Piano Sonata in E flat minor, 1 X 1905

Presentiment: Con moto

Death: Adagio

Janacek’s one surviving Piano Sonata was inspired by the fate of a young Czech worker, Frantisek Pavlik, who died from bayonet wounds after troops were called in by the German authorities in Brno to break up a demonstration for the establishment of a Czech university in Moravia. Always a fervent patriot, Janacek was so moved by the event as to write a sonata in three movements with the title Street Scene, 1 X 1905 – the date leaving no room for doubt as to what scene he had in mind. It was presumably on musical rather than political grounds that he destroyed the manuscript of the third movement before the work was heard in public and, after two performances of the Sonata in a two-movement version, threw the rest of the score into the Vltava. Fortunately, the pianist had taken the precaution of making a copy of the two remaining movements and the composer was eventually persuaded that the work could be published in that form.

It is based on virtually one theme, which is not so much anticipated in Presentiment as woven into its fabric on every textural level. After only a few bars of the first subject, gently rolled E flat minor chords in the left hand and a quiet legato melody in the right, Janacek interpolates between the two hands a dramatic six-note motif – the Death motif, which is actually a contraction of the two previous bars of melody. Once it takes hold of the movement, it clings on, often as a left-hand ostinato, and loosens its grip only when reshaped into the more lyrical G major second subject. Then it fastens persistently onto the development section in a new four-note form, rising in company with a passionate fragment of the first subject to a protesting climax.

The Death motif is instantly recognisable, in spite of its newly elegiac tone, at the beginning of the second movement, where it is repeated in all but five of the seventeen bars of exposition. The motif is varied but there is no other melodic material apart from a dotted-rhythm ostinato which, after a deceptively innocent entry, motivates a climax even more dramatic than that of the previous movement. After the return of the opening lament in inexorable E flat minor harmonies, a third movement seems unnecessary.

Gerald Larner ©2005

Presentiment: con moto

Death: adagio

Janacek’s one surviving Piano Sonata was inspired by the fate of a young Czech worker, Frantisek Pavlik, who died from bayonet wounds after police and troops were called in by the German authorities in Brno to break up a demonstration for the establishment of a Czech university in Moravia. Always a fervent patriot, Janacek was so moved by the event as to write a sonata in three movements with the title Street Scene, 1 X 1905 - the date leaving no room for doubt as to what scene he had in mind.

At a rehearsal for the first performance of the work in January 1906, however, the composer snatched the manuscript of the third movement from the unfortunate pianist and burned it. The first two movements were performed alone but after a second performance , in Prague, Janacek expressed his dissatisfaction with these too and threw what was left of the manuscript into the Vltava. Fortunately, the pianist, Ludmila Tuckova, had been prudent enough to make a copy of the two remaining movements. Janacek later gave permission for their publication, realising perhaps that it is the distortion of the form by the obsessive treatment of the material which makes the work so moving.

The first part is headed “Presentiment” and the second “Death.” Not surprisingly, the main theme of “Death” is anticipated in “Pre-sentiment,” but the extent to which the Death motif dominates the work will be rather more surprising to anyone expecting anything like a conventionally structured sonata. After only a few bars of the first subject, gently rolled E flat minor chords in the left hand and a quiet legato melody in the right, he interpolates between the two hands a dramatic six-note motif - the Death motif, which is actually a contraction of the two previous bars of melody. Once it takes hold of the movement, it clings on, often as a left-hand ostinato and loosens its grip only when reshaped into the more lyrical G major second subject. Then (after the exposition repeat) it fastens persistently onto the development section in a new four-note form, rising in company with a passionate fragment of the melody that gave rise to it to a protesting climax.

The Death motif is instantly recognisable, in spite of its newly elegiac tone, at the beginning of the second movement, where it is repeated in all but five of the seventeen bars of exposition. The motif is varied but there is no other melodic material apart from a dotted-rhythm ostinato which, after a deceptively innocent entry, motivates a climax even more dramatic than that of the previous movement. After the return of the opening lament in inexorable E flat minor harmonies, a third movement seems unnecessary.