Richibi’s Weblog

        “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