17th Centuary Sonata vs Trio Sonata
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The Baroque Sonata
'Sonata- A composition for one or more solo instruments, one of which is usually a keyboard instrument, usually consisting of three or four independent movements varying in key, mood, and tempo.' (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language). This short definition is what I believe to be the real meaning of the seventeenth century term 'sonata'. Whilst conducting research on the topic I discovered a vast collection of information regarding the sonata and its' various styles, yet I do not believe that the detailed analysis of the style was the composers intention. As I will discuss later, the term sonata merely identified a piece from being either instrumental or with voice and it was only from the classical period onwards that it took on a more restricted meaning.
The sonata first arose in Italy in the 17th Century and initially the term was only used to identify an instrumental piece from a piece with voice (cantata) hence the word sonata meaning "sounded" or 'to be played'. The sonata was generally written for 1-8 instruments and as time went by, these pieces where categorised again into the trio sonata, solo keyboard and duo sonata (for soloist and keyboard), unaccompanied sonata, sonata de chiesa (church sonata) or sonata da camera (chamber sonata). The sonata de chiesa was sacred and written in four movements: slow, fast, slow, fast. It used a contrapuntal style which simply means it had a layer of different melody's (counterpoint) rather than using a chordal structure. Whereas the sonata da camera, more commonly known as the chamber sonata, was secular and simply a suite of dances however, non-dance movements were eventually added...