Piano Sonata

The sonata on a single keyboard, moving from court rooms into concert halls.

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ClassicalSonataSonata FormPiano

A piano sonata is a multi-movement work for one keyboard instrument. It puts sonata form, variation and rondo within the span of ten fingers, letting a soloist carry the structure without an orchestra.

Origins and dates

Baroque keyboard sonatas were mostly single movements, and Scarlatti left more than five hundred. In the mid-eighteenth century C.P.E. Bach and Haydn fixed the three-movement layout. Beethoven's thirty-two pushed dynamics, pedalling and motivic development to their limit. In the nineteenth century Chopin, Liszt and Brahms carried the genre into the concert hall.

Listening features

Count the movements first; the fast-slow-fast frame is the most common. In the first movement follow the contrast and return of two themes, in the slow movement the singing line, in the finale the rondo or variations. Listen to the bass, the thickness of chords and the resonance of the pedal. Late works often link movements, with themes crossing from one to another.

Composers and works

Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms and Prokofiev.

Lineage

It grows from the keyboard toccata and sonata and leads to the character piece, the étude and the twentieth-century piano concerto. It shares thematic development with chamber music.

Misconceptions

A piano sonata need not have three movements or follow sonata form. It was not written only for teaching; Beethoven's late works long outgrew the parlour.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Sonata" — definitions and dating checked, not quoted
• Charles Rosen, Sonata Forms — formal categories checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.