"Sonata of..." or "The sonata of..."?

Question

For example, what's more grammatically correct (or at least common practice) "Sonata of Awakening" or "The Sonata of Awakening"?

Look at the names here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata#Famous_sonatas To stick with traditional naming practices you ought to name it along the lines of: Sonata in for OR Sonata No. 1 OR Awakening (Sonata in ) But I think this is off-topic on ELU. — Jim, Apr 20 '14 at 17:16
This question appears to be off-topic because it is asking for opinions on naming of musical compositions. — Jim, Apr 20 '14 at 17:18

Tucker · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-20T17:55:31.883

2

Sonata of Awakening (yay, Zelda!) sounds a lot better to me personally without 'the' in front of it.

Because sonata means a solo composition, it sounds more natural at the end.

What I mean is:

Sounds less natural than:

However, that might be a personal bias as I am more familiar with musical titles where the word sonata comes at the end.

Here are a few of note:

edited Apr 20 '14 at 17:55

answered Apr 20 '14 at 17:46

Tucker

Thanks for the answer. Ha, seems like I'm not the only Zelda fan in the site. – wyc Apr 20 '14 at 17:53
Somehow, 'Awakening Sonata' hasn't got quite the ring to it that 'Moonlight Sonata' has. Nor 'Psalms Symphony' that of 'Symphony of Psalms' [Stravinsky]. Nor, for that matter, 'Goddesses Symphony' that of 'Symphony of the Goddesses'. And as for 'Bells Carol' ... – Edwin Ashworth Apr 20 '14 at 22:27
@dwin Ashworth How about "Sonata of Solitude" or "Solitude Sonata"? – wyc Apr 21 '14 at 00:20
@EdwinAshworth Whatever floats your boat! – Tucker Apr 21 '14 at 03:15
@EdwinAshworth Oh, because I nitpick, Goddesses Symphony is wrong. It would be Goddesses' Symphony because it is posesive in this case (which is why it's Symphony of the Goddesses). Just wanted to throw that out there. – Tucker Apr 21 '14 at 03:38
It appears about as 'possessive' a construction as 'Carnival of the Animals' to me ['The concert was named after the Golden Goddesses in The Legend of Zelda series', Wikipedia], and as "the removal of the apostrophe from 'plural nouns in phrases which express affiliation {rather than being true possessives}. . . is widespread in the English-speaking world' " your use of 'wrong' is wrong. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 21 '14 at 13:21
@EdwinAshworth That's actually interesting, and thank you for pointing it out. – Tucker May 11 '14 at 19:44

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '14 at 17:10

0

If you are referring to a piece of music that you have composed, you can call it as you prefer!

answered Apr 20 '14 at 17:10

2 Answers2