ABSTRACT
Our current perception of the sonata during the period of this book is of a purely instrumental piece for one or two instruments in several varied movements, or more-or-less discrete sections, at least one of which is in sonata-form or a recognisable variant. We could narrow the description further by saying that the keyboard was almost always a component, in spite of the exceptions involving harp (J. L. Dussek and Bochsa) and other instruments such as the guitar and mandolin (Mauro Giuliani, Paganini, Hummel). The overwhelming presence of the keyboard, however, is largely confirmed by the facts, with the proviso that the trio-sonata from the Baroque was carried over in the form of a 'keyboard sonata with the accompaniment of violin and cello'; however, the fact that'ad lib[itum]' was usually added gave the game away, in that many of these were not trios in the sense in which we – or, indeed, the last quarter of the period – would apply the term. 1
