The Piano Sonata, BB 88, Sz. 80, is a

piano sonata A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with t ...

by Hungarian composer

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...

, composed in June 1926. 1926 is known to musicologists as Bartók's "piano year", when he underwent a creative shift in part from

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

ian intensity to a more

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

ian craftsmanship.Hannah Durham, Texas Performing Arts, "About the Program", Feb. 27, 2013 The work is in three movements, with the following tempo indications: It is tonal but highly dissonant (and has no

key signature In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp (), flat (), or rarely, natural () symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef at ...

), using the

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

in a percussive fashion with erratic

time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats (pulses) are contained in each measure (bar), and which note value ...

s. Underneath clusters of repeated notes, the melody is folklike. Each movement has a classical structure overall, in character with Bartók's frequent use of classical forms as vehicles for his most advanced thinking. Musicologist Halsey Stevens finds in the work early forms of many stylistic traits that became more fully developed in Bartók's "golden age", 1934–1940. Bartók wrote ''Dittának,

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

en, 1926, jun.'' at the end of the score, dedicating it to

Ditta Pásztory-Bartók Ditta Pásztory-Bartók (31 October 190321 November 1982) was a Hungarian pianist and the second wife of the composer Béla Bartók. She was the dedicatee of a number of his works, including '' Out of Doors'' and the Third Piano Concerto. Biograp ...

, his second wife. A performance generally lasts around 15 minutes. Bartók wrote the duration as around 12 minutes and 30 seconds on the score. Bartok wrote this piece with an

Imperial Bösendorfer The Bösendorfer Model 290 Imperial, or Imperial Bösendorfer (also colloquially known as the 290) is the largest model and flagship piano manufactured by Bösendorfer, at around long, wide, and weighing . It has an eight-octave range from C0 to ...

in mind, which has extra keys in the bass (97 keys in total). The second movement calls for these keys to be used (to play G₀ and F₀). Bartók had previously written a piano sonata in 1896, which is little known.

References

Bartok Compositions by Béla Bartók 1926 compositions {{sonata-stub