Vibrant Keyboard Sonorities The Solo Keyboard Sonata A History in Seven Volumes: Volume 1 The Keyboard Sonata in Perspective

By Robert M. White, M.D.

About the Book
The purpose of Vibrant Keyboard Sonorities is to provide a comprehensive, critical evaluation, and appreciation of the 450-year history of the keyboard sonata. This history should be of interest to all those who are musicians, music historians and lovers of Classical music. This subject will be of great interest and relevance to all music lovers. Also, these volumes will serve as reference works and would be excellent introductory textbooks for college-level music students. This source of comprehensive information about the keyboard sonata is fully available through this book alone. This is the first text of its nature with information that is not fully available in one source elsewhere.

About the Author
Robert M. White, M.D. is a retired pathologist who pursues several hobbies and interests outside of medicine. His hobbies include playing the piano, long distance running, and avid reading. He is actively involved in his church and in several community service-oriented organizations. His real passion is Classical music, and for more than fifty years, he has been a serious student of Classical music in all of its forms. Dr. White is the author of two recently published reference books: Sounding Together: A History of the Symphony (2019) and Performing Together: A History of the Keyboard Concerto (2021). His playing of the piano since childhood has afforded his extensive knowledge of piano literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886045536

Book preview

Chapter One

The History

Usage of the term sonata ideally should be specific as to what one is talking about. Throughout history, this term has been applied to a wide range of musical forms dating from the ensemble canzona of the mid-sixteenth century to various avant-garde compositions. The term literally means an instrumental piece of music without further detail. For centuries, musicians have composed works with this title. These varying compositions often have had little to no relationship in styles or even forms. The one thing they have had in common is that they are by definition non-vocal music.

The word sonata per se by its original definition has had no rules as to form, instrumentation, or number of performers. The number of performers has ranged from one to a small ensemble. A wealth of musical riches has been composed with the sonata as a title. This book is about one specific usage of the term sonata, namely the sonata for solo keyboard. This is indeed a challenging subject due to its vast literature and the complexity of this history. Many beautiful and even adventurous sonatas reward music lovers of all persuasions. Our central focus is the piano sonata, a musical form which originated about two and a half centuries ago. The full story must be told, and so we will begin at the beginning.

This text is a history of nearly all the most significant solo keyboard music written with the title sonata. The emphasis is on sonatas written in sonata form, beginning with Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Mozart; this sonata form construct had a major influence on solo piano composition for the last 250 years up to the present day. For about 150 years before Haydn and Mozart, composers also had written keyboard music with the same title of sonata. These earlier compositions have little in common in form or style with the sonata form or classical style sonata, which is the focus of this text. For full appreciation of the solo keyboard sonata, the entire history is reviewed in these volumes. The earliest keyboard sonatas were inspired and modeled after the Baroque Italian violin solo Concertos. The Neue Clavier-Übung (published from 1692 to 1695 in Leipzig) by the German composer Johann Kuhnau (1660 - 1772) contains a single keyboard sonata in B flat, among seven keyboard suites. This sonata is the earliest known work of its type to be published in Germany. Recent research has shown that Kuhnau was following a trend that was already established in other countries in which the instrumental sonata ensemble had been established.

During the Baroque Era, the solo keyboard sonata became a popular musical form for composers of several European countries. We will trace this development and learn how the pre-Classical sonata arose in conjunction with the appearance of the fortepiano. By the time of Franz Haydn and W.A. Mozart, keyboard instruments had advanced to one in which the strings were hammered, allowing for much greater expression and dynamic range of sound. With the arrival of these early pianos, the stage was set for an enormous and widespread proliferation of piano sonatas. Over the following centuries, the volume of sonatas produced per composer decreased as the length, sophistication, and complexity increased.

The Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757) composed more than 550 keyboard sonatas, which are one movement works of only a few minutes duration each. By the late nineteenth century, most composers were inspired to compose just one to a few sonatas. These were usually multi-movement works of much length and structural complexity. This evolution of the sonata resulted in diverse compositions which often had little in common except the name sonata. It is clear that no one definition of what a sonata is will define this diversity. Still, all these works throughout the centuries fit into the category of the sonata.

The term sonata identifies a musical composition of usually several movements. One movement works are allowed, and such works are intended almost without exception for instruments (i.e. non-vocal music). These works are intended for a soloist or a small group performing a as keyboard soloist with one or two accompanists or as duet sonatas of the Classical and Romantic Eras. One movement works and the first movement of multimovement works have incorporated sonata form (or first movement form) as the formal design which determines parameters of composition for that movement. Modern attitudes and critical analysis of sonata form has sometimes called into question the legitimateness and appropriateness of this tradition. The sense of rigidness implied by the term sonata form is regrettable. In fact, the reality is that its actual application over more than the past five and a half centuries has included broad formal and stylistic connotations.

The generally accepted formal definition of sonata is an extended instrumental composition usually in several (commonly three or four) movements in contrasted moods and keys, each movement being developed with a balanced form in mind.¹ The term came from the Italian derivation of the Latin sonāta, the feminine form of sonātus, meaning sounding; having sound. From the early thirteenth century onwards, the word sonnade was found in writings to identify an instrumental piece. This word sonnade appears as a stage direction in plays in Italy, France, and Elizabethan England in the fifteenth century.

At the same time in Germany, the word evolved into turm sonaten (‘tower sonatas’) for trumpet calls and fanfares in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sonata was one of many terms used in an often-unclear manner to describe the many instrumental musical forms that grew rapidly by the end of the sixteenth century. Gradually, the term began to refer to broadly conceived (multimovement) music which became known by the nineteenth century as absolute music. Certain features prevailed throughout its history, such that one can justify a single historical continuum. A semantic approach to this discussion would be a study of the composer’s own ideas of what types of music qualify as sonatas. This text is a study specifically of the solo keyboard sonata and will be a pragmatic approach and less semantic as other instrumental forms are not discussed. Some important sonatas for two pianos will be mentioned for historical context. Sonatas for piano and violin (or cello or other instruments) or sonatas for larger ensembles are not discussed.

As detailed in the sonata form chapter of this volume, the essence of the sonata became formalized in the Classical Era by the works of Haydn and Mozart. This essence is introductory statements which then assume a series of structural transformations of harmony, rhythm, and melodic line. New material is added to the original material which is restructured to not be simply repeated verbatim. This form became progressively freer and often more complex through the next two and a half centuries.

Vocal music and music for the dance became popular in the Middle Ages, and instruments often accompanied this music. Any instrument of the proper range was suitable for this purpose. These musical forms preceded purely instrumental music, and this method extended into the Renaissance. Sacred music had a much longer history, extending back to the early Roman Church. The music of the church centered around polyphonic chant initially and later around the organ. The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century provided the impetus for a greatly expanded body of music in the Protestant Church. The main keyboard instruments were organ and various predecessors of the harpsichord. Some of the earliest manuscripts of pure instrumental music are for the organ. The lute was the principal instrument used as a vocal accompaniment. The lute retained its accompaniment until it was all but replaced by stringed instruments (mainly harpsichord) by the seventeenth century.

Instrumental music of the Renaissance period served three functions: (1) arrangements or imitations of vocal music, both secular and sacred, with or without a cantus firmus;² (2) purely improvisational music for a specific instrument or ensemble; and (3) music composed or arranged for dancing. There are three early surviving manuscripts of instrumental music from the first category above. These are Fundamentum organisandi by Conrad Paumann (c. 1410 - 1473), Buxheimer Orgelbuch (c. 1460) and Tabulaturen by Arnold Schlick (c. 1512). Each contains performance instructions and arrangements of songs or chasons. Example 1 is one such transcription of a chanson (Je loe amours) from the Buxheimer manuscript:

Example 1

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Many of these elaborations of songs in the Paumann collection have the cantus firmus in the bass below an embellished upper staff melody. Other works in the set are early improvisations in the style of a toccata. The figural technique became common in Germany in the sixteenth century, leading to a German keyboard school called colorists from their embellishment (colorization) of the melodies. Arrangements included other forms such as ricercari and canzoni, and these keyboard sets became more numerous by the end of the sixteenth century. In these sets, no difference between organ and clavichord usage was indicated.

The definitions for instrumental arrangements of vocal pieces without cantus firmus is unclear. The two principal areas were canzona da sonar (meaning music sounded without voice) and ricercare. Furthermore, large ensemble works called sonate are found in sixteenth century publications. For example, the outstanding Sonata piano e forte, for antiphonal ensembles, and the Sacrae Symphoniae (1597) by Giovanni Gabrieli are two late century examples. Derived from chanson (French), the canzona and the separately derived ricerare were additional musical forms that often employed contrapuntal methods of composition. Composers in France and Italy developed these two forms to a high degree. More individuality in writing, sectional divisions, and movement toward more lyric elements were found in the Cavazzoni and Gabrieli families in Italy. Works called canzoni da sonar were published. The da sonar phrase indicated music exclusively for instrumental performance. Giovanni Gabrieli’s canzoni e sonate (1615) is an outstanding example of this song-derived music.

Other sixteenth century lines of instrumental music development include a small school of English keyboard music, organ music employing cantus firmi, improvisational forms (mostly for organ) and forms derived from dance music. Dance music for keyboard instruments appeared in quantity in the late sixteenth century, especially in England. Most of this music was for the virginal, the name given to the rectangular wood framed instrument with strings that were plucked like the harpsichord. Most works were brief, and the writing resembled vocal writing. The most important forms that influenced composers of the next century were the so-called embryonic set (usually pairs of dances) and the ensemble canzone. Among the keyboard works, the unified ricercare, the Italian toccata, and the variation set of the English school were of lasting value. These forms carried within them the seeds of the keyboard literature of the seventeenth century.

The emergence of Baroque style corresponded with the rapid growth of instrumental music, including keyboard music. The Baroque Era in this text is defined as the years 1585 to 1750. This extends from the sonatas of Gabrieli to the death of J.S. Bach. While this new aesthetic philosophy challenged the Renaissance traditions, Renaissance style was not easily abolished. It continued to function parallel to the new style as recognized by the names stilo antico (antique style), stilo grave (strict style), or prima prattica (first practice), especially in the field of church music. As earlier discussed, the term sonata was introduced to mean instrumental piece in the late Renaissance, especially in Spanish lute tablatures ³ (as in sonada or sonado in Luis de Milán’s El maestro, 1536, or soneto a sonado in Valderrábano’s Silva de sirenas, 1547).

At the same time sonata was entering the Italian musical language as the feminine past participle of sonare (to sound or play); that infinitive had met the need for an antithesis to cantare (to sing) as early as 1509, in the title of Petrucci’s lute tablature per cantar e sonar. In 1572 Vicentino used the hybrid term canzon da sonar for a chanson or quasi-chanson to be played by instruments. For some 75 years the terms canzona and sonata were both used, often interchangeably (as in Tarquinio Mercula’s Canzoni, overo sonate, (1637). Thereafter, the ensemble canzone survived primarily as the fugal (often the second) movement of the sonata da chiesa; the term was thus applied by Purcell in England in his trio sonatas in the late seventeenth century. Similar identifications and confusions of sonata with both concerto and sinfonia were to prevail from the late seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, as in the manuscripts of Stradella and G.B. Sammartini in Italy.

Just as the ensemble canzone ushered in the field of chamber music, a separate divergence of the canzona led directly to the new form of sonata. In ensemble canzona, imitative textures resembled textless motets which were of unified sections which lacked contrast. Meanwhile, the sonata (early sonata form) became sectional with separate and independent movements which intentionally provided contrast. With contrasting sections came increasing interest by musicians and audiences. While motet-like ensemble music retained polyphonic textures of Medieval and Renaissance music, the sonata made considerable use of monodic style elements. Polarity of melody and bass was integral with a melodic top line and a figured bass.⁴ With its style came a greater diversity of note values to increase the range of rhythm. Composers began to write idiomatically for various instruments including the clavichord and especially for the violin. These early sonatas are not to be confused with the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart of the eighteenth century and later composers whose sonatas were a significant advance in technique and style.

The Baroque Period (1585 to 1750) represents a transition from polyphony (antiphonal voices or music lines) to the monodic style of composition as lyric melody accompanied by a figured bass. This method of composition supported the development of vocal music, opera, and independent instrumental music. Monodic style devices, when applied to instrumental forms, made independent instrumental music possible. The integrity of the modal system was broken down, and long steps were taken toward the establishment of major and minor tonality. But the old contrapuntal style was not abolished entirely. From the 1600s, the two styles existed side by side, the old confined largely to sacred music, the new making itself felt in the many branches of secular musical composition.

Parallel developments took place in the fields of art and architecture; as a result of being too close to rigorously evaluate those developments, art historians writing in the late eighteenth century stigmatized them with a derogatory name. The term baroque, derived from the Portuguese barocca referring to something misshapen, irregular, or grotesque, was applied to the seventeenth century examples of the new style. Music historians in the nineteenth century borrowed the term, and thus the Baroque Period became known by this odd label.

The continuo (figured bass) was the main technical component of the Baroque Period. The earliest Baroque composers had two styles to choose from; composers of the Medieval Period and Renaissance Period had rarely been faced with such a choice. Stylistic unity had been the principal characteristic of earlier periods of music history. After about 1600, stylistic unity was no longer possible. Baroque composers had to be aware of the new style which they were all but expected to use. Thus composers, for this era, became style-conscious.⁵

In keyboard music, evidence of the Baroque style can be found as early as the second half of the sixteenth century, especially in Italy. This era of experimentation culminated with the magnificent works of J.S. Bach and George Handel. Characteristics of this music included use of chromaticism, dissonance, and lyric lines. The system of modality gave way to major and minor tonality and harmonic progression. Thoroughbass was the musical shorthand which aided chord progressions. It became standard practice for the harpsichord to act as the medium by which the figured bass was realized. The harpsichordist was expected to improvise the entire chord sequence as directed by the figures and the bass notes. Sometimes a low string instrument would join the harpsichord to reinforce the bass line. Early reinforced sonatas did not have a precise form or definition. A sonata was patterned after other existing forms, such as the toccata, ricercare, capriccio, or variation forms such as chaconne and passacaglia.

The sonata as a specific musical genre arrived fully with the Classical Era. The concept of sonata form matured and was essentially codified during the Classical Period, only to see composers begin to find ways to tear away from its rules. Beethoven is the most notable composer in this regard. The real beginning of the keyboard sonata occurred in the Baroque Period, which contained a broad range of styles found throughout Europe. Around the turn of the seventeenth century, several Italian composers popularized the term sonata with works so titled for two or more instrumental choirs and those vocal works called Sonata con voci. Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudo Monteverdi stand out in these vocal works. Other Italians began to call works for solo violin and bass (or two violins and bass) sonatas.

Around this time, a distinction arose between sacred and secular music. The sonata da camera (chamber sonata) was an independent instrumental fantasy in several movements without a text. The Sonata da chiesa (church sonata) was usually a three to four movement instrumental work which could be used for various sacred services as part of Vespers or the Mass. This distinction was defined in 1701 in Brossard’s Dictionaire.⁶ Earlier, there was discussion of the etymology of the words suonata, sonate and sonata, and there was also a discussion of scoring and instrumentation. The Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli established the slow-fast-slow-fast pattern of movements in the church sonata. After 1710, these two sonata types (camera and chiesa) overlapped, and the title sonata came to represent the church type and da camera type was largely replaced by terms such as overture, partita, or other such terms. Using the da chiesa type as his model, the Italian Adriano Banchieri (1567 - 1634) titled his treatise on organ playing L’organo suonarino (1605). This treatise is the first use of the term sonata when referring to keyboard performance. The first known German composer to use sonata was Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (ca. 1623 -80). He published a suite with one movement named sonata. More significant is the German Johann Kuhnau (1660 - 1722) who mainly composed keyboard music. His Neuer Clavier Übung was published in two volumes in 1689 and 1692. Each volume included seven suites (all called partitas).

In volume two, there is the earliest surviving keyboard sonata (in B flat). Four short sections follow the slow-fast-slow-fast tempo pattern. Four years later, Kuhnau published Frische Clavierfrüchte (Fresh Keyboard Fruit) containing seven sonatas in three to four movements, including those called chaconne, fugue, or aria. This publication contained detailed markings for tempo and dynamics, the first keyboard sonata publication to include performance directions. His most intriguing work are his six Biblical Sonatas (1700), which are discussed further in volume two.

Throughout the Baroque era, innovations in music originated in Italy. Even Handel and J.S. Bach mostly followed the Italians. The Italians evolved their methods and styles and initiated the Galant style (ca. 1720 - 1770) which is roughly equivalent to the late Baroque subperiod. The phases of Baroque music have been divided into three subperiods. This division facilitates understanding of this evolving era. The Italians were the most influential group throughout the entire period. Table 1 was developed by Bukofzer, who believed that clear subdivisions of the Baroque era were evident from his research:

Table 1: Baroque Subperiods⁷

The evolution of a body of harpsichord music, fully separate form organ music, was not complete until after the middle subperiod. The variation principle, dance suites, vocal works, and organ compositions were all parts of this new music. English composers (the English Virginalists) wrote almost exclusively by the variation principle and did not embrace the sonata. Likewise, the sonata was foreign to the French clavecinists. French music from about 1650 to 1770 was based on the dance. During this time, the French harpsichord style was widely exported to other countries and was eagerly imitated elsewhere. The first major German harpsichord composer was Jakob Froberger (1616 -1667), who learned his art from Frescobaldi in Italy and Chambonnières in France.

Neither Frescobaldi nor Chambonnières showed any interest in the sonata, and Froberger also avoided the form. As earlier mentioned, it was Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor as cantor in Leipzig, who first wrote harpsichord music in a form sonata style, which was modeled after the sonata da chiesa from Italy. By the late Baroque subperiod, the harpsichord multimovement suite dominated German harpsichord music until the arrival of the sons of J.S. Bach in the Galant Period.

Italian Baroque keyboard music began in Naples where a group of composers turned their attention from ensemble music to the harpsichord. Most notable were G. M. Trabaci (ca. 1580 - 1647), Antonio Valente (ca. 1520 - 1580), and Ercole Pasquini (ca. 1580 - 1614). These individuals wrote examples of the variation canzone, toccatas, partitas, and the like. The most important composer of this era was Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583 - 1643). Much of his music is titled di cembalo et organo and is the cornerstone of the seventeenth century harpsichord school. His influence extended into Germany through his best-known student, Johann Froberger. Frescobaldi wrote no works called sonata and showed no interest in such a manner of composition. Until the early seventeenth century, organ music remained the center of attention for the Italians. Nonetheless, there was a steady growth in other keyboard composition which was mostly contrapuntal in texture. Much of this music led the way to fugal writing. The toccatas of Frescobaldi and Froberger were an improvisatory style that continued for centuries.

The toccata is Italy’s specific contribution to early keyboard music, and many of the toccatas of this period are suitable for performance on the modern piano. Many sets of variations (often called partite) mark the literature, along with a host of dance styles such as the corrente, balletto (often a metric variant of the corrente), passacaglia, and ciaconna (chaconne).

It was in Italy where the fortepiano (Cristofori, 1709) originated. In the early and middle eighteenth century, the Italian keyboard sonata occupied a prominent place in the literature. The light homophonic style of a Platti or a Pergolesi prepared the way for the pre-classical sonatas of Paradies and Rutini. Flexible keyboard writing was a strong contrast to the earlier Baroque style of Frescobaldi or Michelangelo Rossi- a style often florid, powerful, and strange to modern ears. The chromaticism of these earlier masters seems wild, daring, and often extravagant (Rossi’s Toccatas, for example). Domenico Scarlatti is a figure bridging the baroque to the classical pianism of Muzio Clementi (late eighteenth and early nineteenth century). However, many of the characteristic elements of his musical speech are Spanish in origin, taking their harmonic, rhythmic, and textural patterns from Spanish dance and guitar music.

Spanish and Portuguese keyboard music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is limited and much has been lost. Joaquin Nin in Spain and Santiago Kastner in Portugal assembled valuable collections of their respective native music. These published works are a rich source worthy of investigation by pianists. Most of this music is in one movement, easy to play, and yet often distinctive. These Spanish and Portuguese composers are the immediate successors of Scarlatti. Padre Antonio Soler (1724 - 1783) of Spain and Carlos Seixas (1704 -1742) of Portugal are the most outstanding of these composers.

It has been characteristic in Western music history for a new style to make its appearance at a time when the old style had reached its apex. The new style matured as the old declined in influence. During the years that Handel and J.S. Bach composed, a concurrent style emerged around 1720 and continued well past the death of Bach (the defined end of the Baroque) to 1770. This new style transformed by 1780 into the Classical style of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

This transitional period from 1720 to 1770 became known by several names. For this text, the preferred name is the Pre-Classical era. This style emerged when French architecture was decorated to excess which caused the normal structure lines of a building to be obscured. The term rococo [from the French rocaille = artificial ornamentation] became applied to this new music. This was music for the fashionable aristocracy of France, and they referred to this music as style galant. A later version evolved in Germany, and there it modified toward more sentiment (or feeling) and was known as the empfindsamer Stil (sensitive style).

The Rococo Period was a reaction against the formalism, rigidity, and seriousness of much Baroque music. This development grew out of the parallel development of the age of enlightenment of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montequien in France. The death of King Louis XIV of