Chamber Music – When is a Trio Sonata not a trio?

A quick word of warning – due to the number of players in a continuo section, the number of players you might see in a Trio Sonata will not be three – often more, usually four.

They are called Trio Sonatas because they have three individual lines of music, which allow composers such as Handel, Bach, Georg Telemann, and Arcangelo Corelli to demonstrate their prowess at counterpoint.

Henry Purcell wrote several pieces ‘for three parts’ to emphasise the three lines of music.

Here we have two sets of trio sonatas by Corelli:

The first are sonate da camera, which are more like suites of dance movements suitable for home entertainment (‘camera’ meaning ‘room’).
The second are sonate da chiesa, which are alternating fast and slow movements for church performance (‘chiesa’ meaning ‘church’), which use fugue and more typical formal forms for that setting.

Here we can also a trio sonata by the Parisian Baroque composer Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre who composed four trio sonatas sometime before 1695.

Corelli – Sonate da camera Op.4