Sonata, op. 22

This sonata by Sor, op. 22, bears the heading in its Meissonnier edition of Paris in 1825: “Grand[e] Sonate de Sor, qui fut dédiée au prince de la Paix”. The “Prince de la Paix” was Manuel Godoy, the architect of the Peace of Basle in 1795 (whence his sobriquet), Prime Minister of Spain and virtual ruler of that country in the last years before the Napoleonic invasion; and Godoy fell from power in 1808, which means that Sor must have composed this sonata in some form or other in Spain in 1808 or before.

The earliest known source of this sonata op. 22 of which a copy has so far been found is the Meissonnier edition of 1825, and so this present edition is based upon that. However, a reference has now been found to a Spanish catalogue of 1824 advertising for sale a “Sonata laudatoria” by Sor, which may well be this sonata which is now known as op. 22, in which case it would be the earliest known edition of the work. So far no copy of that Spanish edition has been found, but perhaps one day one will be discovered. (See Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Biografías y Documentos sobre Música y Músicos Españoles (Legado Barbieri), Volume 2, ed. Emilio Casares, Madrid, 1988, page 322.)

If the work was composed in 1808 or before but not published until 1825, it is almost certain that over a period of some twenty years changes would have been introduced. But because no source from Spain has yet been discovered, it must remain an open question to what extent, if at all, the original version differed from the text which we have. As yet it is also not certain whether the reference in the 1824 catalogue was to a printed edition (if so, it was probably fairly recent at that time), or to a manuscript, and if the latter then it is quite possible that it could have been a manuscript, or a copy of one, dating from many years earlier.

Sor had also composed at least two other sonatas, those known today as op. 14 and op. 15 (b) respectively; but those were both one-movement sonatas like those of Domenico Scarlatti, whereas this has four movements and (perhaps for that reason) is called “Grande Sonate”. Op. 25 also has four movements and is called “Deuxième Grande Sonate”.

Manuel Godoy, as well as being a powerful political figure, was also “an intelligent and generous patron of the arts” (Gerald Brenan, The Literature of the Spanish People, 1963, p. 295), encouraging the dramatist Moratín and many other writers and artists. It is not at all surprising that Sor should have dedicated this work to him.

The sonata has four movements: allegro, adagio, minuet, and rondo. Like op. 15, it is in C. As in op. 14, the first movement moves freely from key to key; in the first two pages we move suddenly from C to E flat major. This is a kind of change not characteristic of Sor’s later works, and supports the idea derived from the dedication to Godoy that this is in fact an early work. Soriano Fuertes wrote of Sor’s early style, in relation to this sonata: “En un principio su gusto fue tan enérgico, que se le puede llamar soberbio, como se ve en la obra que dedicó al príncipe de la Paz” (‘At first his style was so energetic that one can call it magnificent, as can be seen in the work which he dedicated to the Prince of the Peace’) (Historia de la Música Española, IV, 1859, p. 211). In the Minuet, the bar-count is one bar short, giving a seven-bar section from bar 25 on. To remedy this, in this edition bar 29 is repeated to give an eight-bar section. Players can omit the repeated bar if they wish to.

Rondo, bar 148: the sharp on the F is editorial (there is no sharp in the original edition), added partly on the analogy of bar 158 (although that is not quite the same) which has a sharp on the F in the original edition.

This edition comes from the new 2019 second edition of Sor’s New Complete Works for Guitar edited by Brian Jeffery. The Introduction and Index to the entire series are here in nkoda.

This new edition is copyright © by Brian Jeffery 2019. Your cooperation is requested in not making illegal copies for other people.

Brian Jeffery