Sonatinas for Piano
Volume I, Baroque to Pre-Classic
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 first volume contains 26 easy to moderately difficult sonatinas from the time of the High Baroque and pre-classical periods by composers including C.P.E. and J.C.F. Bach, Handel, Georg Benda, Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler. Since the term “sonatina” had quite diverse meanings at this time, the volume offers works of varied character. The simple pieces at the beginning provide a way in; then the sonatinas follow in chronological order. A table shows the most important embellishments and their correct execution according to the rules of the time. A large body of literature for piano lessons!
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.