Sonata, in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata, a piece sung. 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 still maintain the same structure.
Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar".
The viola sonata is a sonata for viola, sometimes with other instruments, usually piano. The earliest viola sonatas are difficult to date for a number of reasons:
E major is a major scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, and D♯. Its key signature has four sharps. Its relative minor is C-sharp minor and its parallel minor is E minor. Its enharmonic equivalent, F-flat major, has six flats and the double-flat B, which makes it impractical to use.
The Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb/1, by Joseph Haydn was composed around 1761-65 for longtime friend Joseph Franz Weigl, then the principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus's Esterházy Orchestra.
The Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra, Op. 35, was completed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1933.
The Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor, D. 821, was written by Franz Schubert in Vienna in November 1824. The sonata is the only substantial composition extant today for the arpeggione. The sonata was composed in November 1824, about a month after Schubert had returned to Vienna from his second stay in Zseliz. It has been adapted to other string instruments, especially the cello.
Alisa Weilerstein is an American classical cellist. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.
Hyacinthe Jadin was a French composer who came from a musical family. His uncle Georges Jadin was a composer in Versailles and Paris, along with his father Jean Jadin, who had played bassoon for the French Royal Orchestra. He was one of five musical brothers, the best known of whom was Louis-Emmanuel Jadin.
The Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65, was written by Frédéric Chopin in 1846-1847. It is one of only nine works of Chopin published during his lifetime that were written for instruments other than piano. Chopin composed four sonatas, the other three being piano sonatas. The cello sonata was the last of Chopin's works to be published in his lifetime.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 was completed in November 1901 and published a year later.
An organ concerto is an orchestral piece of music in which a pipe organ soloist is accompanied by an an orchestra, although some works exist with the name "concerto" which are for organ alone.
The Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano by César Franck is one of his best-known compositions, and is considered one of the finest sonatas for violin and piano ever written. It is an amalgam of his rich native harmonic language with the Classical traditions he valued highly, held together in a cyclic framework.
Sonatas, duos and fantasies by Franz Schubert include all works for solo piano by Franz Schubert, except separate dances. They also include a number of works for two players: piano four hands, or piano and a string instrument.
Composed in 1846, the Piano Trio in G minor, opus 17 by Clara Schumann is considered her greatest, most mature four-movement work. It is her only piano trio, composed while she lived in Dresden, following extensive studies in fugue writing and the publication of her Three Preludes and Fugues For Piano, opus 16 in 1845. The trio was premiered by the composer in Vienna on January 15th, 1847.
The sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, BWV 1027–1029, are three sonatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach for viola da gamba and harpsichord. They probably date from the late 1730s and early 1740s.
In 1816, Franz Schubert composed his first three violin sonatas, D 384, 385 and 408. They were published after the composer's death as Sonatinas in 1836. These sonatas breathe an intimate atmosphere, requiring relatively little virtuoso bravura from their performers.
Klaus Storck was a German cellist who appeared internationally as soloist and chamber musician. He also edited music for cello. He often appeared in a duo with his wife, the harpist Helga Storck, and composers wrote music for them.
The Cello Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 32, is a cello sonata composed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1872. Dedicated to the French cellist Jules Lasserre, the sonata was premiered on 7 December 1872 at the Société nationale de musique in Paris, with Auguste Tolbecque on cello and the composer at the piano.
