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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.
Forces
Most works designated as sonatas are performed by a solo instrument (most often a keyboard instrument) or by a solo instrument together with a keyboard instrument.
As various scholars have remarked, this makes the term rather arbitrary: the musical characteristics of the sonata (at any particular time) tend to be carried over to works composed for larger forces. It would be perfectly sensible to speak of symphonies as being sonatas for orchestra, string quartets as being sonatas for string quartet, and so on; but by custom these usages are avoided.
The Baroque sonata
By the time of Arcangelo Corelli two polyphonic types of sonata were established, the sonata da chiesa and the sonata da camera.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
The sonata in the Classical era
By the establishment of the Classical era in music, the sonata took on a fairly well-defined standard form (well exemplified in the work of Joseph Haydn), with movements organised as follows (with typical departures from the standard noted underneath in brackets):
First movement is in sonata form, and is fast and lively
(or rarely, slow instead; and sometimes in another form, like theme and variations)
Second movement is slow and lyrical; it is traditionally in binary form or ternary form
(but it may be in sonata form, perhaps abridged; or theme and variations)
Third movement is either a minuet or a scherzo (both of these being in triple time)
(but sometimes the minuet or scherzo is omitted altogether; or it comes second, with the slow movement coming third)
Last movement (i.e., the fourth, or sometimes just the third) is fast, and either in sonata form or a rondo
(or sometimes theme and variations)
Generally, the minuet (or scherzo) and the finale were written in the same key as the opening movement (or sometimes the parallel major or minor); composers selected a variety of keys for the slow movement (most often the subdominant, or some reasonably closely related but flatter key, whether major or minor).
As noted above, many Classical sonatas (notably Mozart's) had fewer movements than the standard four, omitting one or more of the last three in the formula above: usually in fact the minuet or scherzo; less commonly the slow movement.
Books
There are many books on the sonata form and history of the sonata, among them
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
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