Piano Sonata in B minor (Liszt)

Music

No other work of Liszt's has attracted anywhere near the amount of scholarly attention paid to the Sonata in B minor. It has provoked a wide range of divergent theories from those of its admirers who feel compelled to search for hidden meanings. Possibilities include the following:

• The Sonata is a musical portrait of the Faust legend, with "Faust," "Gretchen," and "Mephistopheles" themes symbolizing the main characters.
• The Sonata is autobiographical; its musical contrasts spring from the conflicts within Liszt's own personality.
• The Sonata is about the divine and the diabolical; it is based on the Bible and on John Milton's Paradise Lost.
• The Sonata is an allegory set in the Garden of Eden; it deals with the Fall of Man and contains "God," "Lucifer," "Serpent," "Adam," and "Eve" themes.
• The Sonata has no programmatic allusions; it is a piece of "expressive form" with no meaning beyond itself.

The complexity of the sonata means no analytical interpretation has been widely accepted. Some analyses suggest that the Sonata has four movements, although there is no gap between them. Superimposed upon the four movements is a large sonata form structure, although the precise beginnings and endings of the traditional development and recapitulation sections have long been a topic of debate. Others claim a three-movement form, an extended one-movement sonata form, and a rotational three-movement work with a double exposition and recapitulation. An average performance of the sonata lasts approximately 30 minutes.

Analysis

While its distinct movements: allegro, adagio, scherzo and finale are combined into one, the entire work is encompassed within an overarching sonata form — exposition, development, and recapitulation. Liszt is said to have composed a sonata within a sonata, which is part of the work's uniqueness, and he was economical with his thematic material. The first page contains three motive ideas that provide the basis for nearly all that follows, with the ideas being transformed throughout.

The first theme is a descending scale marked Lento assai; full of ominous undertow. It reappears at crucial points in the work's structure, especially in the coda. After the first theme, the time signature changes from ⁴
₄ to Alla breve, and the second theme marked Allegro energico, consisting of a jagged, forceful motif in octaves, is introduced. This is quickly followed by the third theme, which Liszt characterized as Hammerschlag ('hammer-blow') to describe the single note repetition in the theme. A dialogue ensues, with mounting energy, until reaching the noble Grandioso material in D major. Liszt transforms the "hammer-blow" motif into a grand melodic gesture marked cantando espressivo. The slow movement, an Andante sostenuto in F-sharp major, is the centerpiece of the Sonata. This fully-fledged movement, in compound ternary form, features, in quick succession, a number of themes heard earlier in the Sonata in a tour de force of thematic economy.

The recapitulation opens with a fugue in B-flat minor, that can also function as a scherzo. Each of the sections are examples of Classical forms, which means that this piece is one of the first instances of Double-function form, a musical piece which has two classical forms happening at the same time; one containing the other. Already in 1851 Liszt experimented with a non-programmatic "four-movements-in-one" form in an extended work for piano solo called Grosses Concert-Solo. This piece, which in 1865 was published as a two-piano version under the title Concerto pathétique, shows a thematic relationship to both the Sonata and the later Faust Symphony. Walker claims the quiet ending of the Sonata was an afterthought; the original manuscript contains a crossed-out ending section which would have ended the work in a loud flourish instead.

Reception

The Sonata was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1854 and first performed on 27 January 1857 in Berlin by Hans von Bülow. It was attacked by Eduard Hanslick who said "anyone who has heard it and finds it beautiful is beyond help". Johannes Brahms reputedly fell asleep when Liszt performed the work in 1853, and it was also criticized by the pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. However, the Sonata drew enthusiasm from Richard Wagner following a private performance of the piece by Karl Klindworth on April 5, 1855. Otto Gumprecht of the German newspaper Nationalzeitung referred to it as "an invitation to hissing and stomping". It took a long time for the Sonata to become commonplace in concert repertoire because of its technical difficulty and negative initial reception due to its status as "new" music. However by the early stages of the twentieth century, the piece had become established as a pinnacle of Liszt's repertoire and has been a popularly performed and extensively analyzed piece ever since.

Arrangements

Camille Saint-Saëns, a close friend of Liszt, made a two-piano arrangement of the Sonata in 1914, but it was never published in his lifetime because of rights issues. It was first published in 2004 by Édition Durand in Paris, edited by Sabrina Teller Ratner. According to a letter from Saint-Saëns to Jacques Durand, dated 23 August 1914, the two-piano arrangement was something that Liszt had announced but never realized.

Leó Weiner made an orchestral arrangement of the Sonata in 1955. The arrangement has not been published and exists only in manuscript form. It was recorded in 2006 by the orchestra of Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar with Nicolás Pasquet conducting, and in 2009 by the North Hungarian Symphony Orchestra under László Kovács for the label Hungaroton.

Heinz Roemheld orchestrated the Sonata which is heard on some 1930s movies, including The Black Cat (1934), starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, The Raven (1935), as well as the Flash Gordon serials (1936) (Chapters 6–13), Werewolf of London (1936), and Mars Attacks the World (1938).

There is an orchestrated excerpt version of the Sonata in the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen starring Danny Kaye where the ballet scene for "The Little Mermaid" is danced near the end of the film.

An orchestrated version of the lyrical parts of the Sonata appears in the 1960 Hollywood film of Liszt's life called Song Without End.

Frederick Ashton used the Sonata for his 1963 ballet Marguerite and Armand, created for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, based on "The Lady of the Camellias" by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The original performances used an orchestral transcription of the Sonata by Humphrey Searle. In 1968 the Royal Ballet commissioned a new arrangement, by Gordon Jacob.

An organ transcription of the Sonata was made in 1984 by Bernhard Haas. Other transcriptions for organ includes one by Nathan Laube, which was performed in 2022.

There is also a transcription of the Sonata for solo cello made by cellist Johann Sebastian Paetsch in 2013. This has been published by the Hofmeister Musikverlag in Leipzig.

Recordings

The Sonata is considered a standard of the piano repertoire. Below is an incomplete list of recordings by various artists.