Sonata
A multi-movement instrumental work.
What it means
The sonata is a multi-movement instrumental work for one instrument alone or for one instrument with piano. The classical layout comprises three or four movements: a weighty opening movement, usually in sonata-movement form, a slow movement, where applicable a minuet or scherzo, and a finale. The sonata as a cycle is to be distinguished from the sonata movement, the form of a single movement — the two terms are easily confused.
Musical use
As a genre, the sonata belongs among the most important genres of instrumental music since the eighteenth century. Its core is sonata-movement form: two theme areas are presented in different keys, worked out in the development, and led back to the home key in the recapitulation. This procedure allows wide-ranging development and is therefore also the formal backbone in symphony, concerto, and chamber music. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the layout is varied in many ways, up to single-movement works that merge the movements into one another. To distinguish: the sonatina is shorter and technically simpler but built on the same principle.
Other names
Sonata is the Italian form. It comes from sonare, to sound, and originally designated an instrumental piece as opposed to the sung cantata.
Performance practice
Get a formal overview of every movement and mark the exposition, development, and recapitulation; without this orientation the opening movement seems arbitrary. Plan the tempo relations between the movements and the pauses between them. Note repeat signs and decide deliberately. In sonatas with piano, watch for real equality; the piano is not an accompanying instrument. Do not always practise only the first movement, but work the cycle as a whole.
Bear in mind that the term means two things easily confused: the genre as a multi-movement work and sonata-movement form as the construction plan of a single movement. When in doubt, say what is meant, because different questions follow from it. For study it holds to grasp every movement formally and to observe the key relations, especially in the recapitulation. Plan the tempo relations between the movements.
Check whether an edition contains the editor's fingerings and slurs, and separate them from the composer's text.