sonata

The tradition & historical record

In music, a sonata (; pl. sonate) is a piece that consists of 3 or 4 movements that can be for different musical instruments. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until the Classical era, when it took on increasing importance. Sonata is a vague term, with varying meanings depending on the context and time period. By the early 19th century it came to represent a principle of composing large-scale works. It was applied to most instrumental genres and regarded—alongside the fugue—as one of two fundamental methods of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert music. Though the musical style of sonatas has changed since the Classical era, most 20th- and 21st-century sonatas maintain the overarching structure. The term sonatina, pl. sonatine, the diminutive form of sonata, is often used for a short or technically easy sonata.

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Sonata”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

sonata is type of musical composition, usually for a solo instrument or a small instrumental ensemble, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 39 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹