The Sonatine ( Sonatina) for violin and piano is a

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

composition by

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

, written while he was still a student in 1951. It carries the work-number ⅛ in his catalogue of works.

History

Stockhausen composed the Sonatine as the second of two "free works" required for his final examinations at the

Cologne Conservatory Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...

. The piano part of the first movement was composed originally as a separate work, titled ''Präludium'', and the violin part was then superimposed. The manuscript of the completed composition is dated 19 March 1951. It was premiered by Wolfgang Marschner, concertmaster of the NWDR Symphony Orchestra, with the composer at the piano, in a broadcast recording transmitted for the first time on 24 August 1951. The first performance before a live audience, however, did not occur until twenty years later, when

Saschko Gawriloff Saschko Gawriloff (born October 20, 1929) is a German violinist and violin teacher of Bulgarian descent. Life Gawriloff was born in Leipzig and received his first violin lessons from his father Yordan Gavriloff, who was a violinist in the Leipz ...

(violin) and

Aloys Kontarsky Aloys (14 May 1931 – 22 August 2017) and Alfons (9 October 1932 – 5 May 2010) Kontarsky were German duo-pianist brothers who were associated with a number of important world premieres of contemporary works. They had an international reputatio ...

(piano) played it on 22 October 1971 at a concert of the SMIP in Paris.

Analysis

The work is not so much an integrated composition as three disparate style exercises, related only through the use of a common

twelve-tone row In music, a tone row or note row (german: Reihe or '), also series or set, is a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets ar ...

in which thirds and perfect fifths predominate. Together with the '' Drei Lieder'' for alto and chamber orchestra, composed the previous summer, the Sonatine is the most significant example of Stockhausen's employment of classical Schoenbergian

twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...

, but at the same time both compositions integrate this technique with aspects of neotonality and stylistic features associated with

neoclassicism Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was ...

. The three movements, played without pause, are: #Lento espressivo—vivacetto irato—tempo 1 #Molto moderato e cantabile #Allegro scherzando The first movement is lyrical and restrained in character, similar in character to a three-part invention in which rhythmic motives join with row transformations to produce the structure. On the other hand, it also resembles a small

sonata-allegro form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...

, beginning with the

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

superimposition of three different forms of the row (prime and retrograde in the right and left hands of the piano, inversion in the violin), all beginning on the same pitch, C₅. The opening, slow section functions as an exposition. The middle section, in a faster tempo, is a sort of development section, and the final section returns to the opening tempo and material as a recapitulation. In contrast to the polyphonic texture of the first movement, the second is more homophonic, with a slow

boogie-woogie Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since 1870s.Paul, Elliot, ''That Crazy American Music'' (1957), Chapter 10, p. 229. It was eventually extended from pi ...

rhythm in the bass. The violin is muted throughout, and becomes separated from the increasingly heavy piano part as it floats upward. The movement is

through-composed In music theory of musical form, through-composed music is a continuous, non- sectional, and non- repetitive piece of music. The term is typically used to describe songs, but can also apply to instrumental music. While most musical forms such as t ...

with an overall slowing process which Stockhausen described as "incredibly meditative, like ''

Stimmung ''Stimmung'', for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work nu ...

''", and ends with the violin playing sextuplets against quadruplets in the piano. The finale is dominated by polytonal chords, which accumulate into dense layers. The movement ends with a three-note chord, duplicated in the two hands of the piano as well as the violin, consisting of the notes C, D, and A. These notes were the predominating melodic notes at the beginning of this movement, as well as at the start of the first movement, and constitute the first trichord of the prime form of the basic row, which dominates all of the Sonatine.

Discography

*Karlheinz Stockhausen: ''Drei Lieder'', für Altstimme und Kammerorchester (1950); Sonatine, für Violine und Klavier (1951); ''Spiel'', für Orchester (1952); ''Schlagtrio'', für Klavier und 2 x 3 Pauken (1952). Sylvia Anderson, alto; Sinfonie-Orchester des Südwestfunks Baden-Baden, Karlheinz Stockhausen, cond.

, violin;

, piano. LP Recording, 1 disc: stereo, 12 in., 33⅓ rpm. DGG 2530 827. amburg Deutsche Grammophon, 1977. These recordings of the Sonatine and ''Drei Lieder'' reissued, on Stockhausen: ''

Chöre für Doris (Choruses for Doris), after poems by Paul Verlaine, is a three- movement a cappella choral composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1950 and later given the number 1/11 in the composer's catalogue of works. The score is dedicated to the c ...

'', ''Choral'', ''Drei Lieder'', Sonatine, ''Kreuzspiel''. Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks (Irmgard Jacobeit, soprano), Karlheinz Stockhausen, cond. (first two works); members of the London Sinfonietta, Karlheinz Stockhausen, cond. (last work). Compact disc, 1 sound disc: stereo, 4¾ in. Stockhausen Complete Edition CD 1. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag, 2002.

References

Cited sources

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External links

*, Jörg and Heinz Lengersdorf, 2008 {{authority control Chamber music by Karlheinz Stockhausen 1951 compositions Twelve-tone compositions Neoclassicism (music)

Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...