ABSTRACT
The sonatas themselves are the students' compositions, written in the course of their study of counterpoint and instrumental performance, corrected by Buoni, and then sent to the presses with dedications to those who had hosted touring performances of the Concerto de' Putti. The dance types represented in the sonata repertory tell us that Italians were dancing in a variety of styles—Italian and French, old and new. The gagliarda, representing the oldest continuing tradition, persists into the 1680s. In some cases, however, the dances of the sonata da camera were designed with uses other than dance accompaniment in mind. Aside from binary form, a common feature of the two dances is syncopation within compound meter. Otherwise, they differ markedly: while the French-style corrente suggests dancer's music because of its regular pattern of accents in a homophonic texture, the other almost certainly precludes dancing to its rhythms, which obscure its meter with unceasing and unpredictable syncopation.
