Sonata Op.1 (1910)

Mässig bewegt

Always conscious of the great Viennese tradition behind him – he liked to point out that his Sonata, Op.1, was published in the very same house in the Tuchlauben as Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony a hundred years earlier – Berg did not set out to defy convention in writing a piano sonata in only one movement. The Mässig bewegt which he completed in 1908 was originally intended as the first part of a sonata in at least three movements. It was his composition teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, who persuaded him that the single movement was complete in itself. What Schoenberg was thinking of perhaps was the fact that, although the piece is demonstrably in B minor, the progressions are so condensed and the turn-over of events so compressed that it covers more harmonic ground in twelve minutes than any ordinary Viennese sonata would cover in four movements of the same length.

Certainly, that is the cause of any problem one might have in listening to it: even if B minor is initially registered as the definitive tonality (through the cadence briefly following the first phrase of the opening theme) it eludes the ear from then on and reasserts itself only in the last two bars. Obviously aware of that, however, Berg compensated for it by making tempo at least as important a structural factor as harmony. Structural interchanges are signalled by changes of tempo and each section between them has its own shape and its own climactic accelerando – always corresponding, of course, with the emotional scenario which is the most important factor of all.

The first subject, which includes both the tristanesque theme in the opening bars and a slightly quicker one with prominent triplet figures, is brought to a climax over forceful octaves in the left hand. The tempo and the dynamic intensity are gradually relaxed for the tenderly lyrical second subject and then stepped up again before the long ritardando leading to the quasi adagio closing theme and the (usually observed) exposition repeat. The emotional crisis occurs towards the end of the development section, in a dramatic ffff climax at the top of a long-sustained acceleration pushed along by the triplet rhythms and rising fourths and fifths of the first subject. As before, there is a relaxation of intensity for a quiet and gentle statement of the second subject, which now leads by way of another acceleration into the recapitulation. By no means a literal recapitulation, it is so marked by the emotional trauma of the development section that it inevitably recalls that experience before acquiescing in a peaceful and unequivocally B minor ending.