Don’t be put off by the serious title - this is a book about classical music for people who say they love music “but don”t understand how it works”, as well as for performers and music students of all ages. It traces the development of the “sonata” idea in music for instruments. The sonata is one of the most popular frameworks of classical music: in symphonies, concertos, chamber music and solo sonatas, it dominated concert music for some 250 years - yet it is little understood by many music-lovers. To simplify this vast field, the book singles out for study “sonatas” for piano trio - piano, violin and ’cello. These instruments have well-contrasted and easily-identifiable sounds, and as the story unfolds the reader is introduced to many rarely-heard but beautiful works for piano trio.
This is a lively, clearly-written narrative as well as a handbook for subsequent listening. The book has two distinctive features: firstly, technical terms are carefully explained, and for those not familiar with music notation, audio clips in the accompanying website reproduce the actual sound of the music described. Secondly, in a broad historical sweep from mid-18th to 20th centuries, the development of the sonata is followed in its context of contemporary arts and literature - demonstrating how the sonata idea deserves to be better understood and valued as a western cultural archetype alongside other great artistic and literary forms.
