(Born December 3, 1729, in Olot, Spain; died December 20, 1783, at El Escorial, Spain)
Antonio Soler, a Catalan composer, organist, and priest, composed concertos, quintets for organ and strings, motets, organ works, several masses, and over 100 villancicos, secular works combining song and dance to narrate a story and often associated with Christmas, but his most celebrated works are his 120 keyboard sonatas, many recently rediscovered.
Soler began his musical career at age six in the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat. In 1744, he was appointed organist and sub-deacon at the cathedral in Seo de Urgel. A Hieronymite monk and a priest, he became choir master (maestro de capilla) and organist at El Escorial, the royal palace, in the late 1750's, and remained there for the rest of his life, teaching and performing as organist as well as composing music. Requiring little sleep, he filled 20-hour days with prayer, contemplation, and farming, and yet managed to write more than 500 compositions, including much sacred choral music. One of his students was Infante Don Gabriel, the son of Carlos III; Soler wrote several harpsichord sonatas for him, but also around 200 other keyboard sonatas for royal patrons; most of his keyboard works survive in undated manuscripts, although it is known that he began composing sonatas around 1760. Some evidence points to Soler having studied with Scarlatti as early as 1752 and continued until Scarlatti's death in 1757, although some maintain it is not even certain that the two composers ever met. It is quite sure that if he did not become Scarlatti's student, he did become familiar with Scarlatti's music while the two were both at El Escorial. Soler was perhaps the most important Spanish musician of the 18th century, and undoubtedly, his music was influenced by Scarlatti's. Soler referred to Scarlatti as his mentor, yet Soler's sonatas moved beyond Scarlatti's, especially in originality of key relationships and modulations.
Soler's “sonatas” (like Scarlatti's) are very short one-movement pieces; they bear the name sonata to distinguish them from vocal music (“cantatas”). There are undeniable similarities in Soler's and Scarlatti's sonatas: although both almost always composed sonatas in one movement and used binary form, Soler's sonatas are more varied in form, and he did occasionally did write some in three and four movements, a rarity for the 18th century. Scarlatti's sonatas never have more than two movements. Some of Soler's feature sonata form, a development, in a sense, of binary form. In the 1700s, the term “sonata” generally indicated a piece with a pedagogical purpose; Soler's sonatas were most definitely intended to serve a teaching function.
Soler was a prolific composer and theorist, producing, in addition to his sonatas, six concertos for two organs, motets, masses, and a treatise called “The Key to Modulation”. According to Padre Samuel Rubio, who catalogued Soler's works, the treatise, “owing to its progressive theories regarding modulation, started one of the most heated arguments to be found in the history of Spanish music.”
Soler's work bridges late Baroque and early Classical styles and embraces Spanish folk melodies, showing a fondness for syncopation and requiring virtuosity from the performer. He sometimes set the different sections of a single movement sonata in different tempi. He also used broad interval leaps, frequent hand crossings, syncopations, phrases of irregular length, and scalar passages, particularly in thirds and sixths. A salient difference from Scarlatti's technique is Soler's tendency to use some form of Alberti bass, a broken-chord accompaniment pattern. Soler's works also embrace stylistic developments that classical composers after Scarlatti, like Haydn, employed, such as symmetrical phrase repetitions. Scarlatti frequently included the acciaccatura (dissonant notes played quickly in between harmonic tones); Soler seldom did. Soler's sonatas, overall, are rich in texture and very various, some mystical and meditative, some passionate and lively.
Soler's Sonata in G Major, R. 45, is a lively single movement piece in binary form with repeated sections that blends Italian stylistic influences with a spirited Spanish flair. Like many of his keyboard sonatas, it bridges the late Baroque and early Classical periods, and Scarlatti's influence can be detected. Here, Soler includes scalar passages with rapid finger techniques, broken octaves, and Alberti bass accompaniment figures. Soler included quick harmonic shifts (modulación agitada) and rhythms of Spanish popular dance, giving this sonata a quick tempo, rhythmic crispness, and a spirited character. The bright figuration he gives to the right hand most likely was based on the sound of Spanish royal trumpets (clarines), which historians trace to Soler's time at El Escorial.
Sonata in C-Sharp Minor, R. 21, like many of his keyboard works, is a striking single movement piece in binary style. It is known for its dramatic intensity, due in part to the key signature he chose, which was then thought to be remote. The work incorporates rich harmonies and poignant dissonances leading to sharp contrasts.