Learn to Play Recorder

Lesson 53: A Complete Short Baroque Sonata

  • Take a complete three- or four-movement Baroque sonata from first read to a single end-to-end performance.
  • Memorise the opening of each movement so the transitions between movements feel intentional, not improvised.

A sonata is not three or four pieces. It is one piece that happens to pause for breath.

The model is Loeillet of Ghent's Op. 1 No. 1 in D minor: Largo – Allegro – Adagio – Giga, the slow-fast-slow-fast sonata da chiesa plan. The new skill is architectural: keeping four contrasting movements in your head as a single arc. The Largo is grave; the Allegro must sound like a release; the second Adagio is heavier than the first; the Giga is the lightest thing in the piece.

Movement architecture — the four affects

Read all four opening motives in sequence before working on any single one.

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The opening — a French-style noble descent.
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The opening figuration — running eighths and a sequential rise.
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The second slow movement — longer notes, richer suspensions than the first.
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The closing dance — the lightest gesture in the whole sonata.

Practice plan — two weeks, twelve sessions

Days 1–2 — map every movement
Each movement once at half tempo, no stopping; mark the hardest two bars in each.
Days 3–6 — hardest-bar work
Apply the Lesson 51 chunked procedure to those eight bars, one bar per session.
Days 7–9 — one movement per day
End-to-end runs at performance tempo, no skipping.
Days 10–11 — movements in pairs
I→II as a single unit with an eight-beat performance rest between; then III→IV.
Day 12 — the whole sonata, once
Record the run; listen back; mark anything that surprised you.

Memorise the openings

Memorise the first two bars of each movement — the four snippets above — so the entry into the next movement is not a scramble for the page.

Now play these

Loeillet of Ghent: Sonata in D minor, Op. 1 No. 1
The model; the plan above is calibrated to it.
Pepusch: Sonata in F major, Op. 1 No. 1
Same plan; the second run is always faster.
Loeillet of Ghent: Sonata in C major, Op. 3 No. 1
Test the procedure with the affects flipped to major.

When one of the sonatas above plays end-to-end in a single sitting with an unbroken sense of pulse across the whole arc, move on to Lesson 54.