Pianoforte Sonata

Before the piano sonata became music's most demanding and rewarding form, it had to be invented. John South Shedlock traces this glorious evolution from Johann Kuhnau's 1695 Sonata in B flat the earliest keyboard sonata ever written through to the late Romantic era, when composers like Liszt and Brahms had pushed the form to its explosive limits. Along the way, we encounter the remarkable figures who shaped its destiny: C.P.E. Bach, whose empfindsamer Stil cracked open the Classical era; Haydn, who gave the sonata its structural bones; Mozart, who infused it with aristocratic grace; Beethoven, who transformed it into a vehicle for revolutionary emotion; and Chopin, who discovered the piano's soul. Shedlock, a respected 19th-century musicologist, writes with authoritative warmth, illuminating how each composer grappled with the sonata's fundamental challenge: how to organize musical thought into a dramatic arc of tension and release. Musical examples throughout demonstrate his points with concrete precision. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not just the piano sonata, but the entire trajectory of Western classical music.