Purcell wrote in all twenty-two sonatas--twelve in three parts, ten in
four. So far as the number of parts is concerned, there is little real
difference. In the three-part works one stave serves for both the string
bass-player and the harpsichordist; in the four-part ones there are two
separate staves, with trifling variations in the two parts. The twelve
three-part sonatas were issued, as has been said, in 1683. They are
pure, self-sustaining music, detached from words and scenic
arrangements; nothing approaching them had been written by an
Englishman, nor anything so fine by an Italian. Indeed, in their own
particular way they are matched only by the composer's own four-part
sonatas published after his death. We must not look for anything like
form in the sense that word conveys nowadays; there is no unalterable
scheme of movements such as there is in the Haydn symphony, and within
each movement there is no first subject, second subject, development and
recapitulation. All that had to be worked out nearly a century later.
The set forms of Purcell's day were the dances. The principle of
Purcell's sonata form is alternate fast and slow movements.
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