 no.3); use of harmonic colour (especially chromaticism) for
effect (Haydn, hXVI:20 in C minor, hXVI:52
in E; Mozart, k333/315c; Beethoven, op.27 no.2 – one of a pair of
sonatas entitled ‘quasi una fantasia’, partly on the grounds that the movements
are designed as ‘sections’ which follow on in sequence with scarcely any break,
but partly also because of recourse to keyboard textures and idioms more
closely associated with the fantasia genre than with a sonata) and use of
irregular phrase-lengths (Haydn, hXVI:45 in E; Mozart, k309/284b
opening themes). Texturally, the high Classical sonata typically returns to a
more fully polyphonic norm in which counterpoint plays an increasingly
significant thematic role (Haydn,hXVI:52; Clementi, op.40
no.1, op.50 no.1; Beethoven, op.2 no.2, op.54); elsewhere the texture is
enlivened by more confident use of a wider keyboard range than was normal in
the earlier galant style, sometimes stressing textural variety so
prominently as to make it a defining force within the movement structure
(Haydn, hXVI:49; Mozart, k457;
Beethoven, op.10 no.3, op.13).
At the end of the Classical period the sonata, as hinted earlier, launched itself out of the drawing-room and on to the concert platform. The middle-period sonatas of Clementi and, especially, Beethoven secured the place of the sonata as a public statement in which the composer as individual genius chose to express some of his innermost thoughts. From the early 19th century the sonata trod the parallel paths of grand virtuosity and inward contemplation. Occasionally, as in Beethoven’s op.106 (the Hammerklavier), both types meet on a grand scale, leading to the sublime juxtaposition of extreme sound worlds. Both Clementi and Beethoven tend in their sonatas to devote considerable effort to the working out of motifs. (That much is well-known in Beethoven’s case from examination of his sketches.) Clementi’s op.50 set (published in 1821), including the programmatic ‘Didone abbandonata’ (no.3 in G minor), is notable for its concentration of motivic usage, frequently over protracted time-spans, as also for complexity of tonal and phrase-structure. A tendency towards the incorporation of quasi-orchestral sonorities at the keyboard is evident in Beethoven’s later sonatas (opp.81a, 109, 111), although it is only one trait among several that emerge at this stage: others include a renewed interest in fugue (opp.101, 110, 111) and variation chains (opp.109, 111), along with idiosyncratic keyboard patterns such as high-pitched trills as a tonally stabilizing background to culminating thematic statements (as in the finales of opp.109 and 111). At this late stage in the Classical sonata's evolution the ‘centre of gravity’ no longer necessarily resides in the first movement, as was generally the case in Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas. This trend is especially notable in Beethoven’s work. From the earliest set, op.2, the slow movements clearly function as highly expressive individual statements, rather than mere contrast to the quicker outer movements (those of op.10 no.3 and op.57 are particularly outstanding examples). In Beethoven’s later sonatas the work becomes a journey, no single movement making sense outside the whole context (op.90, for instance, in two movements of contrasting ‘dark’ and ‘light’ character; also opp.106, 109 and 110). In opp.109 and 111 the variation finales (containing, perhaps, a wider range of expression than any previous sonata-form first movement in the Classical sonata literature) truly become the emotional heart of their respective works.
Sonata, §3: 19th century after Beethoven
Beethoven's sonatas wielded enormous influence on compositional, pedagogical and performing practices throughout the 19th century. His towering achievements in the solo and duo sonata, as well as the string quartet and the symphony, set a standard that few composers could hope to meet. Sonatas in imitation of Beethoven's nevertheless abound, along with analytical and pedagogical publications on Beethoven's own sonatas. His sonatas featured prominently in the piano recitals that developed as a genre from the late 1830s, with a canon of favourites established early on (although occasionally subject to the virtuoso ‘embellishments’ that were popular before 1850). By 1861, pianists were performing Beethoven sonatas in complete cycles, a practice that of course survives to this day.
Austria and Germany remained especially important centres of sonata production in the wake of Beethoven, although French and British composers also produced large numbers. Beethoven's influence encouraged a new appreciation of the sonata as one of the most ‘distinguished’ forms (Schumann); it thus became a staple of piano solo and ensemble recitals alike, its increasing significance reflecting the collective predilections of performers, publishers, students and amateur groups, as well as their often sophisticated audiences. In The Sonata since Beethoven (1969, 3/1983), William S. Newman claimed that the ‘main cornerstones’ of the Romantic sonata were Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, the last of these being ‘the most important and central contributor to the sonata since Beethoven’. All told, he identified some 625 European and American composers who produced sonatas, in three overlapping phases: 1800–50 (during which Dussek, Weber, Schubert and Mendelssohn were the key practitioners); 1840–85, which started with an alleged decline in the quality and quantity of sonata production, followed after a decade by a revival of interest (a period dominated by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Brahms); and finally about 1875–1914 (when the later Brahms, Reger, Franck, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, d'Indy, Grieg, Medtner, Rachmaninoff and MacDowell were pre-eminent).
While Newman regarded 19th-century sonatas as a ‘conservative facet of Romantic music history’, Charles Rosen (1980) asserted that compositional styles after 1830 were not ‘especially suitable’ for dealing with sonata form, which is ‘largely irrelevant to the history of 19th- and 20th-century styles’, neither generating nor being altered by them. (Richard Strauss for one complained in 1888 of ‘a gradually ever increasing contradiction between the musical-poetic content that I want to convey [and] the ternary sonata form that has come down to us from the classical composers’, a form in his opinion no longer capable of conveying ‘the highest, most glorious content’ found in Beethoven's sonatas.) Conversely, Anatole Leikin (1986) identified a dissolution of normative sonata structure in the music of Schubert, Schumann and Chopin, among others, where the elements of the sonata archetype blend together, the borders between them blurring or disappearing altogether partly because of the influence of other formal paradigms.
Sonata, §3: 19th century after Beethoven
The sonata as genre must be distinguished from the sonata as form. Arguably, any work bearing the title ‘sonata’ belongs to the sonata genre, as indeed did such disparate works as the symphony, fantasy and concerto, according to early 19th-century parlance. As generic categories hardened, however, composers and writers alike employed more precise terminology, while descriptive labels such as ‘brillante’, ‘dramatique’ and even ‘érotique’ were appended to the titles of published sonatas by composers or (more often) publishers, either to denote character or simply to enhance appeal.
Sonata-derived procedures and formal properties influenced a vast number of pieces not explicitly designated ‘sonatas’ – for instance, Chopin's four ballades, which demonstrate a unique application and understanding of the ‘sonata principle’ as inherited from 18th-century masters. The essence of such a sonata principle was a (usually harmonic) opposition or polarity set up early in a work, which, after a heightening of resultant tensions, experienced eventual resolution and reconciliation in the last third or so of the piece, principally through tonal adjustments. Key 19th-century specimens, as well as 18th-century sonatas, depend on that fundamental dialectic, notwithstanding the increasingly schematic formulae developed by theorists from the 1790s onwards and applied by composers with growing frequency, often at the expense of the music's life.
Francesco Galeazzi (1796) was one of the first to adumbrate a standard ‘sonata form’ (not referred to as such, however; see Churgin, 1968), while Reicha's ‘grande coupe binaire’ (Traité de haute composition musicale, 1824–6) anticipates many of the features in the most important 19th-century definition of sonata form, that proposed in Czerny's School of Practical Composition op.600 (published in German in 1849 and in English translation in 1848, several years after the third volume of A.B. Marx's seminal treatise Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition, which explicitly addresses ‘Sonatenform’). Outlining the basic requirements of a sonata form, Czerny advanced a prescriptive model based less on harmonic relationships than on thematic ones, and although many of the terms in current usage (e.g. ‘exposition’, ‘recapitulation’ and even ‘sonata form’ itself) did not feature in the English translation of Czerny's op.600, its influence on subsequent theoretical thought and actual compositional practice can hardly be overstated. (According to Rosen, sonata form was fixed once and for all after Czerny: even Brahms ‘could not change the form as Haydn or C.P.E. Bach had’.)
It is fascinating to trace the process by which textbook sonata form came to challenge or replace the supple ‘sonata principle’ in the hands of composers. Although contemporary dictionaries and other publications paid little heed to sonata design (George Macfarren's On the Structure of a Sonata, 1871, is a rare exception), there was (in Newman's words) an ‘increasing recognition and description of an explicit “sonata form” by theorists and other writers’ which ‘had the levelling effect, at least among the weaker, less imaginative composers, of rigidifying the once fluid form and making it into a stereotype’. One of the great paradoxes of music history is that this new model dominated the vast and highly conventionalized output of most mid- to late 19th-century sonata composers, while the older, even atavistic ‘sonata principle’ remained potent in the music of their (relatively few) progressive counterparts.
Sonata, §3: 19th century after Beethoven
This domination of the conventional caused despairing critics to predict the sonata's demise. Schumann for one noted in 1839 that most sonatas by younger composers were little more than a ‘study in form … hardly born out of a strong inner compulsion … [It] seems that the form has run its course’. Typical sonatas reveal a slavish adherence to a predetermined, formulaic and essentially static tonal architecture, as well as an emphasis, sometimes excessive, on melodic and thematic material generally lacking the potential for truly dramatic development. Often the music seems stillborn and predictable, falling short of the ideals associated with ‘this noble musical form’ (Schumann) – a form which, according to Rosen, was the ‘vehicle of the sublime’ after Beethoven, indeed the principal means by which the ‘highest musical ambitions’ could be realized.
Nevertheless, the best 19th-century sonatas contain many novel features as well as variants on compositional procedures found in Classical works. Such innovations include a fluid, expansive melodic handling in which symmetrical periodicity is often sacrificed to broader gestures at various hierarchical levels; a richer harmonic and tonal palette, as well as rapid and extreme shifts between harmonic regions; a pervasive exploitation of motif at the same time as an eclectic blend of disparate materials (a technique possibly deriving from improvisatory practices, which certainly influenced Beethoven's middle-period and late sonatas); overarching cyclical tendencies, whereby reminiscences occur, as in the ‘Rückblick’ from Brahms's op.5, or such that ‘each movement is based on a transformation of the themes of the others’ (Rosen); and a fusion of the typical four-movement structure into one amalgam, most notably in Liszt's B minor Sonata, which is often referred to as a ‘double-function form’. Although (as Newman observed) ‘no front-rank Romantic sonata was identified with a programme, even a vague one, by its composer’, a greater range of characterization was achieved through operatic, folk-derived, hymn-like and highly chromatic idioms lavishly and imaginatively used in altogether new contexts.
Most 19th-century sonatas have four movements, the first of which typically subscribes to the sonata-form model, at least in more conventional repertory. But in ‘progressive’ sonatas, especially Brahms's, the blurring between sectional divisions noted above often occurs, with considerable development outside the formal development section, and an ‘influx of expositional traits into the recapitulation’ (Leikin). As for the exposition itself, the opposition or polarity so vital to the 18th-century sonata principle is often replaced (in Rosen's words) by ‘only a sense of distance’, possibly being further ‘weakened by a chromatic blurring of the approach to the second tonality’ (usually the dominant in major-key movements, often the relative major in minor-key ones). Rosen maintained that, in many Romantic sonatas, ‘exposition as opposition and recapitulation as resolution have almost disappeared’, because the end-weighted structural thrust of the prevalent ‘plot archetype’ overshadows and even obliterates the climax point at the close of the development section as found in most Classical sonatas. The internal compositional dynamic is additionally altered by ‘the virtual elimination of full-fledged themes as tonal and melodic landmarks’, explained by Newman as an ‘extreme consequence of continuous motivic writing’.
Whereas the expectations for first movements proved constraining to many composers, not least Brahms, second movements offered a broad spectrum of formal and expressive possibilities. Typical designs included binary or ternary forms, a compact rondo form (A–B–A–B–A) and a theme-and-variations format, taken at a moderate tempo more often than a slow one. Third movements were usually lively scherzos, whether or not they bore that title, while finales tended to have a rondo construction, although other formal templates were also used. Newman remarked that the ‘finale posed the chief structural problem, one main reason apparently being a felt need to alter, intensify, and, unfortunately, overcomplicate the traditionally light, gay rondo sufficiently for it to carry more weight’. In Brahms's case, ‘the tempo, drive, and melodic intensity of the finale are sufficient to achieve a clear peak in the over-all profile’, despite the greater weight given to the slow and scherzo movements in his piano and duo sonatas.
Practical considerations often inspired the composition of sonatas, whether particular performance opportunities, the invitation of a publisher or performer, or the desire to write for students. For younger composers, the sonata offered a perfect first work to launch a career in print: hence Schumann's comments above. Sonatas also appealed to many women composers (perhaps because of a generic ‘respectability’), among them Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Luise Adolpha Le Beau, Cécile Chaminade and Ethel Smyth. As already suggested, sonatas were often written as teaching-pieces, perhaps in an old-fashioned ‘pedagogic’ style or a somewhat reduced format – for instance, a petite sonatine as opposed to the grande sonate played in public by a virtuoso pianist.
Newman's analysis of the 19th-century sonata settings identified in Hofmeister's Musikalisch-literarischer Monatsbericht neuer Musikalien reveals that 41% were for solo piano, 21% for piano and violin, 11% for piano duet, 6% for piano and flute, and 5% for piano and cello, with other combinations occurring less frequently. That the largest group was for solo piano is hardly surprising, given the instrument's central importance throughout the era. But all told, so-called ‘accompanied sonatas’ – for piano plus one other instrument (which ‘accompanied’ the piano) – form a considerable corpus. In general, the piano part retained the prominence it enjoyed in early duo sonatas, to the point that the titles to Brahms's sonatas continued to list the piano first. Composers of violin–piano sonatas include Schumann, Franck and Fauré, while Hummel, Onslow and Rubinstein wrote works for viola and piano. Sonatas for cello and piano were composed by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Hiller, Reger, Vierne and Fauré; for clarinet and piano by Brahms, Draeseke and Stanford; and for flute and piano by Kuhlau, Reinecke and Pierné. Other sonata settings exist for horn and piano, oboe and piano, bassoon and piano, unaccompanied violin, organ and two pianos. Arrangements or transcriptions of solo sonatas for two or more instruments were also concocted, both to expand ensemble possibilities and to increase the market for new scores. For instance, the ‘Marche funèbre’ from Chopin's op.35 appeared in well over 100 different formats, including settings for two pianos eight hands, salon orchestra, and a trio comprising harmonium, violin and cello.
Sonata, §3: 19th century after Beethoven
Leipzig, Paris and London were the main publication centres for 19th-century sonatas, which tended to be produced in very small print runs (as was also the case with other genres) and occasionally on a subscription basis. The parts in duo sonatas were published separately until fairly late in the century, the piano part having at most a short cue from the other instrument. Newman observed that ‘the sonata has always been one of the easier genres to print because so few instruments have been involved’, but he quoted Gottfried Fink's complaint from 1839 that ‘only the smallest number of new sonatas find a publisher nowadays’ – an odd remark, which does not square with the evidence. Not only were arrangements devised to appeal to wider audiences, but publishers resorted to elaborate covers and fancy titles to promote sales, in addition to publishing individual sonata movements separately. Guides on performance also appeared in profusion, of which perhaps the most notable is Czerny's Über den richtigen Vortrag der sämtlichen Beethoven'schen Klavierwerke, which discusses articulation, tempo and additional matters with reference to Beethoven's piano sonatas, among other works.
Sonata, §3: 19th century after Beethoven
As already noted, sonatas featured prominently in piano recitals in the late 1830s and beyond, such as those of Liszt, Clara Wieck and Moscheles in the early part of the era; Rubinstein and Bülow in the mid- to late 19th century; and Paderewski, Rachmaninoff and Hofmann at the end of the century. Sonatas were played by such violinists as Joachim, Ysaÿe and Kreisler (Paganini performed only his own highly idiosyncratic examples) and by the cellist Piatti. Public performances of ensemble sonatas took place in all the leading centres, particularly Paris and London, promoted by concert series, music societies, educational establishments and even the musical press. Amateurs also performed sonatas in more private settings, although many preferred ‘the lightest, frothiest examples’ (Newman) rather than the relatively serious and technically difficult works more typical of the genre. The supremely challenging sonatas of Beethoven were frequently played by serious students and professionals alike (for instance in all-Beethoven recitals), thus indicating his seminal influence up to the end of the 19th century and beyond.
The distinctiveness of the sonata as a genre had, by the end of the 20th century, all but disappeared. The title had lost its traditional implication of a work in several movements for piano alone or with another instrument. A great many neo-classical sonatas follow these conventions, but, as the term ‘neo-classical’ itself implies, continuity of sonata writing was lost, and perhaps only in Soviet Russia was any new tradition established. It is true that Beethoven has often been cited in connection with piano sonatas by Tippett (no.3, 1972–3), Boulez (no.2, 1947–8) and Barraqué (1950–52), but that means only that those composers approached the solo piano medium with something of the strength and seriousness of Beethoven; the references in the Boulez piece to the Hammerklavier form relationships with a specific model rather than with a tradition. Paradoxically, the three masters of the Second Viennese School, for whom sonata form was a constant guide, left only one sonata among them: Berg’s op.1 for piano (1907–8).
At the beginning of the century, however, the Brahmsian sonata tradition was being perpetuated in the work of Reger. His later compositions include several sonatas for string instrument and piano in which allusion to Bach, formally and contrapuntally, increased, and that tendency is certainly no less obvious in the seven sonatas for violin alone, op.91 (1905), the first significant sonatas for solo melody instrument since the 18th century. Thus Reger’s sonatas were not only a culmination of the 19th-century tradition: they looked forward to the classicism, eventually neo-classicism, which was to play an important part in sonata writing for the next 50 years. A similar place, though in a different tradition, might be ascribed to the three late, finely and sparely wrought sonatas of Fauré: the Violin Sonata no.2 op.108 (1916–17), the Cello Sonata no.1 op.109 (1917), and the Cello Sonata no.2 op.117 (1921).
Debussy’s three late sonatas (1915–17) also show a purification of style, but here there is little reference to formal archetypes. What is involved is rather a clarification of Debussy’s own, individual technique, removing from it any literary or pictorial association (although he gave the unofficial subtitle ‘Pierrot angry with the moon’ to the Cello Sonata). In the second piece he abandoned conventional sonata scoring, writing the work for flute, viola and harp; that innovation opened the way for such unusually scored sonatas as Ravel’s for violin and cello (1920–22) and Poulenc’s for two clarinets (1918), clarinet and bassoon (1922) and brass trio (1922).
If Debussy’s sonatas refer much more to his own earlier work than to any tradition, those of Skryabin and Ives are equally personal. The late piano sonatas of Skryabin (the last, no.10, dates from 1913) are single-movement structures in which tonal modulation has almost no functional part; in expressive terms they relate to a never completed cataclysmic ‘mystery’. Ives, who left four numbered sonatas for violin and piano and two for piano, used the sonata as a container for reminiscences of popular music, responses to literature and nature, and so on. The movements cannot normally be related to traditional formal models, although the total form may be: the four movements of the Piano Sonata no.2 ‘Concord’ (c1914–19), for example, include a scherzo as the second and a slow movement as the third.
The various sonatas produced by Debussy, Skryabin and Ives in the decade 1910–20 had already broken almost completely with 19th-century standards of sonata writing. In the next decade there was a widespread attempt to recover tradition, but not directly; instead of following Brahms and Reger, composers looked back to Beethoven and, more commonly, still further. Stravinsky claimed that, in his Piano Sonata 1924, he ‘used the term sonata in its original meaning … therefore, I did not regard myself as restricted by any predetermined form’; nevertheless, he admitted to having made a study of Beethoven’s sonatas prior to the composition, and there are distinct traces of Beethoven as well as the Baroque in the work. By the time of the brief Sonata for Two Pianos (1943–4) Stravinsky was even able to use sonata and variation forms.
Bartók also made a return to Baroque counterpoint in his Piano Sonata (1926), where again the shadow of Beethoven can be felt; but the music’s rhythmic and harmonic aggressiveness are quite new. The two sonatas for violin and piano (1921, 1922) are more spontaneous in form and feeling, and remarkable for the independence of their instrumental parts. All three of Bartók’s sonatas of the 1920s open with movements in sonata form, as do the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937), and the Solo Violin Sonata (1944), where the influence of the Bachian sonata is strongest. Other composers who could be said, like Stravinsky and Bartók, to have looked back a century or more in writing sonatas included Poulenc, Martinů and Hindemith. Hindemith, most of whose works in the genre are in the smoothed neo-classical style of his later years, left sonatas for most of the instruments in current use, including harp, english horn and tuba.
What might be called the ‘neo-classical sonata’ was also widely practised in the USA after 1930, for example Sessions’s Piano Sonata no.1 (1927–30). In Sessions’s later sonatas, however, the neo-classical frame became hidden in an increasingly complex and individual style; and a similar development in Carter’s music took place most swiftly at the time of his three sonatas: for piano (1945–6), for cello and piano (1948) and for flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord (1952). The ‘sonata’ movements of Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (1946–8) are in a two-part, pseudo-Baroque form, yet the oriental modality and character of the music make the description ‘neo-classical’ less than helpful. Some of Prokofiev’s sonatas might with more justice be given that appellation, but those he wrote in Soviet Russia (Piano Sonatas nos.6–9, 1939–47; Violin Sonata no.1, 1938–46; Flute Sonata, 1943; Cello Sonata, 1949) lack the conscious archaism or irony of neo-classicism, perhaps because the model they seem to suppose – a 19th-century Russian sonata tradition – never existed.
Instead they established a tradition of their own, and led towards Shostakovich, whose Viola Sonata (1975) is among those late works in which a sense of the ageing of the musical tradition has a personal reality. Being at once weighty with history and individual in presentation (as the testament of a soloist), the sonata was a natural form for composers who, for whatever reason, felt kinship with the past in terms both of its achievements and of its philosophy of personal expression. Not only Shostakovich’s sonatas can be understood in this light, but also Barraqué’s Piano Sonata.
Other composers aligned their works rather with earlier traditions: Ferneyhough’s plurally titled Sonatas for string quartet (1967) is partly a response to Purcell, and Davies’s St Michael Sonata for wind (1957), a sonata of a Gabrielian sort (although later sonatas by this composer are aesthetically more on the Shostakovich model). Or the title may be used simply to indicate that the work concerned is for a soloist, abstract and serious, without any implications for its form. Boulez’s three piano sonatas (1946, 1947–8 and 1955–7) show a progression from traditional patterns (of two movements in no.1, of four in the post-Hammerklavier no.2) to one determinedly new. Ligeti’s Viola Sonata (1991–4), as a set of inventions for unaccompanied soloist, as assertive statement, as virtuoso showpiece and as a sequence of forms not beholden to the past, fits into many of the sonata’s histories.
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I. Faisst: ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Claviersonate von ihrem ersten Auftreten bis auf C.P. Emanuel Bach’, Caecilia, [Mainz] xxv (1846) 129–58, 201–31; xxvi (1847), 1–28, 73–83; repr. in NBeJb 1924, 7–85
J.W. von Wasielewski: Die Violine im XVII. Jahrhundert und die Anfänge der Instrumentalcomposition (Bonn, 1874/R)
R. Eitner: ‘Die Sonate: Vorstudien zur Entstehung der Form’, MMg, xx (1888), 163–70, 179–85
A. Heuss: ‘Ein Beitrag zur Klärung der Kanzonen- und Sonaten-Form’,SIMG, iv (1902–3), 214–17 [part of ‘Die Instrumentalstücke des “Orfeo”’, 175–224]
A. Einstein: Zur deutschen Literatur für Viola da Gamba im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1905/R)
A. Schering: ‘Zur Geschichte der Solosonate in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Riemann-Festschrift (Leipzig, 1909/R), 309–25
G. Beckmann: Das Violinspiel in Deutschland vor 1700 (Leipzig, 1918, music suppl. 1921)
W. Fischer: ‘Instrumentalmusik von 1600–1750’, AdlerHM, 540–73
J. Subirá: La música en la Casa de Alba (Madrid, 1927)
F. Vatielli: Arte e vita musicale a Bologna (Bologna, 1927/R)
A. Schlossberg: Die italienische Sonata für mehrere Instrumente im 17. Jahrhundert (Paris, 1935)
E.C. Crocker: An Introductory Study of the Italian Canzona for Instrumental Ensembles and its Influence upon the Baroque Sonata (diss., Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA, 1943)
H.G. Mishkin: ‘The Solo Violin Sonata of the Bologna School’, MQ, xxix (1943), 92–112
W.C. Gates: The Literature for Unaccompanied Solo Violin (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1949)
W.S. Newman: ‘A Checklist of the Earliest Keyboard “Sonatas” (1641–1738)’, Notes, xi (1953–4), 201–12; xii (1954–5), 57
P. Evans: ‘Seventeenth-Century Chamber Music Manuscripts at Durham’, ML, xxxvi (1955), 205–23
E. Schenk, ed.: Die italienische Triosonate, Mw, vii (1955; Eng. trans., 1955)
S.J. Sadie: British Chamber Music, 1720–1790 (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1958)
F. Giegling, ed.: Die Solosonate, Mw, xv (1959; Eng. trans., 1960)
S. Sadie: ‘The Chamber Music of Boyce and Arne’, MQ, xlvi (1960), 425–36
P. Brainard: ‘Tartini and the Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin’, JAMS, xiv (1961), 383–93
B.K. Klitz: Solo Sonatas, Trio Sonatas, and Duos for Bassoon before 1750 (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1961)
R. Allorto: ‘La sonata a uno e piú strumenti in Italia’, Musiche italiane rare e vive da Giovanni Gabrieli a Giuseppe Verdi, Chigiana, xix (1962), 45–7
A. Biales: Sonatas and Canzonas for Larger Ensembles in Seventeenth-Century Austria (diss., UCLA, 1962)
W. Klenz: Giovanni Maria Bononcini of Modena: a Chapter in Baroque Instrumental Music (Durham, NC, 1962)
E. Apfel: ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Triosonate’, Mf, xviii (1965), 33–6
G.A. Henrotte: The Ensemble Divertimento in Pre-Classic Vienna (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1967)
U. Zingler: Studien zur Entwicklung der italienischen Violoncellsonate von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (diss., U. of Frankfurt,1967)
C.V. Palisca: Baroque Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968, 3/1991)
S. Bonta: ‘The Uses of the sonata da chiesa’, JAMS, xxii (1969), 54–84
M.R. Maniates: ‘“Sonate, que me veux tu?”: the Enigma of French Musical Aesthetics in the 18th Century’, CMc, no.9 (1969), 117–40
E. Schenk, ed.: Die ausseritalienische Triosonate, Mw, xxxv (1970; Eng. trans., 1970)
B. Schwendowius: Die solistische Gambenmusik in Frankreich von 1650 bis 1740 (Regensburg, 1970)
N. Zaslaw: Materials for the Life and Works of Jean-Marie Leclair l’aîné (diss., Columbia U., 1970)
J.M. Bowers: The French Flute School from 1700 to 1760 (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1971)
J. Sehnal: ‘Zur Differenzierung der sonata da chiesa und sonata da camera in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Musica cameralis: Brno VI 1971, 303–10
D. Sheldon: ‘The Transition from Trio to Cembalo Obbligato Sonata in the Works of J.S. and C.H. Graun’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 395–413
N.M. Jensen: ‘Solo Sonata, Duo Sonata and Trio Sonata: some Problems of Terminology and Genre in Seventeenth-Century Italian Instrumental Music’, Festskrift Jens Peter Larsen, ed. N. Schiørring, H. Glahn and C.E. Hatting (Copenhagen, 1972), 73–101
G. Beckman: Die französische Violinsonate mit Basso Continuo von Jean-Marie Leclair bis Pierre Gaviniès (diss., U. of Hamburg, 1973)
D.L. Smithers: The Music and History of the Baroque Trumpet before 1721 (London, 1973, 2/1988), chap.4
E. Cowling: The Cello (London, 1975, 2/1983)
E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford,1975, 3/1994)
O. Edwards: ‘The Response to Corelli’s Music in Eighteenth-Century England’, SMN, ii (1976), 51–96
P. Allsop: ‘Secular Influences on the Bolognese sonata da chiesa’, PRMA, civ (1977–8), 89–100
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Canzona and Sonata: some Differences in Social Identity’, IRASM, ix (1978), 111–19
C. Hogwood: The Trio Sonata (London, 1979)
N.M. Jensen: ‘The Performance of Corelli’s Chamber Music Reconsidered’, Nuovissimi studi corelliani: Fusignano 1980, 241–9
C. Rosen: Sonata Forms (New York, 1980, 2/1988)
C.H. Russell: ‘An Investigation into Arcangelo Corelli’s Influence in Eighteenth-Century Spain’, CMc, no.34 (1982), 42–52
W. Apel: Die Italienische Violinmusik im 17. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1983; Eng. trans., enlarged 1990 by T. Binkley)
J. Daverio: Formal Design and Terminology in the Pre-Corellian ‘Sonata’ and Related Instrumental Forms in the Printed Sources (diss., Boston U., 1983)
J. Daverio: ‘In Search of the Sonata da Camera before Corelli’, AcM, lvii (1985), 195–214
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