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For the detailed form of an individual musical movement, see Sonata form. Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period.
For other uses, see Sonata (disambiguation).

Sonata (From Latin and Italian sonare, "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian cantare, "to sing"), a piece sung. Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. A cantata (derived from the Italian word 'cantare' meaning 'to sing' is a vocal composition with an instrumental Accompaniment and often The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era. The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1810 The term took on increasing importance in the Classical period, and by the early 19th century the word came to represent a principle of composing large scale works. It was applied to most instrumental genres and regarded alongside the fugue as one of two fundamental methods of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert music. In Music, a fugue (ˈfjuːg is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred Though the sound of sonatas have changed since the Classical Era, 20th century sonatas still maintain the same structure and build.

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Usage of sonata

The Baroque applied the term sonata to a variety of works, though most works in the Baroque Period were fugues and toccatas, including works for solo instrument such as keyboard or violin, and for groups of instruments. Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc In Music, a fugue (ˈfjuːg is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred Toccata (from Italian toccare, "to touch" is a Virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or Plucked string instrument In the transition from the Baroque to the Classical period, the term sonata undergoes a change in usage, from being applied to many different kinds of small instrumental work to being more specifically applied to chamber music genres with either a solo instrument, or a solo instrument with piano. Increasingly after 1800, the term applies to a form of large-scale musical argument, and it is generally used in this sense in musicology and musical analysis. Most of the time if some more specific usage is meant, then the particular body of work will be noted: for example the sonatas of Beethoven will mean the works specifically labelled sonata, whereas Beethoven and sonata form will apply to all of his large-scale instrumental works, whether concert or chamber. In the 20th century, sonatas in this sense would continue to be composed by influential and famous composers, though many works which do not meet the strict criterion of "sonata" in the formal sense would also be created and performed. The term sonatina, literally "small sonata", is often used for a short or technically easy sonata. A sonatina is literally a small Sonata. As a musical term sonatina has no single strict definition it is rather a title applied by the composer to a piece that is in basic

Instrumentation

In the Baroque period, a sonata was for one or more instruments almost always with continuo. Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 and 1750. Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer Musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords and Nonchord tones in relation After the Baroque period most works designated as sonatas specifically are performed by a solo instrument, most often a keyboard instrument, or by a solo instrument together with a keyboard instrument. In the late Baroque and early Classical period, a work with instrument and keyboard was referred to as having an obbligato part, in order to distinguish this from use of an instrument as a continuo, though this fell out of usage by the early 1800s. In classical music obbligato usually describes a musical line that is in some way indispensable in performance Beginning in the early 19th century, works were termed sonata if, according to the understanding of that time, they were part of the genre, even if they were not designated sonata when originally published, or by the composer. A related term at the time was "Fantasia" or "Fantaisie," which was applied to movements or works which had a much freer form than the Sonata (for example Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy). The fantasia (also fantasy fancy Fantasie fantaisie is a musical composition with its roots in the art of Improvisation. The Fantasie in C major, Op 15 ( D 760 popularly known as the "Wanderer" Fantasy, is a four-movement fantasy for solo

In the Classical period and afterwards, sonatas for piano solo were the most common genre of sonata, with sonatas for violin and piano or cello and piano being next. However, sonatas for a solo instrument other than keyboard have been composed, as have sonatas for other combinations of instruments, and for other instruments with piano.

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, literally chamber sonata). WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> Arcangelo Corelli (February 17 1653 &ndash January 8 1713 was a French Violinist Sonata da chiesa ( Italian: Church sonata) is an instrumental composition dating from the Baroque period generally consisting of four movements Sonata da camera is Italian for "chamber sonata" Sonata da camera is a type of Trio sonata intended for secular performance

The sonata da chiesa, generally for one or more violins and bass, consisted normally of a slow introduction, a loosely fugued allegro, a cantabile slow movement, and a lively finale in some binary form suggesting affinity with the dance-tunes of the suite. The violin is a bowed String instrument with four strings usually tuned in Perfect fifths It is the smallest and highest-pitched member Bass (ˈbɛɪs as in base) when used as an adjective is used to describe tones of low Frequency or range. 2266-Tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl or TEMPO is the Chemical compound with the formula (CH23(CMe22NO This article is about the musical form See Binary numeral system for the mathematical term In Music, a suite is an ordered set of Instrumental or Orchestral pieces normally performed in a Concert This scheme, however, was not very clearly defined, until the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, when it became the essential sonata and persisted as a tradition of Italian violin music – even into the early 19th century, in the works of Boccherini. WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section.2 This article is written in British English including maximised use of "-ise"

The sonata da camera had consisted almost entirely of idealized dance-tunes, but by the time of Bach and Handel such a composition drew apart from the sonata, and came to be called a suite, a partita, an ordre, or, when it had a prelude in the form of a French opera-overture, an overture. This is an article about the Musical Genre. For the game see Tarocchini. Overture ( French ouverture meaning opening in Music is the instrumental introduction to a Dramatic choral or occasionally On the other hand, the features of sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera then tended to be freely intermixed. Bach, however, while not using the titles themselves, nevertheless keeps the two types so distinct that they can be recognized by style and form. Thus, in his six solo violin sonatas, Nos. Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin ( BWV 1001&ndash1006 form a set of six works composed by Johann Sebastian Bach: three sonatas in four movements 1, 3, and 5 are recognizably sonate de chiesa; and Nos. 2, 4, and 6 are explicitly called partitas, but are admissible among the sonatas as being sonate da camera. Bach is also cited as being among the first composers to have the keyboard and solo instrument share a melodic line, whereas previously most sonatas for keyboard and instrument had kept the melody exclusively in the solo instrument.

The term sonata is also applied to the series of over 500 works for harpsichord solo, or sometimes for other keyboard instruments, by Domenico Scarlatti, originally published under the name Essercizi per il gravicembalo (Exercises for the Harpsichord). These are the sonatas for solo keyboard (originally intended for Harpsichord or Fortepiano) by Domenico Scarlatti, listed in Kirkpatrick A harpsichord is a Musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (October 26 1685 – July 23 1757 was a Neapolitan Composer who spent much of his life in Spain and Portugal. Most of these pieces are in one binary-form movement only, with two parts that are in the same tempo and use the same thematic material, though occasionally there will be changes in tempo within the sections. This article is about the musical form See Binary numeral system for the mathematical term Many of the sonatas were composed in pairs, one being in the major and the other in the parallel minor. They are frequently virtuosic, and use more distant harmonic transitions and modulations than were common for other works of their time. They are admired for their great variety and invention.

The genre – particularly for solo instruments with just the continuo or ripieno – eventually influenced the solo movements of suites or concerti that occurred between movements with the full orchestra playing, for example in the Brandenburg Concerti of Bach. Ripieno ( Italian for stuffing) or tutti (Italian for everybody)can refer to- the larger of the two ensembles in the Concerto grosso The Brandenburg concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach ( BWV 1046&ndash1051 original title Six Concerts Avec plusieurs Instruments) are a The trio sonatas of Vivaldi, too, show parallels with the concerti he was writing at the same time.

The sonatas of Domenico Paradies are mild and elongated works of this type, with a graceful and melodious little second movement included. Pietro Domenico Paradisi (also Pier Domenico Paradies) ( Naples, 1707 &ndash Venice, August 25 1791) was an Italian The manuscript on which Longo bases his edition of Scarlatti frequently shows a similar juxtaposition of movements, though without any 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 (K. 377), and in several of Clementi's best works. This is a complete list of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, listed chronologically. Muzio Clementi (23 January 1752 &ndash 10 March 1832 was a classical Composer, and acknowledged as the first to write specifically for the Piano.

The sonata in the Classical period

The practice of the Classical period would become decisive for the sonata; the term moved from being one of many terms indicating genres or forms, to designating the fundamental form of organization for large-scale works. The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1810 This evolution stretched over fifty years. The term came to apply both to the structure of individual movements (see Sonata form and History of sonata form) and to the layout of the movements in a multi-movement work. Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period. This article treats the history of Sonata form in the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern eras In the transition to the Classical period there were several names given to multimovement works, including divertimento, serenade, and partita, many of which are now regarded effectively as sonatas. Divertimento (from italian divertire - to amuse is a music genre with most of its examples stemming from the 18th century This article is about the musical form See Serenade (disambiguation for other meanings This is an article about the Musical Genre. For the game see Tarocchini. The usage of sonata as the standard term for such works began somewhere in the 1770s. Haydn labels his first piano sonata as such in 1771, after which the term divertimento is used very sparingly in his output. The term sonata was increasingly applied to either a work for keyboard alone (see piano sonata), or for keyboard and one other instrument, often the violin or cello. The Baroque keyboard sonata In the Baroque era the use of the term "sonata" generally referred to either the Sonata da chiesa ( Church sonata 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.

Initially the most common layout of movements was:

  1. Allegro, which at the time was understood to mean not only a tempo, but also some degree of "working out", or development, of the theme. (See Charles Rosen's The Classical Style, and his Sonata Forms. )
  2. A middle movement which was, most frequently, a slow movement: an Andante, an Adagio, or a Largo; or, less frequently, a Minuet or Theme and Variations form. A minuet, sometimes spelled menuet, is a Social dance of French origin for two persons usually in 3/4 time. Variation form Variation form include Ground bass, Passacaglia, Chaconne, and theme and variations
  3. A closing movement, early in the period sometimes a minuet, as in Haydn's first three piano sonatas, but afterwards, generally an Allegro or a Presto, often labelled Finale. The form was often a Rondo. Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in Music in a number of ways most often in reference to a Musical form

However, two-movement layouts also occur, a practice Haydn uses as late as the 1790s. There is also in the early Classical period 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 sonata, divertimento, or partita in Hob XIV, 7 are in two movements, 35 are in three movements, and 3 are in four movements; and there are several in three or four movements whose authenticity is listed as "doubtful. " Composers such as Boccherini would publish sonatas for piano and obbligato instrument with an optional third movement – in Boccherini's case, 28 cello sonatas. Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini ( February 19, 1743 &ndash May 28, 1805) was a classical era Composer and cellist

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 in the early sonatas of Beethoven. Ludwig van Beethoven ( English ˈlʊdvɪg væn ˈbeɪtoʊvən, 16 December 1770 &ndash 26 March 1827 was a German Composer and Pianist. However, two- and three-movement sonatas continued to be written throughout the Classical period: Beethoven's opus 102 pair has a two-movement C major sonata and a three-movement D major sonata.

The four-movement layout was by this point standard for the string quartet, and overwhelmingly the most common for the symphony. A string quartet is a Musical ensemble of four String instruments &mdash usually two Violins a Viola and Cello &mdash or a piece A symphony is a Musical composition, often extended and usually for Orchestra. The usual order of the four movements was:

  1. An allegro, which by this point was in what is called sonata form, complete with exposition, development, and recapitulation. Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period.
  2. A slow movement, an Andante, Adagio or Largo. This is a list of musical terms that are likely to be encountered in printed scores 2266-Tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl or TEMPO is the Chemical compound with the formula (CH23(CMe22NO 2266-Tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl or TEMPO is the Chemical compound with the formula (CH23(CMe22NO
  3. A dance movement, frequently Minuet and trio or – especially later in the classical period – a Scherzo and trio. A minuet, sometimes spelled menuet, is a Social dance of French origin for two persons usually in 3/4 time. A scherzo (plural scherzi) is a piece of Music or a movement in a certain style that forms part of a larger piece such as a Symphony.
  4. A finale in faster tempo, often in a sonata–rondo form. Sonata rondo form was a form of musical organization often used during the Classical music era.

This four-movement layout came to be considered the standard for a sonata, and works without four movements, or with more than four, were increasingly felt to be exceptions; they were labelled as having movements "omitted," or had "extra" movements. Movements when they appeared out of this order would be described as "reversed", such as the Scherzo coming before the slow movement in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This usage would be noted by critics in the early 1800s, and it was codified into teaching soon thereafter.

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 thought essential for any serious instrumentalist to master.

The sonata in the Romantic period

In the early 19th century conservatories of music were established, leading to a codification by critics, theorists and professors of the practice of the Classical period. In this setting, our current usage of the term sonata was established, both as regards form per se, and in the sense that a fully elaborated sonata serves as a norm for concert music in general, which other forms are seen in relation to. Carl Czerny declared that he had invented the idea of sonata form, and music theorists began to write of the sonata as an ideal in music. Carl Czerny (sometimes Karl; February 21 1791 &ndash July 15 1857 was an Austrian Pianist, Composer and teacher From this point forward, the word sonata in music theory as often labels the abstract musical form as well as much as particular works. Hence there are references to a symphony as a sonata for orchestra. This is referred to by William Newman as the sonata idea, and by others as the sonata principle. William Stein Newman ( April 6, 1912 &ndash April 27, 2000) was an American Musicologist.

Among works expressly labelled sonata, some of the most famous were composed in this era. Among piano sonatas alone, there are the three of Frédéric Chopin, those of Felix Mendelssohn, the three of Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt's Sonata in B Minor, and later the sonatas of Johannes Brahms and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born and generally known as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3 1809 &ndash November 4 1847 was a German Composer Robert Schumann, sometimes given as Robert Alexander Schumann (June 8 1810 &ndash July 29 1856 was a German Composer, Aesthete and influential Music critic The Piano Sonata in B minor (Klaviersonate h-Moll S178, is a musical composition for solo Piano by Franz Liszt. Johannes Brahms ( pronounced ˈbʁaːms (May 7 1833 &ndash April 3 1897 was a German Composer WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов

In the early 19th century the sonata form was rigorously defined, from a combination of previous practice and the works of important Classical composers, particularly Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, but composers such as Clementi also. Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period. Works not explicitly labelled sonata were nevertheless felt to be an expression of the same governing structural practice. 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 that the differences between the three- and the four-movement layouts became a subject of commentary, with emphasis on the concerto being laid out in three movements, and the symphony in four. Many thought 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.

The importance of the sonata in the clash between Brahmsians and Wagnerians is also of note. Brahms represented, to his advocates, adherence to the form as it was strictly construed, while Wagner and Liszt claimed to have transcended the Procrustean nature of its outline. For example Ernest Newman wrote, in the essay Brahms and the Serpent:[1]

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. Ernest Newman ( Everton Liverpool, November 30, 1868 – Tadworth, Surrey, July 7, 1959) was an English 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. . .

This view, that the sonata is truly only at home in the Classical style, and had become 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 called for no explicit analysis in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven's era, in the same sense that Bach "knew" what a fugue was and how to compose one, whereas 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. In Music, modulation is most commonly the act or process of changing from one key ( tonic, or tonal center) to another

The sonata after the Romantic period

The sonata was closely tied in the Romantic period to tonal harmony and practice. Tonality is a system of Music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center" or tonic. Even before the demise of this practice, large-scale works increasingly deviated from the four-movement layout that had been considered standard for almost a century, and the internal structure of movements began to alter as well. The "sonata idea," along with the term sonata itself, 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 an extremely important form of extended musical argument would inspire composers such as Hindemith, Prokofiev, Shostakovich to compose in sonata form, and works with traditional sonata structures continue to be composed and performed. Paul Hindemith (16 November 1895 &ndash 28 December 1963 was a German Composer, Violist, violinist teacher music theorist and conductor. Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Серге́й Серге́евич Проко́фьев Sergéj Sergéjevič Prokófjev) ( - 5 March 1953 was a Russian composer who Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich ( Russian: ru Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович ( &ndash 9 August 1975 was a Russian Composer

The piano sonatas of Scriabin would begin from standard forms of the late Romantic period, but would progressively abandon the formal markers that had been taught, and would usually 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. Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Скря́бин Aleksandr Nikolaevič Skrjabin; sometimes transliterated as Skriabin

Charles Ives's massive Concord Sonata (1920) for piano bore little resemblance to the traditional Sonata. Charles Edward Ives (October 20 1874 – May 19 1954 was an American Composer of modernist Classical music. The Piano Sonata No 2 Concord Mass 1840-60 by Charles Ives, commonly known as the Concord Sonata, is one of the composer's best-known and It had four movements (though not with the usual tempos), very few barlines, and the tonality, where present, is fleeting or often compounded with polytonality. In Musical notation, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration The Musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality. It even contained optional (and very minor) parts for viola and flute. The viola is a bowed String instrument. It is the middle voice of the Violin family, The flute is a Musical instrument of the Woodwind family Unlike other woodwind instruments a flute is a Reedless wind instrument that produces its

Still later, Pierre Boulez would compose three sonatas in the early 1950s, which, while they were neither tonal nor laid out in the standard four-movement form, were intended to have the same significance as sonatas. WikipediaWikiProject Classical music#Biographical_infoboxes --> Pierre Boulez (pjɛʁ buˈlɛz (b Pierre Boulez composed three piano sonatas The First Piano Sonata in 1946 a Second Piano Sonata in 1948 and a Third Piano Sonata Elliot Carter began his transition from neo-classical composer to avant-garde with his Cello Sonata. Elliott Cook Carter Jr (born in New York City on December 11, 1908) is an American Composer from New York City.

The sonata in scholarship and musicology

The sonata idea or principle

Research into the practice and meaning of sonata form, style, and structure has been the motivation for important theoretical works by Heinrich Schenker, Arnold Schoenberg, and Charles Rosen among others; and the pedagogy of music continued to rest on an understanding and application of the rules of sonata form as almost two centuries of development in practice and theory had codified it. Heinrich Schenker ( June 19, 1868 - January 13, 1935) was a Music theorist best known for his approach to Musical analysis Arnold Schoenberg ( pronounced ˈʃøːnbɛrk (13 September 1874 &ndash 13 July 1951 was an Austrian and later American Composer, associated with Charles Rosen (born May 5 1927 is an American Pianist and music theorist.

The development of the classical style and its norms of composition formed the basis for much of the music theory of the 19th and 20th centuries. As an overarching formal principle, sonata was accorded the same central status as Baroque fugue; and generations of composers, instrumentalists, and audiences were guided by this understanding of sonata as an enduring and dominant principle in Western music. In Music, a fugue (ˈfjuːg is a type of contrapuntal composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of parts, normally referred The sonata idea begins before the term had taken on its present importance, along with the evolution of the Classical period's changing norms. The reasons for these changes, and how they relate to the evolving sense of a new formal order in music, is a matter to which research is devoted. Some common factors which were pointed to include: the shift of focus from vocal music to instrumental music; changes in performance practice, including the loss of the continuo and the playing of all movements of a work straight through, without "mechanical" repeats; the shift away from the idea that each movement should express one dominant emotion (see Affekt), to a notion of accommodating contrasting themes and sections in an integrated whole; the move from a polyphonic mode of composition to a homophonic mode; changes in the availability of instruments, and new technical developments in instruments; the obsolescence of straightforward binary organization of movements; the rise of more dance rhythms; and changes in patronage and presentation. The doctrine of the affections, also known as the doctrine of affects, or by the German term Affektenlehre (after the German Affekt; plural Affekten In Music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent Melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice ( Monophony In Music, homophony (hoʊˈmɒfəni from Greek "homófonos" where ομοιο = the same and φωνή = a sound tone is a texture in which two or more

Crucial to most interpretations of the sonata form is the idea of a tonal center; and, as the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music puts it: "The main form of the group embodying the 'sonata principle', the most important principle of musical structure from the Classical period to the 20th century: that material first stated in a complementary key be restated in the home key. "

The sonata idea has been thoroughly explored by William Newman in his monumental three-volume work Sonata in the Classic Era (A History of the Sonata Idea), begun in the 1950s and published in what has become the standard edition of all three volumes in 1972. He notes that according to his research, theorists had generally shown "a hazy recognition of 'sonata form' during the Classical Era and up to the late 1830s" and places particular emphasis on Reicha's 1826 work describing the "fully developed binary form", for its fixing of key relationships, Czerny's 1837 note in the preface to his Opus 600, and Adolf Bernhard Marx, who in 1845 wrote a long treatise on sonata form. Anton ( Antonín, Antoine) Reicha ( Rejcha) ( February 26, 1770 &ndash May 28, 1836) was a Czech -born Friedrich Heinrich Adolf Bernhard Marx ( Halle, Germany, 15 March 1795 – Berlin, 17 May, 1866) was a German Up until this point, Newman argues, the definitions available were quite imprecise, requiring only instrumental character and contrasting character of movements.

William Newman also notes, however, that these codifications were in response to a growing understanding that the 18th century did have a formal organization of music. Before those publications of Reicha, Czerny, or Marx, there are references to the "customary sonata form", and in particular to the organization of the first movement of sonatas and related works. He documents the evolution of sonata analysis as well, showing that early critical works on sonatas, with some very notable exceptions, dealt with structural and technical details only loosely. Instead, many important works belonging to the sonata genre, or in sonata form, were not analyzed comprehensively in terms of their thematic and harmonic resources until the 20th century.

20th century theory

Two of the most important theorists in European musicology of the 20th century, Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg, both had ideas of central importance for the analysis and general understanding of the sonata. Their ideas were extremely rigorous, and placed tremendous emphasis on the long range influence of tonal materials. Both advanced theories of analysis of works which would be adopted by later theorists. While the two men disagreed with each other, their ideas have often been used in combination.

Heinrich Schenker argued that there was an Urlinie or basic tonal melody, and a basic bass figuration. He held that when these two were present, there was basic structure, and that the sonata represented this basic structure in a whole work with a process known as interruption. Arnold Schoenberg advanced the theory of monotonality, according to which a single work should be played as if in one key, even if movements were in different keys, and that the capable composer would reference everything in a work to a single tonic triad.

For Schenker, tonal function was the essential defining characteristic of comprehensible structure in music, and his definition of the sonata form rested, not on themes groups or sections, but on the basic interplay between the different "layers" of a composition. For Schoenberg, tonality was not essential to comprehensibility, but he accorded similar importance to the structural role of notes, in "explaining" the relationships of chords and counterpoint in musical structure. Both theorists held that tonality, and hence sonata structure in tonal form, is essentially hierarchical: what is immediately audible is subordinate to large-scale movements of harmony. They argued that transient chords and events are less significant than movement between certain crucial underlying chords.

As a practical matter, Schenker applied his ideas to the editing of the piano sonatas of Beethoven, using original manuscripts and his own theories to "correct" the available sources. The basic procedure was the use of tonal theory to infer meaning from available sources as part of the critical process, even to the extent of completing works left unfinished by their composers. While many of these changes were and are controversial, that procedure has a central role today in music theory, and is an essential part of the theory of sonata structure as taught in most music schools.

Famous sonatas

For a more comprehensive list of sonatas, see List of sonatas. The following is a list of Musical pieces that belong to the category Sonata.

Classical (ca 1760 – ca 1830)

Romantic (ca 1830 – ca 1900)

20th Century (including contemporary) (ca 1910 – 2000)

References

See also

Charles Rosen (born May 5 1927 is an American Pianist and music theorist. Arnold Schoenberg ( pronounced ˈʃøːnbɛrk (13 September 1874 &ndash 13 July 1951 was an Austrian and later American Composer, associated with Heinrich Schenker ( June 19, 1868 - January 13, 1935) was a Music theorist best known for his approach to Musical analysis Felix Salzer ( June 13, 1904 &ndash August 12, 1986) was an Austrian American music theorist, musicologist Stanley Sadie CBE ( October 30 1930 - March 21 2005) was a leading British musicologist, music critic and editor This article treats the history of Sonata form in the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern eras Sonata da camera is Italian for "chamber sonata" Sonata da camera is a type of Trio sonata intended for secular performance Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period. Sonata rondo form was a form of musical organization often used during the Classical music era. A sonatina is literally a small Sonata. As a musical term sonatina has no single strict definition it is rather a title applied by the composer to a piece that is in basic The trio sonata is a Musical form which was particularly popular around the 17th century and the 18th century A bassoon sonata is a sonata for Bassoon, often with Piano accompaniment A cello sonata usually denotes a sonata written for Cello and Piano, though other instrumentations are used such as solo cello A clarinet sonata is piece of music in sonata form for Clarinet, often with Piano accompaniment A flute sonata is a sonata usually for Flute and Piano, though occasionally other accompanying instruments may be used The Baroque keyboard sonata In the Baroque era the use of the term "sonata" generally referred to either the Sonata da chiesa ( Church sonata The viola sonata is a Sonata for Viola, sometimes with other instruments usually Piano. A violin sonata is a musical composition for solo Violin, which is nearly always accompanied by a Piano or other keyboard instrument or by Figured bass

Dictionary

sonata

-noun

  1. (music) A musical composition for one or a few instruments, one of which is frequently a piano, in three or four movements that vary in key and tempo
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