w16035
| Title | Sonata |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) |
| Composition date | 2005 |
| Duration (mins) | 12 |
| Category | keyboard |
| Instrumentation | Pf |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | |
| Notes | To Charles Nash. |
| Programme Note | My old and dear friend Charles Nash imposed a difficult task on me, that of writing a piano piece, in a definite key like C major, without changes of time signature, and using sonata form. I wriggled a bit within those constraints but here is what I came up with - a traditional sonata. Its four movements are all strictly tonal, in C major, F major, G major and C major. The first and last movements use sonata form. Only in the slow second movement, where the structure is freer, do I find myself unable to resist my bad old habits of slipping in irregular bars such as 9/16 - I couldn't help it! It's not Beethoven, no nor Mahler neither : it's more in the cast of Haydn and Mozart, as re-interpreted by middle period Stravinsky and the French neo-classicists, with perhaps a touch of Prokofiev, revisited almost a century later. Structural analysis : The first movement is in straightforward sonata form with a first and second subject, the latter appearing first in what is more or less the dominant key and later, as tradition demands, changing to the tonic key in the recapitulation. The development does no more than combine modified fragments of the two subjects. The second movement is in simple variation from, using a theme derived from the second subject of the first movement. The third movement is a minuet and trio. The trio theme is based on an ornamental passage previously heard in the slow movement. (See for example the passages starting in bar 3 and bar 7 of the second movement.) The final movement again uses sonata form, but with the difference that the whole thing takes place over an unvarying passacaglia bass. The first and second subjects are not strongly contrasting in character. The development section subverts the passacaglia by imposing a logical but contradictory rhythm on top of it, and exhaustively applies to each of its 12 notes a chord first heard as part of the second subject in bar 14. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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