Sonata (music)

Sonata (From Latin and Italian sonare, 'to sound'), in music, literally means a piece "played" as opposed to cantata (Latin cantare, to sing), a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era. The term would take on increasing importance in the classical period, and by the early 19th century the word came to be used for a principle of composing large scale works, and be applied to most instrumental genres, regarded alongside the fugue as the fundamental method of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert music. In the 20th century the term continued to be applied to instrumental works, but the formal principles enunciated and taught through the 19th century were weakened or loosened.

Brief history of the usage of sonata

The Baroque sonata

By the time of Arcangelo Corelli two polyphonic types of sonata were established, the sonata da chiesa (church sonata) and the sonata da camera ("ordinary" sonata).

Related Topics:
Arcangelo Corelli - Sonata da chiesa - Sonata da camera

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The sonata da chiesa, generally for one or more violins and bass, consisted normally of a slow introduction, a loosely fugued allegro, a slow movement and a lively finale in some such binary form as suggests affinity with the dance-tunes of the suite. This scheme, however, is not very clearly defined, until the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Friderich Handel, when it becomes the sonata par excellence and persists as a tradition of Italian violin music even into the early 19th century in the works of Boccherini.

Related Topics:
Violin - Bass - Allegro - Binary form - Suite - Johann Sebastian Bach - George Friderich Handel

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The sonata da camera consisted almost entirely of idealized dance-tunes. By the time of Bach and Handel it had, on the one hand, become entirely separate from the sonata, and was known as the suite, partita, ordre or (when it had a prelude in the form of a French opera-overture) the overture. On the other hand, the features of sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera became freely intermixed. But Bach, who does not use those titles, yet keeps the two types so distinct that they can be recognized by style and form. Thus, in his six solo violin sonatas, Nos. 1, 3 and 5 are sonate de chiesa, and Nos. 2, 4 and 6 are called partitas, but are admissible among the sonatas as being sonate da camera.

Related Topics:
Partita - Overture

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The term sonata is also applied to the series of over 500 works for harpsichord solo written by Domenico Scarlatti. These pieces are in one movement only, comprising two parts that are in the same tempo and use the same thematic material. They frequently involve virtuosity and are admired for their great variety and invention.

Related Topics:
Harpsichord - Domenico Scarlatti

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The sonatas of Domenico Paradies are mild and elongated works of this type with a graceful and melodious little second movement added. The manuscript on which Longo bases his edition of Scarlatti frequently shows a similar juxtaposition of movements, though without definite indication of their connection. The style is still traceable in the sonatas of the later classics, whenever a first movement is in a uniform rush of rapid motion, as in Mozart's violin sonata in F (Kochel's Catalogue, No. 377), and in several of Clementi's best works.

Related Topics:
Domenico Paradies - Kochel's Catalogue - Clementi

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The sonata in the Classical era

The practice of the classical era would become decisive for the sonata, which would move from being a term, to being considered the fundamental form of organization for large scale works. This evolution would take, however, 50 years. It would apply both to the structure of movements, (see Sonata form and History of sonata form) and to the layout of movements in a multi-movement work. In the transition to the classical period there were several names given to multimovement works, including "divertmento", "serenade", and "partita", many of which are now regarded as "sonatas". The usage of "sonata" as the standard term form such works is somewhere in the 1770's. Haydn labels his first piano sonata as such in 1771, after which the term "divertmento" is used very sparingly in his output. The term "sonata" was increasingly applied to either a work for keyboard alone, or for keyboard and another instrument, often the violin or cello. It was less and less frequently applied to works with more than two instrumentalists, for example piano trios were not often labelled "sonata for piano, violin and cello".

Related Topics:
Sonata form - History of sonata form

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Initially the most common layout of movements was:

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• Allegro - which at the time was understood to mean not only a tempo, but the importance of some degree of working out of the theme. (See Charles Rosen's The Classical Style)
• A middle movement which was, most frequently, a slow movement, that is an Andante or Largo, or, less frequently, a Menuet. This could be in theme and variation form.
• A closing movement, early on sometimes a minuet, as in Haydn's first three piano sonatas, but afterwards, generally an Allegro, Presto, and often labelled Finale. This could be a rondo.

However, the use of two movement layouts also occurs, a practice Haydn uses as late as the 1790's. There is also in the early classical the possibility of using four movements, with a dance movement inserted before the slow movement as in Haydn's Piano sonatas No. 6 and No. 8. Mozart's sonatas would also be primarily in three movements. Of the works that Haydn labelled piano sonatas, divertmenti or partita in Hob XIV 7 are in 2 movements, 35 are in three movements and 3 are in four movements, there are several in three and four movements whose authenticity is listed as "doubtful". Composers such as Bocherini would publish sonatas for piano and obligato instrument with an optional third movement - in Bocherini's case 28 Cello sonatas.

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But increasingly instrumental works were laid out in four, not three movements, a practice seen first in String Quartets and Symphonies, and reaching the Sonata proper by the early numbers Sonatas of Beethoven. However, two and three movement sonatas continue to be written through out the classical era: Beethoven's opus 102 pair has a two movement C Major sonata and a three movement D major sonata.

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The four movement layout was by this point standard for the string quartet and all overwhelmingly the most common for the symphony. This layout is:

Related Topics:
String quartet - Symphony

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• An allegro, which by this point was in what is called Sonata form, complete with exposition, development and recapitulation.
• A slow movement, an Andante, Adagio or Largo.
• A dance movement, frequently minuet and trio or especially later in the classical era, a scherzo and trio
• A finale in faster tempo, often in a sonata rondo style.

This four movement layout became considered the standard for a "sonata", and works without four movements, or with more than four, were increasingly felt to be exceptions, and were labelled as having movements "omitted", or had "extra" movements. This usage would be noted by critics by the early 1800's and codified into teaching soon thereafterward.

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It is difficult to overstate the importance of Beethoven's output of sonatas, 32 piano sonatas, plus sonatas for cello and piano and violin and piano, forming a large body of music which would over time increasingly be felt to be essential for any instrumentalist of ability to master.

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Sonata in the Romantic Era

The early 19th century began to establish conservatories of music, and codify the practice of the classical era. In this context, the current usage of the term "sonata" was established, both in terms of form, and in the sense that a full sonata is the normative example of concert music, which other forms are seen in relation to. Carl Czerny declared he invented the idea of sonata form, and music theorists began to write of the sonata as an ideal in music. From this point forward, the word "sonata" in music theory as often labels the musical form as well as much as particular works. Hence references to a symphony as a "sonata for orchestra". This is referred to by Newman as the "sonata idea", and by others the importance of the "sonata principle".

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Among works expressly labelled sonata, some of the most famous sonatas composed in this era, there is the "Funeral March" sonata of Chopin, the sonatas of Mendelssohn and the three sonatas of Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and later the sonatas of Johannes Brahms and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Related Topics:
Robert Schumann - Franz Liszt - Johannes Brahms - Sergei Rachmaninoff

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In the early 19th century the sonata form was defined, from a combination of previous practice and the works of important classical composers, particularly Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, but as well composers such as Clementi. Works which were not labelled "sonata" were felt to be an expression of one governing structural practice. The term "sonata" acquired the meaning of the structure of larger works. Because the word became definitively attached to an entire concept of musical layout, the differences in classical practice began to be seen as important to classify and explain. It is during this period where the differences between the three and the four movement layouts became a subject of comentary, with the prevailing theory being that the "concerto" was laid out in three movements, and the "symphony" in four, and that the four movement form was the superior layout. The "concerto" form was thought to be "Italianate" while the four movement form's predominance was ascribed to Haydn, and was considered "German".

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For example critic JW Davison wrote in his The Works of Fredrick Chopin, on page 7 (1843):

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:Such are the impressions to which we are subject under the influence of this wonderful work – a very triumph of musical picturing – a conquest over what would seem it be unconquerable – viz. – the mingling of the physical and metaphysical in music – the sonata representing a dual picture - ...the battle of the actual elements and the conflict of human passions – the first for the multitude, the last for the initiated.

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The importance of the sonata in the clash between Brahmsians and Wagnerians is also of note, Brahms represented, to his adherents, the adherence to the form as it was understood, while Wagner and Liszt claimed to have transcended the procrustean nature of its outline, for example Ernest Newman, not to be confused with William Newman, wrote, "Brahms and the Serpent" :

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:That, perhaps, will be the ideal of the instrumental music of the future; the way to it, indeed, seems at last to be opening out before modern composers in proportion as they discard the last tiresome vestiges of sonata form. This, from being what it was originally, the natural mode of expression of a certain eighteenth century way of thinking in music, became in the nineteenth century a drag upon both individual thinking...

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This view, that the sonata is truly only at home in the classical style, and became a road block to later musical development is one that has been held at various times by composers and musicologists, including recently by Charles Rosen. In this view the sonata needed no description to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven's era, in the same sense that Bach "knew" what a fugue was and how to compose one, where as later composers were bound by an "academic" sense of form that was not well suited to the Romantic era's more frequent and more rapid modulations.

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Sonata after the Romantic Era

The sonata was closely tied in the romantic era to tonal harmony and practice. Even before the ending of this practice, large scale works increasingly deviated from the four movement layout which had been considered standard for almost a century, and the structure of movements internally began to alter as well. The "sonata idea", as well as the term "sonata" continued to be central to musical analysis, and a strong influence on composers, both in large scale works and in chamber music. The role of the sonata as the an extremely important form of extended musical argument would inspire composers such as Hindemith, Prokofiev, Shostakovich to compose in sonata form, and works in traditional sonata structure continue to be composed and performed.

Related Topics:
Tonal - Hindemith - Prokofiev - Shostakovich

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The piano sonatas of Scriabin would begin from standard forms of the late romantic period in music, but would progressively abandon the formal markers which were taught, and would be composed as single movement works, he is sometimes thought of as a composer on the boundary between romantic and modern practice of the sonata.

Related Topics:
Scriabin - Romantic

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Farther afield, Pierre Boulez would compose three sonatas in the early 1950's, which while they were neither tonal, nor laid out in the standard four movement form, were intended to have the same importance as sonatas. Elliot Carter would begin his transition from neo-classical composer to avant-garde with his Cello Sonata.

Related Topics:
Pierre Boulez - Elliot Carter

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