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 (Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with two movemen ...

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 Hunga ...

, 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. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

ian intensity to a more

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the or ...

ian craftsmanship.Hannah Durham, Texas Performing Arts, "About the Program", Feb. 27, 2013

Movements

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 cl ...

), using the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

in a percussive fashion with changing

time signature A time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, and measure signature) is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type fit into each measure ( bar). The time signature indicates th ...

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.

Writing

Bartók wrote ''Dittának,

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

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 (Bartók), Out of Doors'' and the Piano ...

, 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 t ...

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 Solo piano compositions by Béla Bartók 1926 compositions {{sonata-stub