Piano Sonata Op.26 (1949)

Perhaps the best definition of romanticism is that you know it when you hear it. Although Samuel Barber’s Sonata, one of the monuments of American piano music, was written 50 years too late to qualify by period, and although it is surprisingly aggressive for anyone who knows Barber only as the composer of the Adagio for Strings, it does not conceal his “romantic” orientation. Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” is clearly the model for the first and last movements and the Allegro vivace e leggero is a brilliant example of rhythmic vitality and metrical ingenuity. The outer sections of the Adagio mesto, however, are sheer romantic melancholy, in spite of Barber’s twelve-note pretensions here. Based on a discreetly jazzy variant of the main theme of the first movement, the finale is a monumental fugue comparable in virtuosity to the example at the end of Brahms’s Handel Variations.

Samuel Barber’s Sonata is one of the monuments of American piano music. It might not be as radical as, say, Elliott Carter’s Sonata or Copland’s Variations but it is still a challenging work - not so much because of the occasional modernist gesture, like the twelve-note rows that harmlessly crop up here and there, as because of its uncompromising seriousness. Commissioned by the American League of Composers to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 1949 (with funds supplied by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers) it was written for no less a pianist than Vladimir Horowitz. In such high-profile circumstances it would have been embarrassing if it had turned out to be anything other than significant in stature, meaningful in expression and exciting in technique. Taking Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” as his principal model – one would guess, although there other apparent influences like the sonatas of Bartók and Prokofiev – Barber did not fall short of the most daunting of expectations.

Anyone who knows Barber only by the Adagio for strings will be surprised by the aggressive opening of the Sonata. It is, however, the work of the same master of counterpoint, and the emphatic opening does fix the first subject firmly in the mind – most obviously the punchy dotted rhythms but also the rising minor thirds in the left hand. The more lyrical second subject is introduced high in the right hand ever legato octaves in the left. One other important item is the percussive four-note rhythmic pattern which dominates the rest of the exposition. The development begins with quiet misterioso allusions to the first subject, but it is devoted above all to the percussive figure. Although that figure appears at one point as a gentle accompaniment to a theme of fourths derived from the second subject, its main influence here is as a powerful physical stimulant and it does, in fact, precipitate the recapitulation. In the coda, however, it participates in a gradual relaxation of tension towards the last bars.

Of the two middle movements – a scherzo and an Adagio, in the same order as those of the “Hammerklavier” – the Allegro vivace e leggero is a brilliant example of American rhythmic vitality and metrical ingenuity, with lightly pattering 6/8 outer sections and a waltz occasionally tripping into common time in the middle. The Adagio mesto is based, in a sense, on twelve-note material, although that is a matter more for the eye than for the ear, which is far more likely to perceive the B minor tonality and to register the melancholy beauty of the melodic line than to observe the serial activities of the left hand. It is in ternary structure with a middle section thrown into dramatic relief by the return of the percussive figure from the first movement.

The closing Allegro, like that of the “Hammerklavier,” is a monumental fugue. Its subject is a discreetly jazzy variant of the first subject of the first movement, rhythmically reshaped in even semiquavers, apart from one dotted interval, and resourcefully elaborated in a four-part texture.    The percussive figure reappears in the central episode but in a gentle mood to accompany a delightful scherzando version of the fugue subject, which undergoes numerous other transformations before its headlong acceleration through a formidably demanding virtuoso coda.