The Piano Sonata, sometimes also referred to as Sonata for Piano or in its original French form, Sonate pour piano, is a 1924

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 ...

by Russian expatriate composer Igor Stravinsky.

Composition

Stravinsky composed this sonata when he was in Biarritz and

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...

in the summer of 1924. He finished it on October 21 that year. It was premiered by the composer himself at the

Donaueschingen Festival The Donaueschingen Festival (german: Donaueschinger Musiktage, links=no) is a festival for new music that takes place every October in the small town of Donaueschingen in south-western Germany. Founded in 1921, it is considered the oldest festiva ...

in July 1925. It was eventually edited by

Albert Spalding Albert Goodwill Spalding (September 2, 1849 – September 9, 1915) was an American pitcher, manager, and executive in the early years of professional baseball, and the co-founder of A.G. Spalding sporting goods company. He was born and raised ...

and published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1925. It is dedicated to the Princess Edmond de Polignac,

Winnaretta Singer Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac (8 January 186526 November 1943) was an American-born heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune. She used this to fund a wide range of causes, notably a musical salon where her protégés includ ...

Structure

The sonata is in three

movements Movement may refer to: Common uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Motion, commonly referred to as movement Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...

and takes between 9 and 11 minutes to perform. The movements are: In some recordings, the first movement is titled ''Moderato'' and the third ''Allegro moderato''; however, such titles or tempo markings are not present in the original score.

Analysis

The first and the third movement are related to each other: both share the same tempo and both are in

sonata 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 ...

, each with its own recapitulation; furthermore, as for the thematic material, the first theme played on two hands simultaneously at the beginning is played again at the coda in the last movement. The first movement counters

triplets A multiple birth is the culmination of one multiple pregnancy, wherein the mother gives birth to two or more babies. A term most applicable to vertebrate species, multiple births occur in most kinds of mammals, with varying frequencies. Such bi ...

with

eighth note 180px, Figure 1. An eighth note with stem extending up, an eighth note with stem extending down, and an eighth rest. 180px, Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together. An eighth note (American) or a quaver ( British) is a musical note pla ...

s, whereas the invention-like third movement consists of

sixteenth note Figure 1. A 16th note with stem facing up, a 16th note with stem facing down, and a 16th rest. Figure 2. Four 16th notes beamed together. In music, a 1/16, sixteenth note (American) or semiquaver ( British) is a note played for half the du ...

s that makes it more lively, closer to Baroque styles. The second movement is closer to the Romantic style of

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 classic ...

, who, in Stravinsky's estimation, was one of the "greatest musical geniuses"; therefore, the

ornamentation An ornament is something used for decoration. Ornament may also refer to: Decoration *Ornament (art), any purely decorative element in architecture and the decorative arts *Biological ornament, a characteristic of animals that appear to serve on ...

of the melody is more dense, which is unlike Stravinsky's simple and direct compositional style employed in the prior movement.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control 1924 compositions Compositions by Igor Stravinsky Stravinsky