Sonata in f# minor, 1st movement
Sonata in f# minor
1st movement
Listen HERE.
Program Notes:
This Sonata was written during the long 9 months I waited for my brother to return from his deployment to the North-Eastern mountain provinces of Afghanistan (the most dangerous region at the height of the war). {The title is borrowed from Beethoven but that’s where the comparisons cease. This piece was driven entirely by my own sense of emotional logic and creative urgency.} As I suffered my brother’s absence I felt the need to document the experience in the same way a classic Hollywood movie romanticizes everything: I kept imagining a scene from the 1940s (WWII) and I imagined a story told in three short chapters.
The three movements of this composition each describe a scene: Farewell, Absence, and Return. {I had to compose the 3rd movement based on my own hopeful imagination of things ending well for my brother; thankfully that was accurate.}
Each movement can be summarized briefly:
1st movement: “Farewell” describes two people meeting at a train station to say an emotional goodbye.
2nd movement: “Absence” portrays sadness, repressed anxiety and loneliness.
3rd movement: “Return” offers a home-coming parade as the setting for a happy reunion!
Each movement carries 2 themes of its own, and then the themes of each successive movement layer old and new themes upon one-another.
Every theme in this Sonata has an emotional drive and every phrase is designed to contribute to the story in a way that has specific programmatic meaning. Furthermore the themes of this piece are attached to each protagonist in the story so there are leitmotifs which thread melodic cohesion through the whole work. Indeed, melodic layering is frequent; a theme from the 1st mvmt will reappear in the 2nd or 3rd mvmt but will be layered against another, newer, theme.
The story-telling is served well by the composition technique of layering themes because it allows musical “conversations” to be depicted in a way that shows the listener how the protagonists in the story are affected by the past (old themes) while they experience their present emotions (new themes). The traditional Sonata-Allegro structure is loosely respected in the 1st mvmt, but then the cohesion of the rest of the work lies in how the story develops.
This is a rewarding work to study from an academic standpoint because the narrative is so carefully assembled, but also the less attentive listener is meant to be able to enjoy this piece without analysis. A listener just passing by a performance of this piece should simply feel immersed in a sonic bath of richly rewarding sonorities!