Sonata

“ That form was the Sonata, which having been begun earlier, was developed further by the sons of Bach, but which received its characteristic touches from the hands of Haydn and Mozart. This was the crowning glory of the eighteenth century—the sonata. A form had been created, into which the greatest of masters was even then beginning to breathe his mighty soul, producing thereby a succession of master works, which stand without parallel in the realm of music. ”

“ The first movement opens darkly and sombrely, suggesting the lines of the verse that heads the sonata as a whole, telling of the great rafters in the hall at night, flashing crimson in the flickering light of a dying log fire. The strong voice of a bard rings out, and through this medium the tales of battles, love and heroic valour is told. The movement has passages of tremendous vigour, passion and depth, all painted with the unerring skill of the composer. The final bars are of fierce and elemental power. ”

“ A sonata is a composition in several movements, usually four, and follows a clearly outlined, in fact, an almost rigid form, not to say formula. It attained its highest development during the classical period and left its impress upon all the larger compositions of that time, for a symphony is nothing more than a sonata composed for orchestra, instead of for the pianoforte, and trios, quartets, and other pieces of chamber music of the classical period are sonatas for the corresponding combination of instruments. ”

“ The latter perhaps was her favorite composer, and many were the evenings when with lights quenched and only the soft effulgence of the moon pouring in through the uncurtained windows, she sat with her profile, cameo-like (or like perhaps to the head on a postage stamp) against the dark oak walls of her music-room, and entranced herself and her listeners, if there were people to dinner, with the exquisite pathos of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. ”

“ Let us, in the case of this sonata, conceive of the first simple theme as suggesting, through the subtle symbolism of tone effects, the character of our hero, gravely tender, calmly resolute, nobly, warmly, generously affectionate, with much of innate strength, tempered by gentleness and latent passion, refined by ideality.
In the first variation life presents itself to him as a serious but interesting and agreeable problem, possessing the charm of mystery. ”

“ A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips at every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. ”

“ The Keltic Sonata is generally considered MacDowell's supreme achievement, the great culmination of his evolution toward musical expression of immense and rare power. The sonata is a work of great breadth and vitality, and has a sweep of line and noble beauty of expression that is only equalled in the supreme efforts of genius, such as Beethoven's Appassionata sonata for instance. It is a most superb poetical romance, full of the passion and heroic fervour of the Celtic strain in MacDowell's own nature. ”

“ One cannot choose one movement from the others as being more beautiful either in spirit or workmanship; [Pg 148] and the three together compose one of the flawless sonatas of pianoforte literature.
The more familiar sonata in A major is more irregular. It has, by the way, no movement in the triplex form. The first is an air and variations. It has long been a favorite with amateur and connoisseur alike. The naïve beauty of the air is irresistible. ”

“ The sonata finale is almost always either a sonata-piece—in which case it is of a very impassioned character, such as we find illustrated in the first sonata and in the "Moonlight Sonata"; or a rondo—an easy-going movement, the principal subject often returning, examples of which we find in the "Pastoral Sonata," the opus 2 in C major, opus 7 in E-flat, and a great variety of others. ”

“ In following the development of Sonata, it ought never to be forgotten that composers had no idea whither they were tending, and had to use what they did know as stepping-stones to the unknown. In art, each step that is gained opens a fresh vista; but often, till the new position is mastered, what lies beyond is completely hidden and undreamed of. In fact, each step is not so much a conquest of new land, as the creation of a new mental or emotional position in the human organism. ”

“ These compositions were usually written for the harpsichord and perhaps three instruments of the viol order, the master himself playing the leading melody on the violin. He called them sonatas from sonare, to sound, a name originally applied to any piece that was sounded by instruments, not sung by the human voice. They prefigured the solo sonata, the entire class of chamber music named from the place where they were performed, and the symphony which is a sonata for the orchestra. Absolute music was set once for all on the right path by them. They ushered in a new era of Art. ”

“ The most completely and consistently modern in style is the Sonata in D major, no. 5, which is practically in three divisions. The first is a chorale, the second a kind of 'song without words' in B minor, and the third a species of fantasia, in which the sections are balanced by distinct figures, without more tonal structure than emphasis upon the principal key at the beginning and end, and variety of modulation with some thematic development in the middle. ”

“ Thus in the 2nd Sonata the first division is a kind of prelude in a modern manner, chiefly homophonic and orchestral; the second corresponds to a distinct romance or 'song without words' with clearly defined melody and graceful and constantly flowing independent accompaniment. In the third movement, which though in 3-4 time has something of a march quality, the modern harmonic character is very prominent, and the last movement is a fugue. Similar distribution of styles and modes of writing are as clearly used in the 1st and 4th Sonatas ”

“ The first allegro in the fourth sonata offers a clear example. Throughout the entire movement the instrument is called upon to play more or less in polyphonic style—carrying two parts. It is, however, a graceful and flowing style. There is no suggestion of learning too heavy for sound. The short, slow preludes at the beginning of each sonata are all beautifully wrought. The smooth imitations in No. 2, the use of a rhythmical figure in the bass of No. 3, and in all the free independent movement of the two parts, speak of a composer of finest instinct and true skill. ”

“ Rhythmical motives are plentiful; the smoothly flowing six-eight time; the same with accent completely displaced (as in bar 29, etc.) ; the vigorous dotted quaver and semiquaver of the Vivace; the prominent formula of the section in B flat in the same movement, etc. As before in the Appassionata, the boundaries between first and second themes fade away before the consciousness of their unity. The Sonata exhibits thematic in all its forms. The fugue half changes into the rondo, free in expression, lively in character. An unearthly sweep of music, born tone by tone, rolls over us ”

“ There is one form in modern music which is the type of so large a proportion of extended instrumental movements that the student will do well to master its peculiarities at the earliest possible moment. This is the form sometimes called the sonata form or sonata-piece. The term sonata was originally used in two senses: in its larger sense it indicates an extended musical composition with three or four movements, all which taken together form the sonata. By the term sonata-piece, however, is meant the particular movement of the sonata which gives the name to the whole piece. ”

“ Sonata in A major. As published in the collection of [171] posthumous compositions, this Sonata is for violin, with pianoforte accompaniment. The piece consists of an Introduction, Theme, Three Variations and Coda, the term "Sonata" being employed quite in its primitive sense:—a piece to be played. The Introduction is only eight bars in length, ending with a short cadenza leading to the theme, Andantino, A major, two-four measure. ”

“ A sonata written for an orchestra is a symphony. The nature of the interpreting medium naturally determines the exposition of the form, but all the essential attributes can be learned from a study of the symphony, which because of the dignity and eloquence of its apparatus admits of a wider scope than its allies, and must be accepted as the highest type, not merely of the sonata, but of the instrumental art. ”

“ Certain theorists recommend the student of composition to select a sonata by Mozart, or some other master, in which the established form is strictly adhered to, and to write a precisely similar sonata by imitating the model bar for bar, using the same time, tempo, modulations, changes in loudness, and so on—only substituting other notes. ”

“ A delightfully quaint use of shifted motives is made in the finale of the Sonata, opus 11. The theme of the movement, though written in triple measure, consists entirely of two-beat motives, so that there is a constantly felt, and very exciting, opposition between metrical and rhetorical accents. ”

“ Singularly enough, too, in both cases the struggle which is begun in the first movement and continued in the third, is interrupted by a period of calm reassuring, soul-fortifying aspiration, which in the symphony as well as in the sonata takes the form of a theme with variations. Here, then, the recognition of a simple rhythmical figure has helped us to an appreciation of the spiritual unity of the parts of a symphony, and provided a commentary on the poetical [Pg 31] contents of a sonata. ”

“ That the C major Sonata has been heard more frequently than that numbered as Op. 2, and is still occasionally to be found in a concert-programme, may be accepted both as evidence and result of its advance upon the Sonata in F sharp minor. ”

“ The sonata is the firm and solid bridge over which music passed from the contrapuntal period to the romantic, and doubtless there still are some who prefer to linger on the bridge rather than cross it to the promised land to which it leads. Always there are conservatives who stand still and look back; and that these still should let their eyes rest longingly on the great master of the classical epoch, Beethoven, is, to say the least, comprehensible. ”

“ The genius of Johann Sebastian Bach gained the victory over form, and, in fact, exhausted fugue-form. It is in the clever, but dry fugues of some of his contemporaries and, especially, successors, that one can feel the absolute necessity for a new departure. This Adagio is, as it were, a delicate remembrance, and one not unmixed with sadness, of the composer's immortal parent.
The light, lively final movements need no description. All the music of these sonatas is written in two or three parts or voices; occasionally there are chord passages in which for the moment the number is increased. ”

“ The final Allegro is preceded by a short introduction, in which the chief theme and other material of the Finale are set forth. The connection between this and the earlier movements of the sonata is not evident, like the one, for instance, already noticed, between the Andante and the Scherzo; with research, and possibly some imagination, relationship might, however, be traced. We are far from asserting that movements of a sonata ought to be visibly connected; after all, the true bond of union must be a spiritual one. ”

“ But as music has become more and more an intimate phase of life, and as our most intimate instrument, the instrument of the household, is the pianoforte, we understand its capacity for the intimate expression of moods and fancies, the lights and shadows of life, as it never was understood before. The modern lover of music, if I may judge his standpoint from my own, feels that while the sonatas of the masters I have named were written for the pianoforte, they were thought out for orchestra, and that even a Beethoven sonata is an engraving for pianoforte of a symphony for orchestra. ”

“ Here, though one still finds a classical ideal of form, there are bold, clashing harmonies, and endless complexities of rhythm. The scoring is tremendous, the effect big as an orchestra. The sonata is in three movements, all of which represent the development of one central idea. The first movement, which is preceded by a long and fiery introduction, is made up of a series of variations on this central idea. A subsidiary idea, which, as in the ‘Symphonic Variations’ of Franck, was suggested in the introduction, is woven into the music here and there. ”

“ They finally let her go and settled down to the music once more. She was much more than fifteen minutes in returning, but no one noticed it, so deeply immersed were they in the rendering of the sonata. ”

“ Although one of the few authentic titles, it is difficult to see the meaning of its bearing of the Sonata as a whole, unless indeed it is applied to the sad and dramatic introduction theme which, indeed, deserves as a leading motive to the first movement being introduced before the development section, and it ends just before the coda. The slow movement is of wonderful serenity and breathes a great religious calm. ”

“ The first movement is a wonderful evolution from the first four-note figure, the development full of all kinds of strong devices, the stormy episode in the middle based on the rhythm of the opening phrase of the Sonata and the marvellous slow movement full of passion and tenderness, from its opening five-bar phrase to its beautiful close with those amazing tonic pedal chords. The spirited Minuet, really a Scherzo with two bars taken as one, is admirably contrasted with the Hunting Song of the Trio. ”