Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

SONATA 505
to make tlie most elementary music, had to be
drawn from the inner self and the consciousness
of things which belong to man's nature only,
without the possibility of finding guidance or
more than the crudest suggestion from the
observation of things external. Yet the
structural principles by which such unpromising
materials become intelligible have been so
ordered and developed by the unaided musical
instinct of many successive generations of composers,
as to render possible long works which
not only penetrate and stir us in detail, but are
in their entire mass direct, consistent, and convincing.
Such works, in their completest and
most severely abstract forms, are sonatas.
The name seems to have been first adopted
purely as the antithesis to Cantata, the musical
piece that was sung. It begins to come into
notice about the same time as that form of
composition, soon after the era of the most
marked revolution in music, which began at the
end of the 16th centuiy ; when a band of enthusiasts,
led by visionary ideals, unconsciously
sowed the seed of true modem music in an
attempt to wrest the monopoly of the art in its
highest forms from the predominant iniluenoe
of the Church, and to make it serve for the
expression of human feelings of more comprehensive
range. At this time the possibilities
of polyphony in its ecclesiastical forms may
well have seemed almost exhausted, and men
turned about to find new fields which should
give scope for a greater number of worlcers.
The nature of their speculations and the associations
of the old order of things alike conspired
to direct their attention first to Opera and
Cantata, and here they had something to guide
them ; but for abstract instrumental music of
the Sonata kind they had for a long time no
clue.
The first suggestion was clearly accidental.
It appears probable that the excessive elaboration
of the Madrigal led to the practice of
accompanying the voice parts with violS ; and
from this the step is but short to leaving the
viols by themselves and making a vague kind
of chamber music without the voices. This
appears to have been the source of the instrumental
Canzonas which were written in tolerable
numbers till some way into the 18th century.
It does not appear tliat any distinct rules for
their construction were recognised, but the
examination of a large number, written at different
periods from Frescobaldi to J. S. Bach,
prove.3 the uniform object of the composers to
have been a lax kind of fugue, such as might
have served in its main outlines for the vocal
madi'igals. Burney says the earliest examples
of ' Sonatas ' he had been able to discover in
his devoted inquiries were by Turini, published
at Venice in 1624. His description of those
he examined answers perfectly to the character
of the canzonas, for, he says, they consist of one
movement, in fugue and imitation throughout.
Sonatas did not, however, rest long at this
point of simplicity, but were destined very
early to absorb material from other sources ;
and though the canzona kind of movement
maintained its distinct position through many
changes in its environment, and is still found in
the Violin Sonatas of J. S. Bach, Handel, and
Porpora, the madrigal, which was its source, soon
ceased to have direct influence upon three parts
of the more complete structure. The suggestion
for these came from the dance, and the newly
invented opera or dramatic cantata. The former
had existed and made the chief staple of instrumental
music for generations, but it requires to
be well understood that its direct coimection
with dancing puts it out of the category of
abstract music of the kind which was now
obscurely germinating. The dances were understood
through their relation with one order of
dance motions. There would be the order of
rhythmic motions which, taken together, was
called a Branle, aimther that was called a Pavan,
another a Gigue ; and each dance-tune maintained
the distinctive rhythm and style throughout.
On the other hand, the radical principle
of the Sonata, developed in the course of generations,
is the compounding of a limitless variety
of rhythms ; and though isolated passages may
be justly interpreted as representing gestures of
an ideal dance kind, like that of the ancients,
it is not through this association that the group
of movements taken as a whole is understood,
but by the disposition of such elements and others
in relation to one another. This conception
took time to develop, though it is curious how
early composers began to perceive the radical
diff'erence between the Suite and the Sonata.
Occasionally a doubt seems to be implied by
confusing the names together or by actually
calling a collection of dance-tunes a Sonata
;
but it can hardly be questioned that from almost
the earliest times, as is proved by a strong
majority of cases, there was a sort of undefined
presentiment tliat their developments lay along
totally different paths. In the first attempts
to form an aggregate of distinct movements,
the composers had to take their forms where
they could find them ; and among these were
the familiar dance-tunes, which for a long while
held a prominent position in the heterogeneous
group of movements, and were only in late times
transmuted into the Scherzo which supplanted
the Minuet and Trio in one case, and the Finale or
Eondo, which ultimately took the place of the"^
Gigue, or Chaconne, or other similar dance-forms
as the last member of the group.
The third source, as above mentioned, was
the drama, and from this two general ideas
were derivable : one from the short passages
of instramental prelude or interlude, and the
other from the vocal portions. Of these, the
first was intelligible in the drama through its
relation to some point in the story, but it also
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