Books by William S. Newman

This volume completes Newman's monumental study of the sonata. It examines the evolution of the sonata idea from the precocious Romanticisms of Dussek before 1880 to the near exhaustion of Romantic music by the time of World War I. Thoroughly documented, illustrated by extended lists of sonatas as well as a full bibliography of Romantic music literature, this book is invaluable to musicians.

This definitive volume, the second, largest, and most central in Newman's History of the Sonata Idea, covers the period from the first sample Italian sonatas using the new techniques of the Alberti bass about 1735 to the succession of masterpieces by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven which extended until about 1820.

Provides a full and careful history of what sonata meant and how the word was used from its first appearance as an instrumental title in the sixteenth century to the near end of the thorough-bass practice around 1750. The revised edition includes nearly three hundred new studies, editions, and other pertinent information.

The Sonata in the Baroque Era explores the first appearance of the term "sonata" as an instrumental title in the sixteenth century to the virtual end of the thorough-bass practice, around 1750.

"'Must' reading for any pianist concerned with Beethoven's music, which is to say almost every pianist alive." -William Rothstein, Musical Times