Through the amiable genre of the sonatina, generations of piano pupils have slowly and cautiously approached its “big sister”, the sonata. With the aid of our three-volume selection of sonatinas from two centuries, intermediate piano pupils large and small can undertake an excursion through the development of piano music from the early 18th to the end of the 19th century. This second volume contains 21 sonatinas from the classical period by composers such as Clementi, Diabelli, Haydn, Kuhlau and Pleyel. Rhythmic elegance and melodic charm on the one hand, and Alberti basses and sometimes simple melodic structures on the other, are typical of the sonatinas of this era. Our collection offers a representative selection. Simple pieces at the beginning provide a way in; then the sonatinas follow in chronological order. A large body of literature for piano lessons!
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Preface
This is the second volume in a threepart anthology of sonatinas spanning two centuries. Its purpose is to enable the user to survey the evolution of keyboard music from the early years of the 18th century (D. Scarlatti, Handel) to the second half of the 19th (Hermann Goetz, Stephen Heller). The three vol- umes generally follow chronological order. Nevertheless, each begins … more
Critical Commentary
About the authors
Ernst Herttrich (Editor)
Dr. Ernst Herttrich, born in 1942 in Würzburg, read musicology, history, German and theology at the universities in Würzburg and Cologne. In 1970 he earned his doctorate in Würzburg with a study of the expression of melancholy in the music of Mozart.
From 1970 to 1990 he was an editor at G. Henle Publishers in Munich, after which he was Head of the Beethoven Complete Edition for over 15 years. In 1999 he took over as Head of the Beethoven-Haus Publishers, and from 2001 was made Head of the Beethoven-Archiv, the research centre at the Beethoven-Haus.
He has been a visiting professor at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and has undertaken several lecture tours both there and to Kyoto. His research interests include source studies, editorial techniques and music history. Herttrich’s publications include “Beethoven. Liederkreis an die ferne Geliebte” (Bonn 1999) and “Ludwig van Beethoven. Biographie in Bildern” (Bonn, 2000). Herttrich has edited over 100 Urtext editions for G. Henle Publishers.