sonata

sonata, type of musical composition, usually for a solo instrument or a small instrumental ensemble, that typically consists of two to four movements, or sections, each in a related key but with a unique musical character.

Deriving from the past participle of the Italian verb sonare, “to sound,” the term sonata originally denoted a composition played on instruments, as opposed to one that was cantata, or “sung,” by voices. Its first such use was in 1561, when it was applied to a suite of dances for lute. The term has since acquired other meanings that can easily cause confusion. It can mean a composition in two or more movements, or separate sections, played by a small group of instruments, having no more than three independent parts. Most frequently it refers to such a piece for one or two instruments, such as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (1801) for piano. By extension, sonata can also refer to a composition for a larger instrumental group having more than two or three parts, such as a string quartet or an orchestra, provided that the composition is based on principles of musical form that from the mid-18th century were used in sonatas for small instrumental groups. The term has been more loosely applied to 20th-century works, whether or not they rely on 18th-century principles.

Quite distinct from all of the preceding, however, is the use of the term in “sonata form.” This denotes a particular form, or method of musical organization, typically used in one or more movements of multimovement instrumental works written since the beginning of the Classical period (the period of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven) in the mid-18th century. Such works include sonatas, string quartets and other chamber music, and symphonies. (See sonata form.)

Components of the sonata

Typical sonatas consist of two, three, or four movements. Two-movement and, more specifically, three-movement schemes are most common in sonatas for one or two instruments. Beethoven, particularly in his earlier period, sometimes expanded the scheme to four movements. Most first movements of Classical sonatas are in sonata form, and they are usually fast; the second movement commonly provides the contrast of a slower tempo; and the last movement in most cases is again fast. When there are four movements, a simpler, dance-style movement of the type also found in the suite is included. This is usually placed between the slow second movement and the finale; in some cases it stands second and the slow movement third.

The forms of the second, third, and fourth movements vary much more than that of the first, which in Classical examples is almost invariably the weightiest. Because their function is to complement the experience of the first movement through a new but related range of contrasts, the scope and manner of the later movements depend on the nature and the degree of prior development of the thematic material. Simple ternary (A B A) form and variation form (i.e., theme and variations) are among the most common patterns for the slow movement, but rondo and sonata forms are also used. In rondo form a recurring theme is contrasted with a number of intervening themes, as A B A C A. When sonata form is used in slow tempos, the demands of overall proportion frequently cause the omission of the development section. Sonata form, rondo, and, less often, variation form are also used for the final movement. In final movements, also, the simple rondo pattern (A B A C A) is often expanded into A B A-development-B A, with B in the dominant key at its first appearance and in the tonic key at its second. The result is a hybrid form known as sonata-rondo.

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In the first part of the Classical period, the dance movement, when it appeared, usually consisted of a minuet in fairly simple binary form (the two-part form from which sonata form evolved). This was followed by a second minuet known as the trio, which tended in orchestral works to be more lightly scored. The first minuet was then repeated, normally without its own internal repeats. The minuet-trio-minuet structure forms an overall ternary pattern. Haydn frequently, and Beethoven still more often, chose to speed up the traditional minuet so that it could no longer be considered a dance medium and became a scherzo, a quick, light movement usually related to the minuet in form. In some extreme cases, such as the ninth symphonies of both Beethoven and Schubert, the binary structures of both scherzo and trio were expanded into small but complete sonata-form structures. In this way, as with the sonata-rondo, the principles of thematic development and key contrast spread during the Classical period as the sonata form began to influence other movements.

Early development in Italy

The sonata in all its manifestations has roots that go back long before the first uses of the actual name. Its ultimate sources are in the choral polyphony (music having several equal melodic lines, or voices) of the late Renaissance. This in turn drew at times on both liturgical and secular sources—on the ancient system of tones or modes of Gregorian chant, and on medieval European folk music. These two lines were constantly interweaving. Popular tunes, for example, were used as the starting point for masses and other religious compositions from the 15th to the early 17th centuries. Sacred and secular elements influenced the development of both the sonata and the partita (or suite) of the Baroque period.

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The specific musical procedures that were eventually to be characteristic of the sonata began to emerge clearly in works by the Venetian composers of the late 16th century, notably Andrea Gabrieli and Giovanni Gabrieli. These composers built instrumental pieces in short sections of contrasted tempo, a scheme that represents in embryo the division into movements of the later sonata. This approach is found not only in works entitled “sonata,” such as Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sonata pian’ e forte (Soft and Loud Sonata) of 1597, which was one of the first works to specify instrumentation in detail; the instrumental fantasia and the canzona, an instrumental form derived from the chanson or secular French part-song, display a similar sectional structure. Like early sonatas, they were often contrapuntal (built by counterpoint, the interweaving of melodic lines in the different voices, or parts). At this stage sonatas, fantasias, and canzonas were often indistinguishable from each other, and from the fuguelike ricercare, though this form is generally more serious in character and more strictly contrapuntal in technique.

In the 17th century stringed instruments eclipsed the winds, which had played at least an equally important role in the sonatas and canzonas composed by the Gabrielis for the spacious galleries of San Marco Basilica, Venice. Claudio Monteverdi devoted more of his energies to vocal than to instrumental composition. The development of instrumental writing—and of instrumental musical forms—was carried on more and more by virtuoso violinists. One of these was Carlo Farina, who spent part of his life in the service of the court of Dresden, and there published a set of sonatas in 1626. But the crowning figure in this early school of violinist-composers was Arcangelo Corelli, whose published sonatas, beginning in 1681, sum up Italian work in the field to this date.

Apart from their influence on the development of violin technique, reflected in the works of such later violinist-composers as Giuseppe Torelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Francesco Maria Veracini, Giuseppe Tartini, and Pietro Locatelli, Corelli’s sonatas are important for the way they clarify and help to define the two directions the sonata was to take. At this point the sonata da chiesa, or church sonata, and the sonata da camera, or chamber sonata, emerged as complementary but distinct lines of development.

The sonata da chiesa usually consists of four movements, in the order slow–fast–slow–fast. The first fast movement tends to be loosely fugal (using contrapuntal melodic imitation) in style, and thus reflects, most clearly of the four, the sonata’s roots in the fantasia and canzona. The last movement, by contrast, is simpler and lighter, often differing little from the dance style typical of the sonata da camera. The sonata da camera is altogether less serious and less contrapuntal than the sonata da chiesa, and it tends to consist of a larger number of shorter movements in dance style. If the sonata da chiesa was the source from which the Classical sonata was to develop, its courtly cousin was the direct ancestor of the suite, or partita, a succession of short dance pieces; and in the 18th century, the terms suite and partita were practically synonymous with sonata da camera. The two streams represented by church and chamber sonatas are the manifestation, in early Baroque terms, of the liturgical and secular sources found in Renaissance music. The Baroque style flourished in music from about 1600 to about 1750. Down to the middle of the 18th century the two influences maintained a high degree of independence; yet the injection of dance movements into the lighter examples of the sonata da chiesa and the penetration of counterpoint into the more serious suites and sonate da camera show that there was always some cross-fertilization.

Another characteristic of the Baroque sonata that Corelli’s work helped to stabilize was its instrumentation. About 1600 the musical revolution that began in Italy had shifted emphasis from the equal-voiced polyphony of the Renaissance and placed it instead on the concept of monody, or solo lines with subordinate accompaniments. The comparatively static influence of the old church modes was superseded by the more dramatic organizing principle of the major–minor key system with its use of contrast of keys. Although counterpoint continued to play a central role in musical structure for another hundred years and more, it became a counterpoint that took careful account of the implications of harmony and of chords within the framework of the major and minor keys.

In this context the continuo, or thorough bass, assumed primary importance. Composers who used a continuo part wrote out in full only the parts of the upper melody instruments. The accompaniment, which was the continuo part, was given in the form of a bass line, sometimes supplemented with numbers, or figures, to indicate main details of harmony, whence the term figured bass. The continuo was “realized,” or given its performed form, by a low melody instrument (viol, the deeper-pitched violone, or later cello or bassoon) in collaboration with an organ, harpsichord, or lute. The collaborating instrument improvised the harmonies indicated by the figures or implied by the other parts and so filled the gap between the treble and bass lines.

In Corelli’s work, “solo” sonatas, for one violin with continuo, are found alongside others for two violins and continuo described as sonatas a tre (“for three”). These sonatas a tre are early examples of the trio sonata that was the principal chamber-music form until about 1750. Use of the term trio for sonatas played by four instruments is only superficially paradoxical: although trio sonatas were played by four instruments, they were considered to be in three parts—two violins and continuo. Moreover, specific instrumentation at this period was largely a matter of choice and circumstance. Flutes or oboes might play the violin parts, and if either harpsichord or cello or their substitutes were unavailable, the piece could be played with only one of them representing the continuo. But a complete continuo was preferred.

Corelli’s importance is as much historical as musical. Perhaps because a vigorous line of Italian composers of violin music followed him, he is commonly accorded the main credit for late 17th-century developments in sonata style. But his undeniably vital contribution should not distract attention from equally important work that was done during the same time outside Italy.

Early development outside Italy

In France Jean-Baptiste Lully’s lucrative monopoly of music at the royal court and the immense popularity of spectacular ballets used as courtly entertainments naturally led, through François Couperin, to a concentration on the smaller dance forms found in the ballet and courtly social dance. This concentration gave the French school its preeminence as producer and influencer of the 18th-century dance suite. The French, thus occupied with dance music, had little effect on the growth of the sonata da chiesa. But in Germany, where in 1619 Michael Praetorius published some of the earliest sonatas, the sonata developed from an originally close relation to the suite into a more ambitious blend. As it evolved it combined the suitelike multisectional structure of the sonata da camera with the contrapuntal workmanship and emotional intensity of the Italian sonata da chiesa form.

One of the first contributors to this development of the Italian influence was the Austrian composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. In Nürnberg in 1659 he published a set of trio sonatas for strings, following it in 1662 with a set for mixed strings and wind instruments, and in 1664 with what may have been the first set of sonatas for unaccompanied violin. The German composer Johann Rosenmüller spent several years in Italy; his Sonate da camera cioè sinfonie (i.e., suites or symphonies), published in Venice in 1667, are essentially dance compositions. But 12 years later, in Nürnberg, he issued a set of sonatas in two, three, four, and five parts that vividly illustrate the German trend toward more abstract musical structure and expressive counterpoint. During this period even pieces with dance titles began to lose their danceable character and became compositions meant only for listening.

Meanwhile, the greatest member of this school, Heinrich Biber, published several sets of sonatas—some for violin and continuo, others in three, four, and five parts. In these, from 1676 onward, he took a penchant for expressiveness to extremes of sometimes bizarre but often gripping profundity that contrast sharply with the bland, polished style of Corelli. The titles of some of Biber’s sets of sonatas specifically indicate his aim of reconciling church and chamber styles. The 1676 publication, for instance, is entitled Sonatae tam aris quam aulis servientes (Sonatas for the Altar as Well as the Hall). And being himself, like Corelli, a violinist of extraordinary powers, Biber made a valuable contribution to the development of instrumental technique in a set of sonatas for unaccompanied violin in which the practice of scordatura (adjustment of tuning to secure special effects) is ingeniously exploited.

The English composers were achieving a comparable intensification of expression during the 17th century, though in their case the technical starting point was different. In accordance with the characteristic time-lag of the English in the adoption of new European musical methods, the English continued to work with polyphony in the Renaissance manner, while the Italians were perfecting monody and the Germans fruitfully uniting monody with their own contrapuntal tradition. English polyphony in the 17th century attained a remarkable level of technical finish and emotional grandeur. Thomas Tomkins, Orlando Gibbons, John Jenkins, and William Lawes were the chief agents of this refining process. They and their predecessors, notably John Coperario, made a gradual transition from the string fantasia bequeathed by William Byrd and other composers during the reign of Elizabeth I and approached the new kind of musical form associated with the Baroque sonata; but they always stayed closer than their continental colleagues to the spirit of polyphony.

When Henry Purcell, in his three-part and four-part sonatas, submitted this rich English tradition to the belated impact of French and Italian influence, he produced a fusion of styles that was the highest point of musical inspiration yet reached by the emergent sonata form.

The Baroque era

The years from the end of the 17th century to the middle of the 18th represent a moment of equilibrium in the interaction of counterpoint and monody that had created the Baroque sonata. The continuo device, as long as it endured, was a sign that the balance still held—and it did endure as long as the trio sonata kept its central position as a chamber-music medium. During the first half of the 18th century the later Italian violinists, most notably Vivaldi, were prolific creators of trio sonatas. Sometimes they leaned to a three-movement pattern (fast–slow–fast), influenced by the direction the Italian operatic sinfonia, or overture, was taking. More often the old four-movement pattern was preserved. In this well-tested shape too, Georg Philipp Telemann produced hundreds of examples that maintained a remarkably consistent standard of musical interest. George Frideric Handel, working for most of his life in England, composed some trio sonatas, and also some valuable sonatas for solo instrument with continuo. In France, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier and the violinist Jean-Marie Leclair, the Elder, cultivated both solo and trio genres with charm although with less profundity.

Yet even while the sonata with continuo flourished, the forces of tonality, or organization in terms of keys, developed intensely toward a use of key contrast that would eventually drive the trio sonata from the scene. The continuo itself was being undermined by the growth of interest in instrumental colour, and the figured bass could not long survive the tendency toward scoring for specific instruments and exhaustively detailed music notation.

By 1695 Johann Kuhnau had begun to publish some of the first sonatas for keyboard instrument alone, a number of them programmatic pieces on biblical subjects. Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest composer of Baroque sonatas, continued the move away from the treatment of the keyboard in the subordinate, “filling-in” capacity that was its role in the continuo. He wrote a small number of trio sonatas after the traditional scheme, and also a few violin and flute sonatas with continuo; but at the same time he produced the first violin sonatas with obbligato harpsichord parts (that is, obligatory and fully written out, rather than improvised), others for flute or viol with obbligato harpsichord, and three sonatas (along with three partitas) for unaccompanied violin.

In these works, as in some of Telemann’s later sonatas, the power of key or tonality to articulate sections of musical structure, and its ability to provide a harmonically derived eventfulness—a sense of expectation succeeded by fulfillment—began to make itself felt. These powers of key are the seed from which the Classical sonata form originated. But at this point the dualism engendered by tonal and thematic contrast had not yet supplanted the more continuous, unitary processes at work in a composition based on counterpoint. Nor was the consciousness of tonality any more advanced in the otherwise forward-looking work of Domenico Scarlatti. His harpsichord sonatas—555 movements survive, many designed to be played in pairs or in groups of three—are often original to the point of idiosyncrasy in expression. They introduced a valuable new flexibility in the treatment of binary form, and they had a powerful effect on the development of keyboard writing. But in formal terms they still belong in the old world of unity—even their strongest contrasts have an air of being suspended in time, quite unlike the far-ranging effects of conflict through time that are the basis of the Classical sonata.

A later generation of composers completed the transition from Baroque to Classical sonata. One of J.S. Bach’s sons, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, plunged enthusiastically into the new resource of dramatic contrast. In some 70 harpsichord sonatas, and in other works for chamber ensembles and for orchestra, he placed a new stress on key contrast not only between but, more important, within movements. Correspondingly, he emphasized the art of transition.

In the development of sonata form in orchestral music, particular value attaches to the work of the Austrians Matthias Georg Monn and Georg Christoph Wagenseil and of the Italian Giovanni Battista Sammartini. All three played vital roles in shaping the symphony, which assumed an importance equal to that of the solo or small-ensemble sonata. Their symphonies further stressed the individual characterization of themes and, in particular, the use of the second subject to shape form. Another of Bach’s sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, made sporadic but interesting contributions to this development, and a third, Johann Christian Bach, who settled in London, exploited a vein of melodic charm that influenced Mozart.