Kuhnau’s musical narratives were published in August, 1700. Earlier than this he had published his famous _Sonata aus dem B_. The work so named was appended to Kuhnau’s second series of suites or _Partien_. It has little to recommend it to posterity save its name, which here appears in the history of clavier music for the first time. Nor does this name designate a form of music akin to the sonatas of the age of Mozart and Beethoven, a form most particularly associated with the pianoforte. Kuhnau merely appropriated it from music for string instruments. There it stood in the main for a work which was made up of several movements like the suite, but which differed from the suite in depending less upon rhythm and in having a style more dignified than that which had grown out of experiments with dance tunes. In addition, the various movements which constituted a sonata were not necessarily in the same key. Here alone it possessed a possible advantage over the suite. Yet though in other respects it cannot compare favorably to our ears with the suite, Kuhnau cherished the dignity of style and name with which tradition had endowed it. These he attempted to bestow upon music for the clavier.[6] The various movements lack definite form and balance. The first is in rather heavy chord style, the chords being supported by a dignified counterpoint in eighth notes. This leads without pause into a fugue on a figure of lively sixteenth notes. The key is B-flat major. There follows a short adagio in E-flat major, modulating to end in C minor, in which key the last movement, a short allegro in triple time, is taken up. The whole is rounded off by a return to the opening movement, signified by the sign _Da Capo_. Evidently pleased with this innovation, Kuhnau published in 1696 a set of seven more sonatas called _Frische Clavier Früchte_. These show no advance over the _Sonata aus dem B_ in mastery of musical structure. Still they are evidence of the efforts of one man among many to give clavier music a life of its own and to bring it in seriousness and dignity into line with the best instrumental music of the day, namely, with the works of such men as Corelli, Purcell, and Vivaldi. That he was unable to do this the verdict of future years seems to show. The attempt was none the less genuine and influential. In the matter of structure, then, the seventeenth century worked out and tested but a few principles which were to serve as foundation for the masterpieces of keyboard music in the years to come. But these, though few, were of vast importance. Chief among them was the new principle of harmony. This we now, in the year 1700, find at the basis of fugue, of prelude and toccata, and of dance form, not always perfectly grasped but always in evidence. Musical form now and henceforth is founded upon the relation and contrast of keys.