The development of sonatas of the Baroque period

Liu Yibin Yunnan Academy of Arts

The 17th-century prelude and Canzona's structure and name are often confused. As a genre, Canzona in the early 17th century was replaced by sonatas. Sonatas of the Baroque period were often composed for one or two pieces of violin and ensemble bass instruments, including solo sonatas and triple sonatas. The violin is often used as a solo instrument, and the bass string instrument and harpsichord are used as the ensemble bass instrument. Since then, sonatas have been divided into two types: the Sonata da chiesa (church sonata) and the sonate da camera .. Church sonatas are more serious in music and are played in churches; chamber sonatas have more typical secular characteristics. Late Baroque Sonatas in D. Scarlatti and C. P. Under the development of E Bach, it presented the prototype of the classical sonata style and heralded the budding of the classical sonata.

I. Introduction

The music of the Baroque period is of great significance in the development of Western music history, and this period can be said to be the period in the history of Western music that produced the most musical body. Because in this period, vocal and instrumental genres developed simultaneously, especially instrumental works entered the heyday of development, and gradually formed and established a large number of instrumental genre forms, sonatas were born in this period. On this basis, a number of musical giants and a large number of sonata works also appeared in the Baroque period, which became a valuable wealth in the musical literature.

2. The origin of the sonata

"Sonata" is derived from the Italian language, its original meaning is "to make a sound", in these initial applications, "sonata" is only a general concept, it does not have any formal conventions, it is a general term for "works performed with instruments", often corresponding to "cantata" that generally refers to "works sung with human voices". In fact, long before it became an important instrumental genre of the Baroque period, the term "sonata" existed for centuries. But if we look at it only in terms of genre form, in those periods, these early works under the title of "Sonata", all they had in common was that they were all played with instruments.

From the 13th century onwards, "sonata" began to be used as a synonym for music, in the 14th century it referred to the use of musical instruments in song and dance to play passages or improvised small pieces, the term sonata was found in the literature of this period, and in the 15th century, sonatas were sometimes used to refer to various pure instrumental works, and gradually became commonly used by musicians of this period.

The development and establishment of sonatas in the 16th century also has great roots with another musical form, Canzone. Canzona is an Italian word for simple instrumental pieces similar to those of The French Chamson. However, at that time, even those instrumental canzona, which was specially composed for instrumental performance, would still maintain traces of vocal accompaniment, so that some characteristics and characteristics of most of the songs would be clearly visible in Canzona.

Canzona initially represented a gradual development from the original vocal adaptation to a more instrumental stage, while the sonatas of the same period heralded the development from an absolutely independent, purely instrumental position. These two parallel developments of different types of instrumental forms gradually merged into one, and the "sonata" eventually replaced "Canzona", which referred specifically to a particular instrumental genre. In the 17th century, the term "sonata" was widely used in a large number of works.

The development of sonatas in the early Baroque

The survival and development of any musical genre cannot exist in complete absolute isolation, but is often based on one or more similar forms, or even the fusion of other forms to perfect its own development, and the development of sonatas in the Baroque period is inseparable from the influence of Canzona.

In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, sonatas and Canzona gradually began to withdraw from dance and vocal music. At the same time, Canzona himself underwent some development, that is, from the beginning of the passage that only added instrumental color to the vocal music, gradually developed towards a more independent and more instrumental level.

In the course of this development, Canzona not only gradually broke away from the influence of vocal compositions, but more importantly, in a more concentrated expression of structure, gradually developed a change -- the principle of unified sonata, and it was this important principle that had a great influence on the formation and development of the subsequent sonata. Thus, although instrumental Canzona is generally regarded as the factor that most influenced the early sonatas, this is not to say that The contemporary Canzona was slightly inferior to the sonatas of this period in terms of development. In fact, regardless of the name used at the time, both instrumental genres exhibited a more advanced tendency in the society of the time, and in this sense, there can be said that there were no absolute similarities and differences between Canzona and sonatas. By the mid-17th century, the two genres of Canzona and Sonata had faded away from the distinct differences. But its fundamental point is that Canzona was an instrumental genre born from vocal music, so the name Canzona gradually lost its place and was no longer used with the development of the sonata genre.

During this period, the concept of sonata was used to refer to multi-movement instrumental works and was divided into two categories according to their place of performance— church sonatas and chamber sonatas. Church sonatas are specially composed for musical works played inside the church, and the works are usually divided into four movements, and the speed of the music is often arranged in the order of slow-fast-slow-fast.

The slow movements of the music are often slow and sublime, suitable for the serious and sacred place of the church; the allegro movements are mostly composed of light, lively fugue passages. Chamber sonatas are specifically music played in court chambers, often composed of several "sketches", which are usually in the same tonality, with the characteristics of suites, such as Alemand, Pavan, Courant, Garvoort, small steps, etc., in which some passages are also composed of relatively light singing or lyrical passages. The other is to divide according to the form of performance, that is, divided into solo sonatas and triple sonatas, etc. In general, the triple sonata is specially composed for two high-pitched instruments and one instrument that plays the bass; the solo sonata is generally composed for one instrument, usually for the violin and the playing bass instrument. It can be seen that at this stage, the "sonata" has been greatly developed, and different types of performance venues and performance forms have emerged.

The development of the Sonata in the late Baroque

The great development of the sonata can be mainly summarized as two periods of stage, the Baroque period and the Classicist period. In the late Baroque period, the Italian composer who made an important contribution to the development of the sonata was Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757).

During his lifetime, D. Scarlatti composed more than 500 ancient piano sonatas, and his musical styles were diverse, mostly single movements and mostly two-part. In his works, a large number of bilogies with reproducibility elements began to be used.

Starting with the main tone of the first part of the work, the terminating sentence generally ends in the genus tone, and at the end of the second paragraph, the ending sentence of the first part is reproduced again, and then it is returned to the main tone. These two parts are often repeated on their own, similar to the first and second themes of the Viennese Classical Sonata, namely the main theme and the sub-theme. In the creative methods of these two themes, the first theme mostly adopts polyphonic techniques, and the second theme contrasts with the first theme in terms of musical personality.

In the sonatas of this period, although there have not yet been some independent and complete reproductions, there are already extremely obvious reproduction factors. In particular, some sonatas already have an unfolding nature at the beginning of the second part, so that the structure of the work is closer to the classical sonata style. In terms of tonality, the first paragraph ends in the major key of its genus or its relationship, the second paragraph goes to other distant relations, and then returns to the main tone. Therefore, in the sonatas of D. Scarlatti, the signs and initial forms of the sonatas gradually began to show, which is of great significance in the history of the change and development of the keyboard sonatas.

C·P· Ebach can be said to be another composer after D. Scarlatti who has made great distinction in the development of sonatas, and his sonatas are sonatas with three movements, arranged at a speed of "fast-slow-fast", which has shown repetitive passages, which is of epoch-making significance for the development of the genre of classical sonatas.

5. Conclusion

By exploring the early sonatas and the other instrumental genres of the same period and the stage of disengagement, it can be clearly seen that the establishment and development of the sonatas has made a great breakthrough in the Baroque period and has always been in the process of continuous evolution and development, because the musical role and creative ideas of this period have been changing and updating, so the changes and progress of the instrumental music genre will continue, including genres, forms, contents, structures, etc. The "sonatas" of the Baroque period have gone through a broad, Concepts that do not have a given meaning are gradually given a clearer genre meaning. In the late Baroque period, the development of sonatas also heralded the germ of classicism and laid an important foundation for the development and maturity of classical sonatas.