# ancient history



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Well, pretty ancient for most of you.

Back in December of 1960, Melodiya-Eurodisc released an LP titled "Die klassische Klaviersonate". The music program was seven sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (L 422, 116, 423, 118, 395, 449, 487), followed by CPE Bach's Sonata in A, Wq.56, and ending with Franz Joseph Haydn's Sonata in c, Hob VVI No. 20. The pianist was Emil Gilels.

The jacket notes are informative and interesting, but I am too poor a typist to convey them all to you here. I will extract one significant paragraph:

<< By the concept of 'sonata' we here mean not only the story of the form, the long development of which led finally, under the grasp of genius, to the culminating high point of the Beethoven sonata. It stands also for the many different possibilities of expression in which the various phases of the classical style are mirrored - the galant, the empfindsamenstil, high and late classical music. >> [I am copying from my CD-R extract, which does not give the author's identity. The LP is buried in a pile somewhere.]

The ears reveal rather startling (to me) relationships and progressions among the sonatas. You probably won't have much luck finding the LP, but it ought to be relatively easy to compile your own program from available (YouTube?) sources. Hearing the music as a progression could straighten some conceptual kinks, if of course you happen to have any.


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