Piano Sonata (Liszt)

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One of the pages from the original manuscript of the sonata.
One of the pages from the original manuscript of the sonata.

The Piano Sonata in B minor (German: Klaviersonate h-Moll), S.178, is a musical composition for solo piano by Franz Liszt. It is widely considered to be his greatest work for the instrument,[citation needed] and one of the seminal works of the Romantic piano literature.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Background

The Sonata was composed in 1852-1853, and first performed on January 27, 1857 in Berlin by Liszt's pupil and son-in-law, Hans von Bülow. It was attacked by conservative critics such as Eduard Hanslick, Brahms (who reputedly fell asleep during Liszt's performance of the work at their first meeting), and the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. However, the sonata drew an enthusiastic compliment from Richard Wagner.[1] The German newspaper Nationalzeitung referred to it as "an invitation to hissing and stomping".[2] The sonata was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1854. It was dedicated to Robert Schumann, in return for Schumann's dedication of his Fantasia in C, Op.17 (1836) to Liszt.[3]

[edit] Composition

The sonata is notable for being constructed from a small number of motivic elements that are woven into an enormous musical architecture. The motivic units are continuously transformed throughout the work to suit the musical context of the moment. A theme that in one context sounds menacing and even violent, is then transformed into a beautiful melody.[4] This technique helps to bind the sonata's sprawling structure into a single cohesive unit, although the architectural powers of the musician need to be highly developed to achieve this in performance.[citation needed]

Broadly speaking, the Sonata has four movements although there is no gap between them. Superimposed upon the four movements is a large sonata form structure, although the precise beginnings and endings of the traditional development and recapitulation sections has long been a topic of debate. Most analysts[who?] agree that the development begins roughly with the slow section and the recapitulation with the scherzo fugue. In using this structure, Liszt was influenced by Franz Schubert's Wanderer Fantasie,[citation needed] a work he greatly admired, performed often and arranged for piano and orchestra. Schubert used the same limited number of musical elements to create a broad four movement work, and used a fugal 4th movement. Already in 1851 Liszt experimented with a nonprogrammatic "four-movements-in-one" form in an extended work for piano solo called Grosses Concert-Solo. This piece, which in 1865 was published as a two-piano version under the title Concerto pathétique, shows a thematic relationship to both the Sonata and the later Faust Symphony.

The quiet ending of the sonata may have been an afterthought; the original manuscript which is available in the The Morgan Library & Museum[5] in New York City, contains a crossed-out ending section which would have ended the work loudly instead.[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Searle, Humphrey. Album notes for Franz Liszt, Sonate h-moll by Daniel Barenboim. Deutsche Grammophon (2531-271).
  2. ^ Letter No.216 from Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1
  3. ^ Letter No.171 from Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1
  4. ^ This is Liszt's modified version of Berlioz's idée fixe, which Liszt referred to as the cyclical system. This is the basis not only for the Sonata, but also Liszt's major orchestral works.
  5. ^ The Online Catalogue of Piermont Morgan Library
  6. ^ Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989, page 156. This is in the middle of an extensive analysis of the sonata, pp. 149–157.)

[edit] External links