Composition Year | 1907–1909? |
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Genre Categories | Sonatas; For piano; Scores featuring the piano; For 1 player |
Contents[hide] |
Work Title | Piano Sonata |
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Alternative. Title | |
Composer | Berg, Alban |
Opus/Catalogue NumberOp./Cat. No. | Op.1 |
I-Catalogue NumberI-Cat. No. | IAB 9 |
Key | B minor |
Year/Date of CompositionY/D of Comp. | 1907–1909? |
First Performance. | 1911-04-24 in Vienna. Etta Werndorff, piano |
First Publication. | 1910 – Berlin: Robert Lienau |
Composer Time PeriodComp. Period | Early 20th century |
Piece Style | Early 20th century |
Instrumentation | piano |
External Links | Wikipedia article |
The early sonata sketches of Berg while being a student under Schoenberg eventually culminated in this sonata; while considered to be his "graduating composition", it is one of the most formidable initial works ever written by any composer (Lauder, 1986)
This sonata consists of a single movement centered in the key of B minor, but Berg makes frequent use of chromaticism, whole-tone scales, and wandering key centers, giving the tonality a very unstable feel. The piece is in the typical sonata form, with an Exposition, Development and Recapitulation, but the composition also relies heavily on Arnold Schoenberg's idea of developing variation, a method to ensure the unity of a piece of music by deriving all aspects of a composition from a single idea.
Schoenberg stated that the unity of a piece is dependent on all aspects of the composition being derived from a single basic idea. Berg would then pass this idea down to one of his students, Theodor Adorno, who in turn stated: "The main principle he conveyed was that of variation: everything was supposed to develop out of something else and yet be intrinsically different". The Sonata is a striking example of the execution of this idea — the whole composition can be derived from the opening quartal gesture and from the opening leitmotif.