How did the sonata form get started?

Question

The question is pretty self-explanatory. Any wee paragraph on the beggining of the sonata during the Baroque period (and a wee bit before that, too) would be massively helpfull.

And please don't take any guesses or direct me to wiki articles. I've done my research, I need to hear the story from an actual human being :-P

Cheers.

Answer 1

Sonata form had no single starting point. An early manifestation was Gabrieli's Sonata pian e forte (1597) for violin, cornett, and six trombones. But its codification into four set movements did not occur until the work of Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) of Bologna. It was developed in the keyboard compositions of C.P.E. Bach (17814-1788), and was brought to perfection by Haydn and Mozart. Its theoretical foundations were foreshadowed in J.P. Rameau's Traite d'harmonie(1722), but were not fully expounded until Carl Czerny's School of Practical Composition(1848), twenty years after the death of its greatest exponent - Beethoven.