November / Month of the Sonata – 30
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Month: November, 2023
November 29, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 29
“Evening Prayer“ (1888)
Anna Ancher
_______
from the very first few notes of Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata no 31 in A-flat major, Opus 110,
we understand we’ve entered an entirely other
reality, the melody is unorthodox, not a lyric,
but, talking against the grain, the beat,
become a sentence, we are witness to
Beethoven addressing the infinite,
Beethoven at prayer, see above
the notes are clear, concise, naked,
happening, again, against the beat,
profoundly intimate, arhythmic,
unadorned, unadulterated, they are,
consequently, prophetic, not only
entertaining, but a moral code, a
metaphysical example of our role
in the shared fate of our nebulous
universe
Beethoven says we must believe
in our own beauty, our worth, it is
our only salvation
it is a mighty revelation
listen
R ! chard
November 28, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 28
“Geranium”
Odilon Redon
_______
we’re reaching the end of November, with
only three sonatas to go, which will be
devoted to Beethoven’s last three, they
exist in their import, impact, beyond
whatever’s been since, or before,
recorded
if Beethoven’s Hammerklavier was a
treatise on the physical possibilities
of a piano, its breadth of tonal range,
the scope of possible volumes, soft,
loud, not to mention its ability to, in
one instrument, play all the scales,
his following three sonatas, evolved
from the physical to the metaphysical,
“To be, or not to be”, he might as well
be asking, much like Shakespeare
there’d been metaphysical works before,
Bach’s cantatas, Handel’s Messiah, but
this metaphysics was of another order,
there’d been a revolution in France, the
Christian God had been there even
made illegal, Christians sent to the
guillotine, see Poulenc’s formidable
Dialogue of the Carmelites for proof
of that
Beethoven’s prayer, his evocation, in
his last three works for solo piano,
were to the Entity that might, or might
not be, out there, “To be, or not to be,
that [remained] the question”
the miraculous is that Beethoven, with
profound humility and respect, notes
that are clear, concise, and
straightforward, confronts the Entity
with nothing but his unadorned self,
at a loss in a sea of meaning, even
suffering despair, presenting, as an
argument the evidence of his life,
his art, his manifest and irrevocable
being, much as a flower would,
could it speak, no more, admittedly,
no less, but nevertheless a flower,
see above, and there is, Beethoven
says, glory in that
here’s his Opus 109, listen, enjoy
ponder
R ! chard
November 27, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 27
“Sweet, piercing sweet was the music of Pan’s pipe“
Walter Crane
______
a sonata can be written for any instrument,
some just more prevalent than others,
here’s one for clarinet, Brahms’ Opus 120,
no 2
after the distortions of later composers
you might remember from these pages,
it’s nearly quaint to return to the
traditional templates for the sonata,
more than one movement, no more
than two instruments, and attention
to the Classical imperatives of tempo,
tonality, and repetition
Brahms doesn’t put a foot wrong, all
of the requirements are observed
punctiliously, you could even sing
or dance to this music, something
you couldn’t later do, unless with
choreography, see, for instance,
Nijinsky
talking about Nijinsky, the clarinetist
here is as feral as the faun Nijinsky
portrays, via Nureyev in this replicated
version, in his homage to Debussy’s
The Afternoon of a Faun, 1912, he
even seems, the clarinetist, the very
god Pan, come down from Olympus
to frequent the backwoods of Ionia,
to beguile those who would be
beguiled, with his flute, see above
his accompanist is equally hot
watch
enjoy
R ! chard
November 26, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 26
“Portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich“ (1963)
Martiros Sarian
________
Shostakovich is especially interesting
for being a political composer, caught
up in the Soviet experiment, his soul
is Russian, you can hear it in the folk
music that grounds his compositions,
strict tempo, an aspiration towards
melody
but the tonality is off, the singer sings
off key, the dancer’s legs are broken
Shostakovich describes a people,
an exuberant people, lusty,
warm-hearted, whose spirit has
been broken, you can hear it
had there been a Nobel prize for music,
Shostakovich would’ve won it, along
with his contemporary, and compatriot,
Boris Pasternak, for literature, at the
time, whose Doctor Zhivago was a
phenomenon, back in the 1960s
both were, incidentally, persecuted
by their government
here’s Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata,
Opus 134, 1968, written for his friend,
the noted violinist, David Oistrakh,
for his sixtieth birthday
enjoy
R ! chard
November 25, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 25
“Homage to Claude Debussy“ (1952 )
Raoul Dufy
_____
if I object to sonatas consisting of only
one movement, I can also object to
sonatas consisting of more than two
instruments, but here’s Debussy’s
Sonata for flute, viola and harp,
which should more accurately have
been called a trio, a trio is a sonata
with three instruments
note also in the Debussy the breakdown
of all the Classical imperatives, tempo,
tonality, and repetition, another blow to
established authority
but the test is, does it work, at which
point, if it does, terminology becomes
moot, and meaning changes
today, I pondered the word love, its
myriad meanings, and how we still
call that infinite variety of emotions
the same thing, the word sonata
doesn’t hold a candle to the word
love for disinformation
I thought, okay, just make it work,
I’ll define it for myself later, each
one of us being the final arbiter
of our own aesthetic sensibility
Debussy or not Debussy, that is
the question
R ! chard
November 24, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 24
“Franz Liszt“
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
______
Alban Berg isn’t the only composer to
write a sonata with only one movement,
nor even the first, Franz Liszt, some
sixty years earlier, 1853, wrote this one,
his Piano Sonata in B minor, listen
Franz Liszt was an entertainer, more
performer than poet, you’ll hear more
bravado in this piece, to my mind,
than substance
but then again, sometimes, that is
the substance
though the finger work here is magical,
entirely worth the price of admission
earlier still, during the Baroque era,
sonatas had consisted of only one
movement, but the term had referred
to, then, the structure of the piece, its
inner workings, not so much the form,
the intention, the change happened
during the Classical Era, starting
around the middle of the Eighteenth
Century, the mid-1700s, which has
been the focus of this month’s
investigation, therefore excluded
from my survey, not being of the
modern era
but listen to a sonata of Scarlatti,
1685 to 1757, an exact contemporary,
incidentally, of Bach, 1685 to 1750,
except for the extra seven years,
who wrote over five hundred of
them, all available on the Internet
listen to one only of them, however
contextually peripherally, you’ll
be utterly enchanted, the Baroque
is not an era to be easily overlooked
R ! chard
November 23, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 23
.jpg!Large.jpg "The treachery of images (This is not a pipe), 1928 - 1929 - Rene Magritte")
“The treachery of images (This is not a pipe)“ (1928 – 1929)
René Magritte
_______
when is a sonata not a sonata, when,
to my mind, it has less than two
movements, but here’s Alban Berg
doing just that in his Sonata, Opus 1
Alban Berg was a student of Arnold
Schoenberg, the composer who did
the most to break down the pillars
of Classical music, tempo, tonality,
and repetition, you’ll here it all here
Berg was working on a piece he
expected would be a sonata, but
after the first segment, he couldn’t
find the inspiration to continue,
Schoenberg replied that that must
mean his work was complete,
and Berg went along with that,
calling it, nevertheless, a sonata,
playing fast and loose with the
definition, poets do that, also
painters, see above
here’s Glenn Gould playing it, the
pianist I believe the greatest who
ever lived, Gould admired the
Berg, how could I argue with that
R ! chard
November 22, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 22
“Piano“
José Garnelo
_____
having heard Stravinsky’s Concerto for
Two Pianos already, if you’ve taken in
my last instalment, you’ll find it perhaps
the most instructive of any of my
suggested comparisons to hear beside
it Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, the
first, written in 1935, the second, 1781,
you’ll hear the passage of time fly by
both here are played by the same two
performers, brothers, incidentally, an
extraordinary couple, making your
aesthetic decision that much more
contained, straightforward
though Stravinsky might be here
utterly unexpected, even disarming,
he’s evidently much more in tune
with the Twentieth Century, even
the 21st, than the more bucolic
music of, energetic as it is, Mozart,
who is not of our era, however still
entirely relevant
with Stravinsky, you hear the traffic,
the hustle and bustle of modern life,
the pulse and frenzy of a more
frenetic century, though it must be
remembered that Mozart wrote his
piece between the American, 1776,
and the French, 1789, Revolutions,
a couple of historically seismic
events, not at all not turbulent
if you listen, you can hear it all in
the music, art is like that
enjoy
R ! chard
November 21, 2023
November / Month of the Sonata – 21
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