Piano Sonata No. 2

[lateromantic]

It has been well over two years since I last posted here, but I wanted to share what has been my biggest recording project of the last year.  My Piano Sonata No. 2 was completed in February 1984.  In 2020, during the shutdown for the pandemic, I transcribed the old handwritten manuscript into a modern Finale score.  Then a little over a year ago, I began getting the piece back under my fingers, and in March of this year I produced its first digital recording.

This ambitious Romantic composition consists of a single movement in sonata-allegro form, including an introduction and coda, where all the thematic material is connected by motivic relationships and melodic transformation.  It contains elements of tragedy, struggle, and yearning, but ultimately speaks to the possibility of human happiness.

This alternative version of the video follows along with the score:

I look forward to your comments!

[ted]

Firstly Robert, I was very relieved to read your post as I had begun to fear you might have gone the way of our friends Birba and David April ("rachfan"). Happily not.

Until today I had not followed your links and had posted without being aware of your immense musical knowledge and background, which is somewhat embarrassing for a seventy-five-year-old mad improviser who spent thirty years working at a factory and had his last private music lesson well over fifty years ago. Nonetheless, inasmuch as the reaction of an untutored, markedly unanalytical, musical mind may be assumed valid I shall respond as usual.

I have listened three times and intend to listen more. Your music moves me on a deep level, even listening from moment to moment and naively, as someone like me is compelled to do. The impassioned lyricism, the imitative, melodic self-reference, the accented highlights like coloured flashes of light within crystal, invariably produce a "magic casement" effect in my brain. Romantic certainly, emotional to a degree I suppose but "emotion" is a pretty limited term after all. The subjective impression, as with all fine music whatever its genre, is what Aldous Huxley called "suchness", a perception of abstract beauty amounting to a feeling that the universe is wrapped up into a ball which I am holding in the palm of my hand. It isn't about syntactical musical data or structure or pattern; it's something "far more deeply interfused" and you have it in spades.

I know little about form and next to nothing about theory but I hear at once that the contrasting playful sections at 5:40, 14:17 and 22:00 exhibit what I, probably in my ignorance, call the "principle of two". The finest music seems to exhibit this elliptic pendulum balance between two entities, from the overall form right down to phrasal juxtaposition. Just one idea courts monotony and three or more can easily sound polyglot; unless those qualities are aesthetically deliberate of course, which they can be sometimes, rules are for fools after all.

To conclude, I am grateful I heard this as my improvisation, although by no means unsatisfying, has become a tad grotesque lately and your piece, with its truly glorious main phrase has reasserted the power of romantic lyricism for me, so thanks for that.

[lateromantic]

Firstly Robert, I was very relieved to read your post as I had begun to fear you might have gone the way of our friends Birba and David April ("rachfan"). Happily not.

I remain musically active, but my social-media presence of late has been primarly on Facebook.  In the last couple of years, I've kept myself busy recording new material for my YouTube channel, most of it pieces from the general classical/romantic piano repertoire.  But when I record any of my own music, I like to come back here to post it.  Anyway, if feels good to be back. 

Until today I had not followed your links and had posted without being aware of your immense musical knowledge and background, which is somewhat embarrassing for a seventy-five-year-old mad improviser who spent thirty years working at a factory and had his last private music lesson well over fifty years ago.

We're not all that different.  I'm a couple of years younger than you are, and my early training was completed more than fifty years ago.  But I have sought out "refresher" piano lessons a couple of times in my adult life, and also I went back to school in my 40s to earn a couple of advanced music degrees.  Meanwhile, I earned my living outside of music.  Now I'm retired and can devote much more time to it.

Your music moves me on a deep level, even listening from moment to moment and naively, as someone like me is compelled to do. The impassioned lyricism, the imitative, melodic self-reference, the accented highlights like coloured flashes of light within crystal, invariably produce a "magic casement" effect in my brain. Romantic certainly, emotional to a degree I suppose but "emotion" is a pretty limited term after all. The subjective impression, as with all fine music whatever its genre, is what Aldous Huxley called "suchness", a perception of abstract beauty amounting to a feeling that the universe is wrapped up into a ball which I am holding in the palm of my hand. It isn't about syntactical musical data or structure or pattern; it's something "far more deeply interfused" and you have it in spades.

It appears that I accomplished what I set out to do with regard to at least one listener!  The notion of "beauty" may be considered old-fashioned, but yes, I do indeed think in such terms, and I endeavor to create the beautiful.

I know little about form and next to nothing about theory but I hear at once that the contrasting playful sections at 5:40, 14:17 and 22:00 exhibit what I, probably in my ignorance, call the "principle of two". The finest music seems to exhibit this elliptic pendulum balance between two entities, from the overall form right down to phrasal juxtaposition. Just one idea courts monotony and three or more can easily sound polyglot; unless those qualities are aesthetically deliberate of course, which they can be sometimes, rules are for fools after all.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "principle of two," and I would be curious if you could elaborate further on the idea.  Perhaps it is related to an aesthetic concept I like to call "unity within diversity."  The sonata's exposition and recapitulation present three themes, which share the same basic melodic shapes even though they are sharply contrasting in mood and tempo.  The sections starting at 5:40 and 22:00 present the third of the three themes, in the exposition and recapitulation respectively, and here the mood is indeed (as you say) playful.  Point 14:17 is near the end of the development, where it transitions into a little march, which will build gradually toward the recapitulation.  The march again starts out rather playfully, then gradually becomes much more intense.  The melodic shape of the march theme is similar to the others, so the "unity within diversity" concept is at work here as well.

To conclude, I am grateful I heard this as my improvisation, although by no means unsatisfying, has become a tad grotesque lately and your piece, with its truly glorious main phrase has reasserted the power of romantic lyricism for me, so thanks for that.

And speaking of lyricism, there is much lyricism in your prose commentary.  I'm very glad that you found some satisfaction in this piece, and thank you very much for your thoughts!

[ted]

The notion of "beauty" may be considered old-fashioned, but yes, I do indeed think in such terms, and I endeavor to create the beautiful.

In this we are in complete agreement. Personal conception of beauty varies among minds but I would rather work in the garden than create sounds I at least did not find beautiful.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by the "principle of two," and I would be curious if you could elaborate.

Yes, “unity within diversity” is likely a better way of putting it, a syncretic whole from disparate elements, although the duality probably merits special attention owing to its ubiquitous presence in human thought generally.

And speaking of lyricism, there is much lyricism in your prose commentary.

Thanks for the implied compliment. To some extent it might be a curmudgeonly reaction to the increasing tawdriness of language, the tired and hackneyed metaphor, the interminable alliteration and punning and the memetic sprinkling of obscenities, all of which pervade everything from the daily newspaper to what Robert Hughes termed the cornucopia of dung on television. Now I am really showing my age !

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Thanks for this substantial post. It is a very enjoyable work, with scope from the impish to the majestic via the elegiac. There is a lot of interesting harmonic sense at play here.

[lateromantic]

Thanks for this substantial post. It is a very enjoyable work, with scope from the impish to the majestic via the elegiac. There is a lot of interesting harmonic sense at play here.

Thank you, sir, I'm glad you found it enjoyable.  And yes, its scope is very wide indeed.

[stringoverstrung]

Hello,

This is a very enjoyable piece of music. I enjoyed it a lot. Well done. The emotions you wrote about are all there., I captured them. Thank you for sharing your work.

regards,
Gert

[lateromantic]

This is a very enjoyable piece of music. I enjoyed it a lot. Well done. The emotions you wrote about are all there., I captured them. Thank you for sharing your work.

Thank you, Gert!  I'm glad the work was successful for you. 

[droprenstein]

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand, it's amazing and I love it. On the other, wow, this was a hit to the self-esteem.

[lateromantic]

I don't know how to feel about this. On one hand, it's amazing and I love it. On the other, wow, this was a hit to the self-esteem.

I like to think that I'm showing possibilities, not closing off avenues.  I'm not sure whether you're speaking as a composer or as a pianist here, but either way, build up some confidence in yourself!