Editing Sonata (section)

==Scholarship and musicology==

=== Sonata idea or principle ===
Research into the practice and meaning of sonata form, style, and structure has been the motivation for important theoretical works by [[Heinrich Schenker]], [[Arnold Schoenberg]], and [[Charles Rosen]] among others; and the pedagogy of music continued to rest on an understanding and application of the rules of sonata form as almost two centuries of development in practice and theory had codified it.

The development of the classical style and its norms of composition formed the basis for much of the music theory of the 19th and 20th centuries. As an overarching formal principle, sonata was accorded the same central status as Baroque [[fugue]]; generations of composers, instrumentalists, and audiences were guided by this understanding of sonata as an enduring and dominant principle in Western music. The sonata idea begins before the term had taken on its present importance, along with the evolution of the Classical period's changing norms. The reasons for these changes, and how they relate to the evolving sense of a new formal order in music, is a matter to which research is devoted. Some common factors which were pointed to include: the shift of focus from vocal music to instrumental music; changes in performance practice, including the loss of the [[Basso continuo|continuo]].{{sfn|Rosen|1997|loc=196}}

Crucial to most interpretations of the sonata form is the idea of a tonal center; and, as the ''Grove Concise Dictionary of Music'' puts it: "The main form of the group embodying the 'sonata principle', the most important principle of musical structure from the Classical period to the 20th century: that material first stated in a complementary key be restated in the home key".({{sfn|Sadie|1988|p={{Page needed|date=August 2010}}}}

The sonata idea has been thoroughly explored by William Newman in his monumental three-volume work ''Sonata in the Classic Era (A History of the Sonata Idea)'', begun in the 1950s and published in what has become the standard edition of all three volumes in 1972.

===20th-century theory===
Heinrich Schenker argued that there was an [[Fundamental structure|''Urlinie'']] or basic tonal melody, and a basic bass figuration. He held that when these two were present, there was basic structure, and that the sonata represented this basic structure in a whole work with a process known as ''interruption''.{{sfn|Schenker|1979|loc=1:134}}

As a practical matter Schenker applied his ideas to the editing of the piano sonatas of Beethoven, using original manuscripts and his own theories to "correct" the available sources. The basic procedure was the use of tonal theory to infer meaning from available sources as part of the critical process, even to the extent of completing works left unfinished by their composers. While many of these changes were and are controversial, that procedure has a central role today in music theory, and is an essential part of the theory of sonata structure as taught in most music schools.