Gottfried Finger

Sonata a sei Instrumenti

2 Clarini, Timpani, 2 Violini, Viola e Basso continuo. Series: "Denkmäler der Musik in Salzburg", Volume 11, edited by Thomas Hochradner, continuo realization by Johannes Strobl. The parts are included with the score.

Finger's "Sonata" is one of the "Sonate solenne" due to its scoring with two clarini, i.e. those church sonatas that were played on high church festivals. The work thus continues a series of church sonatas scored for trumpets by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and is therefore part of the Middle Baroque tradition - without, however, lacking in topicality. For the work approaches the three-movement form fast - slow - fast, as it had emerged a little earlier in the Neapolitan opera symphony. This is all the more surprising as Finger does not adopt the four-movement structure in his church sonata, which was common throughout Europe. By completely ignoring the sequence of movements successfully propagated by Corelli's works, Finger's "Sonata" represents an individual solution on a remarkable compositional level, but at the same time a work that is anachronistic in itself: Finger combines two design principles of the sonata, but clearly favors the older of the two.