C70 



SUM X ATM 



SONDERSHAUSEN 



Sleep-walkers have achieved the most diverse ex- 

 ploit* v> iihout awaking. They have swum across 

 rivers, thrashed corn, ridden on horseback, and 

 even transacted their usual dnily work. They are 

 oblivion* to danger, and untrammelled l>y fear; 

 thi-. combined \\itli an exaltation of muscular 

 sense, enables them to effect their movements 

 precisely and quickly. Their feats, however, 

 are sub-conscious, and not, as it is popularly 

 supposed, superhuman. Their senses, which are 

 not connected with the dream, slumber ; they 

 do not see, hear, or smell, so they perform with 

 their eyes shut as well as open, anil they may be 

 shaken, and may themselves cough and sneeze 

 without being awakened. A certain degree of 

 anesthesia appears to render them insensitive to 

 pain. After the dream-act is ended the sleeper 

 returns to bed, to sleep until the usual hour for 

 tiding, and when he awakes he either does not recol- 

 lect anything about his escapade, or remembers it 

 only as a dream. Most frequently he recollects it 

 in a subsequent sleep-walk, just as some dreams 

 are only remembered in recurring dreams. Sleep- 

 walking leads the actor into situations which 

 endanger life, and annually many deaths are re- 

 corded from fatalities so arising. If the sleep- 

 walker be awakened at a critical moment, cool- 

 ness and precision are replaced by agitation and 

 fright, and movements become halting and clumsy, 

 ana accident usually follows. Many tragedies have 

 been enacted in this state, ami these are of great 

 forensic interest. From every point of view sleep- 

 walking is a source of much anxiety to the afflicted 

 ami his relatives. 



A sleep-walker found in his wanderings ought 

 not to be awakened, but led back to bed as gently 

 as possible. Abrupt awakening may give rise to 

 shock, and may mark the onset of grave nervous 

 disorders. Whilst it is always advisable to seek 

 medical advice, it may be indicated that the general 

 health should be attended to, so that it may lie im- 

 proved : ami all exciting causes should lie remedied 

 or avoided, as, for example, all undue excitement 

 and fatigue of mind and body. The sleeping con- 

 ditions require consideration; in some cases it is 

 advisable that some one should sleep in the same 

 room. Occasionally, it is advantageous to awaken 

 the sleeper at the end of the first hour of sleep, 

 when it is deepest, to prevent it becoming too pro- 

 found. Hypnotism ia sometime- called artificial 

 somnambulism. See the works and articles cited 

 at SI.KKI-. 



Soiitnatll. an ancient town of Gujarat, in 

 India, is situate,! on the south-west coast of the 

 peninsula of Kathiawar, with a population of 

 LI. 1 1 . mostly Mohammedans. The town in defended 

 by a strong fort and by a trench cut in the solid 

 rock. It contains many ruins and memorials of 

 Krishna, who died and was buried close bv. Not 

 far from the town stand the ruins of the celebrated 

 Hindu temple of the idol Soninath. Ite great 

 sanctity and the fame of its enormous wealth 

 attracted the imagination and avarice of the sultan 

 Mahmnil of Cha/ni (1024). He took the temple 

 afterade|>erate ilefence by its guardians, destroyed 

 the saered idol, and carried off its stores of jewels, 

 and (according to the tradition) the wonderful 

 temple piles. It is. however, more than doubtful 

 whether the -gates of Soninath ' which Lord Ellen 

 borough brought back from Afghanistan in 1842, 

 and purposed to have restored to Soninath after 

 having carried them in solemn procession through 

 great part of Northern India, really are the piles of 

 the ancient temple In-side the Arabian Sea in 

 Kathiawar. The gates that were brought from 

 Afghanistan, nml eventually placed in the arsin.il 

 of Agra, are made of cedar and richly carved, and 

 measure 1 1 feet in height by B feet 6 inches in width. 



Sonata, a musical composition usually of three 

 or four movements, designed chiefly for a solo 

 instrument. Hefore the 17th century the over 

 whelming tendency of musical development had 

 been to increase by every possible device the vocal 

 resources of the art, a culminating point tieing 

 reached in the works of Palestrina and the school 

 of madrigal writers. Instrumental music had been 

 represented for the most part by dance tunes which 

 had no great formal development, whilst the early 

 attempts at opera relied almost entirely on the 

 vocal element for their effect. In fact, abstiact 

 music, independent of external impressions and 

 deriving all it* interest from intrinsic qualities, was 

 up to this time unknown. Some very early sonatas, 

 published at Venice in 1624, consisted of a single 

 movement; but the principle of a succession of 

 contrasted movements, as in the case of the suite, 

 was eventually established, all existing musical 

 forms being pressed into service to secure its fulfil- 

 ment. Thus, the 'first movement' consisted of a 

 kind of can/ona. imitated from a choral form 

 kindred to the madrigal ; the declamatory recitative 

 of the opera was the source of the ' second move- 

 ment:' and the remaining portions of the sonata 

 were founded on dance-rhythms. Ite progress 

 tended towards emancipation from originating in- 

 fluences, whereas the suite adhered closely to dance 

 forms. To secure for each movement structural 

 balance and diversity of material additional ' sub- 

 jects ' were introduced, and the several ]tortions 

 were divided into 'sections,' balanced and con- 

 trasted both as to melody and key ; whilst, as to 

 time, the alternation of quick and slow movements 

 became a recognised principle. Corelli and other 

 writers of his school wrote sonatas chiefly for the 

 violin, the genius of Handel and Bach l>eing also 

 employed in the same field. The improvements 

 effected in the construction of the harpsichord and 

 clavichord at length obtained for them a due 

 measure of attention from Domenico Scarlatti and 

 C. P. Emanuel Bach, whose complete mastery of 

 these instruments enabled them to write clavier- 

 sonatas with the happiest effect. The sulweqncnt 

 efforts of Haydn and Mozart brought the form of 

 the sonata to great perfection of elegance and 

 symmetry, a result to which dementi and Itiissek 

 also contributed. But the acmeof development w as 

 ii-ached by Beethoven, who infused into the some- 

 what mechanical forms of his predecessors the 

 spirit of human emotion. Under him the different. 

 parts of the sonata, instead of lieing mere adjacent 

 sections, became items of one complete organic 

 w hole. The progression of his thought* constituted 

 a work of art, a poem in sound, in which, while the 

 idea was paramount, the form was more or lew 

 veiled, the perfection of the whole resulting from a 

 true and just balance between the two. Weber 

 and Schubert continued to employ the old model, 

 but with them its rules and restraints gradually 

 gave way before the growing imi>ortance of the 

 idea. At a later period Schumann attempted a 

 compromise by means of ingenious devices, and 

 Brahms in two early pianoforte-sonatas had worked 

 along similar lines ; while notable composers of the 

 present day are still trying to extend the limits of 

 sonata-form in conformity with modern tendencies. 

 See the article by I)r C. tinbert H. Parry in Grove's 

 of Music. 



NniHlrrlMllld. a union of the Catholic cantons 

 of Swit/erland (q.v.), which led to civil war in 1845. 



KomlrrlmrK. See ALSKN. 



Somlorsliaiisoil. the chief town of the Ger- 

 man principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershaiisen 

 (q.v.), pleasantly situated on the Wipper, 34 mile* 

 by rail N. of Erfurt. It has a large castle. Pop. 



om 



