Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

506 SONATA
early attained to a crude condition of form which
was ec[ually available apart from the drama.
The other produced at first the vaguest and
most rhapsodical of all the movements, as the
type taken was the irregular declamatory recitative
which appears to have abounded in the
early operas.
It is hardly likely that it will ever be ascertained
who first experimented in sonatas of
several distinct movements. Many composers
are mentioned in different places as having contributed
works of the kind, such as Farina,
Oesti, Graziani, among Italians, Rosenmiiller
among Germans, and John Jenkins among
Englishmen. Burney also mentions a Michael
Angelo Rossi, whose date is given as from about
1620 to 1660. An Andantino and Allegro by
him, given in Pauer's Alte Meister, ' ' require
notice parenthetically as presenting a curious
puzzle, if the dates are correct and the authorship
rightly attributed. [These pieces are now
known to be spurious (see p. 149a), but genuine
specimens of Rossi's works are in Torchi's Arte
'
Musioale in Italia,' vol. iii. See also Oskar
Bie's The Piamoforte, Engl, transl. p. 82.]
Though belonging to a period considerably
before Corelli, they show a state of form which
certainly was not commonly realised till more
than a hundred years later. The distribution
of subject-matter and key, and the clearness
with which they are distinguished, are like the
works of the middle of the 18 th rather than
the l7th century, and they belong absolutely
to the Sonata order, and the conscious style of
the later period. The actual structure of large
numbers of sonatas composed in different parts
of Europe soon after this time, proves a tolerably
clear consent as to the arrangement and quality
of the movements. A fine vigorous example is
a Sonata in C minor for violin and figured bass,
by H. J. F. Biber, a German, said to have been
first published in 1681. This consists of five
movements in alternate slow and quick time.
The first is an introductory Largo of contrapuntal
character, with clear and consistent
treatment in the fugally imitative manner ; the
second is a Passacaglia, which answers roughly
to a continuous string of variations on a short
well-marked period ; the third is a rhapsodical
movement consisting of interspersed portions
of Poco lento. Presto, and Adagio, leading into
a Gavotte ; and the last is a further rhapsodical
movement alternating Adagio and Allegro. In
this group the influence of the madrigal or
canzona happens to be absent ; the derivation
ofthe movements being—in the first, the contrapuntalism
of the music of the Church, in the
second and fourth, dances, and in the third and
fifth, probably operatic or dramatic declamation.
The work is essentially a violin sonata with
accompaniment, and the violin-part points to
the extraordinarily rapid advance to mastery
which was made in the few years after its being
accepted as an instrument fit for high-class
nmsic. The writing for the instrument is decidedly
elaborate and difficult, especially in the
double stops and contraijuntal passages which
were much in vogue with almost all composers
from this time till J. S. Bach. In the structure
of the movements the fiigal influences are most
apparent, and there are very few signs of the
systematic repetition of subjects in connection
with well-marked distribution of keys, which
in later times became indispensable.
Similar features and qualities are shown in
the curious set of seven Sonatas for Clavier by
JohannKuhnau, called 'Frische Clavier Friiohte,'
etc., of a little later date ; but there are also
in some parts indications of an awakening sense
of the relation and balance of keys. The
grouping of the movements is similar to those
of Biber, though not identical ; thus the first
three have five movements or divisions, and the
remainder four. There are examples of the
same kind of rhapsodical slow movements, as
may be seen in the Sonata (No. 2 of the set)
which is given in Pauer's ' Alte Meister ' ; there
are several fugal movements, some of them
clearly and musically written ; and there are
some good illustrations of dance types, as in
the last movement of No. 3, and the Oiaccona
of No. 6. But more important for the thread
of continuous development are the peculiar
attempts to balance tolerably defined and distinct
subjects, and to distribute key and subject in
large expanses, of which there are at least two
clear examples. In a considerable proportion
of the movements the most noticeable method
of treatment is to alternate two characterLstio
groups of figures or subjects almost throughout,
in different positions of the scale and at irregular
intervals of time. This is illustrated in the
first movement of the Sonata No. 2, in the first
movement of No. 1 , and in the third movement
of No. 5. The subjects in the last of these are
as follows :^
The point most worth notice is that the
device lies half-way between fugue and true
sonata-form. The alternation is like the recurrence
of subject and counter-subject in the
former, wandering hazily in and out, and forwards
and backwards, between nearly allied
keys, as would be the case in a fugue. But the
subjects are not presented in single parts or
fugally answered. They enter and re-enter for
the most part as concrete lumjis of harmony,
tlie harmonic accompaniment of the melody