《Three Countries, Four Centuries, Six Sonatas》

„Sonata“ is possibly the most often used term for a musical composition in all of music’s history. Basically the word means „a musical piece performed on instruments“, i.e. excluding a vocal performance. Today the term is most closely associated with a specific form which was almost codified during the Viennese Classical period following the models perfected by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The latter, however, during the later part of his life already started a movement to deconstruct the textbook format, which lead to very interesting individual approaches by many of the leading composers throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Around 1800 „sonata“ means two different aspects: a longer piece typically with three distinct movements, or one single movement, usually the first in a three-movement „sonata“, typically in fast tempo with a specific form of three sections: the „exposition“ normally of two contrasting themes, usually repeated, the „development“ of those themes in more complex, also tonally more diverse combinations, and a „recapitulation“ mirroring the exposition. This so-called „sonata allegro“ is also used in most classical and Romantic symphonies, in the same opening position or preceded by a slow introduction.

The use of the term „sonata“ started in the early Baroque period at the beginning of the 17th century. These early sonatas tended to be more or less loose immediate successions of small, thematically not related parts in a longer piece. Pasquini, in his time one of the most renowned keyboard virtuosos and pedagogues of European fame, was one of the first to name keyboard pieces like this; however it is virtually impossible to distinguish them from his „toccatas“ – a term which means a piece to be „touched“, i.e. played on keyboard or plucked string instruments.

Paul Hindemith, who started out as an accomplished viola player and became one of the key figures of post-Romantic composition, aimed at writing sonatas for every one of the more important musical instruments – including three (quite different ones) for the organ. The first movement of the second sonata in fact most closely follows the principles of the classical „sonata allegro“, with one notable difference: since in the late 19th century the „exposition“ very often used the more complex thematic treatment typical for the „development“, the latter became redundant, leading composers like Max Reger to replace it with a short section using totally different thematic material. Hindemith, who greatly admired Reger, follows the same approach. The second movement of his sonata is a beautiful cantabile, whereas the third is a concise lively fugue, which Hindemith reportedly wrote in one afternoon as part of a bet with friends …

Among Bach’s six organ triosonatas, ostensibly composed for the organistic education of his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, the d minor sonata stands out because its first movement doesn’t have a fast, but only a moderate tempo. This allows for a more varied use of note values and consequently more varied musical characters, which in effect leads away from the unity of „affect“ typical for the Baroque era towards the more colourful picture typical for the so-called „gallant“ style explored by the generation of Bach‘s sons, by the use of two main musical ideas becoming a precursor of the later classical „sonata allegro“ type. The second movement, a transcription of the middle movement of Bach’s „Tripelkonzert“ for flute, violin, harpsichord and orchestra, also displays characteristics of the „gallant“ style, as does, to a limited extent, the third which again uses two main musical ideas.

Mendelssohn‘s six sonatas, published on September 15, 1845, but premiered already some months earlier by the composer, constitute the first cornerstone of the „great“ German Romantic organ repertoire. Among all the movements of these six sonatas, which display a great variety of compositional concepts, the first of the first sonata most closely follows the concept of the classical “sonata allegro”. It incorporates the chorale “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit” as the second subject and thus connects the techniques of sonata and chorale prelude in a most innovative way which would gain great importance in the later development of organ music. The main subject, containing only four notes and exposing two descending fourths, stands in clear contrast to the chorale whose first line may be abstracted into two ascending fourths, almost like an inversion. The lyrical Adagio movement begins with exactly the same chord which was played by the manuals at the end of the first movement, but immediately turns into a flat major – an indication that Mendelssohn intended to connect the movements cyclically. The third movement – again a novelty in organ music – follows the type of an orchestral recitative: a short melody with characteristic recitativic motives and phrasing is treated imitatively in all the voices, interrupted by massive ff-chords. The ensuing finale starts with flowing broken chords; a real melodic subject, however, is introduced only much later, it is short and concise and in its initial four notes exposes the interval of a fourth, probably a reference to the first movement.

During the last year of his life Mozart was commissioned to write several pieces for “musical clocks”, mechanical organs operated by rotating cylinders, which belong to the earliest examples of automated musical instruments. Two of them were commissioned by a certain Count Deym for his wax museum, one room of which was equipped with a musical clock and dedicated to the recently deceased Marshall Laudon, a famous war hero. KV 594 thus is called “a piece for an organ in a clockwork”, and not “sonata”, mostly because of the two slow parts framing the central allegro, but the latter has the typical form of a sonata allegro found in most of Mozart’s piano sonatas. The two very distinct characters of the piece might relate to two essential feelings of a soldier: grief over the manifold loss of lives and triumph in a victory.

Among the large number of his students Franz Liszt estimated Julius Reubke as one of the most talented – as a pianist, but certainly also as a composer. In fact, had Reubke not died from tuberculosis at such an early age he might well have become one of the titans among German composers of the 19th century, judging from the quality and scope of his piano and his organ sonata. Both clearly follow the models of Liszt’s b minor piano sonata, his famous Fantasia and Fugue on “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” for organ and his “symphonic poems” in general, which are all an amalgam of the two aspects of the classical “sonata”: the larger, three-movement piece and the sonata allegro structure of three sections. In this amalgam the typical adagio movement of a three-movement sonata takes the place of the “development” of a sonata allegro. Reubke ingeniously uses this concept to illustrate the main ideas of psalm 94: the prayer for God’s vengeance against the evil forces killing widows, orphans and strangers on one side, God’s consolation on the other. The whole piece is based on two contrasting themes, the main one to be heard right at the pianissimo opening of the piece, and treated in manifold metamorphoses of rhythm, tempo and tonality throughout the piece.