Piano Sonata (Bartók) - Misplaced Pages

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The Piano Sonata, BB 88, Sz. 80, is a piano sonata by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, composed in June 1926. 1926 is known to musicologists as Bartók's "piano year", when he underwent a creative shift in part from Beethovenian intensity to a more Bachian craftsmanship.

Movements

The work is in three movements, with the following tempo indications:

Allegro moderato
Sostenuto e pesante
Allegro molto

It is tonal but highly dissonant (and has no key signature), using the piano in a percussive fashion with erratic time signatures. 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

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Bartók wrote Dittának, Budapesten, 1926, jun. at the end of the score, dedicating it to Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, 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 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 G♯₀ and F₀).

Bartók had previously written a piano sonata in 1896, which is little known.

References

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

v t e Béla Bartók
List of compositions
Opera	Bluebeard's Castle
Ballets	The Miraculous Mandarin The Wooden Prince
Concertante	Piano Concerto No. 1 Piano Concerto No. 2 Piano Concerto No. 3 Viola Concerto Violin Concerto No. 1 Violin Concerto No. 2 Rhapsody No. 1 Rhapsody No. 2 Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra
Orchestral	Concerto for Orchestra Dance Suite Divertimento for String Orchestra Hungarian Pictures Kossuth Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Chamber	44 Duos for Two Violins Contrasts Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion Sonata for Solo Violin String quartets (No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6)
Choral	Cantata Profana
Piano	Allegro barbaro Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs For Children Four Dirges Fourteen Bagatelles Mikrokosmos Nine Little Piano Pieces Out of Doors Petite Suite Piano Sonata Rhapsody, Op. 1 Romanian Christmas Carols Romanian Folk Dances Slovakian Dance Sonatina Suite, Op. 14 Ten Easy Pieces Three Burlesques Three Hungarian Folktunes Three Rondos on Slovak Folk Tunes Two Romanian Dances
Songs	Eight Hungarian Folksongs Five Hungarian Folksongs Twenty Hungarian Folksongs Five Songs, Op. 15 Village Scenes
Collaborations	Homage to Paderewski
Namesakes	Bartók (crater) Béla Bartók Music High School
Related	Hungarian folk music Magyar Rádió Musical cryptogram Neoclassicism Night music Polymodal chromaticism Suite paysanne hongroise Triptych
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