About Trio Sonatas

Trio sonata is the most popular chamber music of the Baroque period. The germ of the trio sonata can already be found in the 16th century in works such as Giovanni Gabrieli’s “Canzona” and “Sonate”, Girolamo Frescobaldi’s “Canzona”, and Dario Castello’s “Sonate concertate”. It was Arcangero Corelli who developed and perfected the “trio sonata” form with two violins and basso continuo. Corelli published a four-volume collection of trio sonatas (Op. 1-4), which was acclaimed throughout Europe. His trio sonatas can be divided into “Church sonatas” and “Chamber sonatas”. The former consists of four movements: slow, fast, slow and fast, with a fugue often used in the fast movement. The latter, in contrast, consists of a prelude and several dance movements.

After Corelli, the trio sonata was widely produced by great composers such as Vivaldi, Händel, Bach, and Telemann. German composers were probably the most prolific users of this form. For example, Bach’s famous trio sonata from “Musical Offering” is one of the best trio sonatas in history (Figure1). Telemann also wrote many trio sonatas for various instrumental combinations. In France, François Couperin, Marin Marais, and others have written trio sonatas, and in England, Henry Purcell and others have written works. Jan Dismas Zelenka, a Czech composer active in Dresden, wrote a marvelous trio sonata for two oboes, bassoon, and basso continuo, which is one of the few examples that can be compared to Bach’s work. This work, in which had been handed down only manuscript form, was printed and performed widely in the last century, making it almost a miraculous masterpiece. https://bit.ly/3YRqqce

The famous flutist Johann Joachim Quantz, in his book “Versuch einer Anweisung die Flote traversiere zu spielen” says, “The trio must be composed so that it is difficult to infer which of the two upper voices is the true main voice”. This is a very core point, and he cites Telemann as an example of a work written in such a manner (Figure2). What he means by this is that the ideal trio sonata is one in which all four movements are written in an imitative style, i.e., in the form of a fugue or canon. Examples of this are Quantz’s own Trio Sonata in C major for recorder and flute (Figure3), and Trio Sonata in C minor for flute and oboe (Figure4). In these works, the first and third movements are composed in imitation of the two upper voices, while the second and last movements are often in the form of a fugue in which all voices, including the bass continuo, imitate each other. Again, recall the trio sonatas of Bach and Zelenka. They are exactly as Quantz pointed out. In addition, I would like to share a trio sonata, which I myself composed about 50 years ago.

https://excelkobo.net/…/uploads/score-pdf/Trio-d-moll.pdf

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