SONATA, in music, originally a piece "played" as opposed to "cantata," a piece sung. By the time of Corelli the term had come to mean a group of instrumental movements. (A move ment is a piece of music forming or starting as if to form, a com plete musical design.) The sonatas of Corelli are classified as sonata da chiesa (church sonata) and sonata da camera (chamber sonata). Both kinds were usually for one or two violins with continuo bass (see CHAMBER MUSIC and INSTRUMENTATION). Handel, when a boy, wrote six for two oboes, and in later years several for flute, and also for one oboe.
The sonata da chiesa consists typically of a slow introduction, a loosely fugal allegro, a cantabile slow movement and a lively finale in melodic "binary" form (see SONATA FORMS). The sonata da camera consists mainly of dance-tunes (see SUITE). Bach, who uses neither title, keeps the two kinds unmixed in his six sonatas for violin alone, the first, third and fifth being sonata da chiesa and the others partitas. A fusion of the two styles persisted in Italian violin music almost to the end of the 18th century.
The sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (q.v.) are small harpsichord pieces, of which the best known are extremely brilliant single movements in binary form. The complete collection of 545, pub lished by Longo, shows that Scarlatti experimented audaciously in remote modulations ; that he also wrote some orthodox violin sonatas; and that he sometimes followed a lively movement by a slow cantabile, as Paradies did in his sonatas. Clementi's early sonatas are at their best when they resemble a sober and heavy handed Scarlatti in a first movement which maintains a uniform rush of rapid motion; and Mozart has left a fine example of the kind in the first movement of his F major violin sonata (K 377).
The main classical sense of the term indicates a work for not more than two instruments, containing at least two, and in the complete scheme, four well-contrasted movements, of which the first and last are on the same tonic, and the others in demonstrably related keys (see HARMONY, sec. 5) the forms being those dealt with in the following article. (D. F. T.)