Hypostases of the “Spanish Baroque Sonatas” for keyboard instruments

Abstract

In Baroque Europe, the music for keyboard instruments was at its peak. The musical genres were the same as in the past, but with the growing importance of the sonata, also for the piano. The most important defining figure of Spanish Baroque music is Padre Antonio Soler who, like Domenico Scarlatti, is known almost exclusively through his sonatas for keyboard instruments. It is possible to identify and generalize a few hypostases on which the theme of Soler’s sonata is centered, by enhancing a certain facet. The great majority of Solerian sonatas are monopartite, of Scarlattian influence, like Sonata no. 1, in A Major, which we are analyzing in this article. It illustrates the hypostasis in which Soler (like Scarlatti) aims to set free from the sometimes tyrannical domination of the baroque polyphony. What is most original about this work, is the phraseological structure, conceived by the totalization of motifs that can be brought anytime and in any order, due to the exclusive conception of the principle of the quadrature and on the pattern of the authentic V-I cadence.