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Background

The majority of Copland's early music was devoted to the piano.^[1] He was persuaded to write a piano sonata during his studies with Rubin Goldmark, who viewed Copland's proficiency in the form as the highest accomplishment they could achieve together. Copland had intended to leave for Paris in June 1920 to join his friend, the poet Aaron Schaffer, but Goldmark viewed his lack of a complete sonata as sufficiently important grounds to delay.^[2] He completed the sonata before leaving in June 1921; Goldmark continued to urge Copland to continue his sonata form studies by letter, even if he "[fell] into the hands of some radicals".^[3]

Composition and publishing

Commissioned by and dedicated to Clifford Odets.^[4]

Published in New York by Boosey & Hawkes.^[4]

Copland had a habit of sketching ideas for long periods of time before composing a piece, often concealing the date he began work. According to Arthur Berger, he preferred "in more serious compositions, to take his time, and shape details with loving care." In 1935, Copland lectured at Harvard during Walter Piston's period of leave; by then, he had already produced sketches for the piano sonata. Berger suggests this similar vintage explains the sonata's similarities with Copland's orchestral work Statements (1934).^[5]

Copland began to compose a new piano sonata in earnest by 1939, prior to his arrival in Hollywood.^[6]

Ahead of attending Tanglewood and touring South America, Copland sought a break to focus on composition. Telling no-one but his companion Victor Kraft, he stayed in the Royal Palm Hotel, Havana, from April to May in 1941. By his return he had completed his book, Our New Music, and almost finished the sonata.^[7]

When packing for Tanglewood in June, Copland had his two suitcases of luggage stolen, one of which contained his current manuscripts. He alerted the New York City police immediately, as well as the Department of Sanitation as he worried the thief would consider the loose papers worthless and discard them. According to a claim Copland filed to the Great American Insurance Company, he had completed two movements of the sonata and sketched another ten pages. The thief was caught and a confession obtained, but the sonata's manuscripts were never recovered. While he still remembered his work, Copland worked with John Kirkpatrick (whom he had played the sonata for) on a re-write.^[8]

Performances

From 19 August to 13 December 1941, Copland undertook a tour of nine countries in Central and South America, sponsored by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.^[9] He spent around a month in Argentina, where he gave several concerts and lectures. One of these concerts was given on 21 October at the Teatro del Pueblo, Buenos Aires; the highlight of this was the world première of Copland's piano sonata with the composer at the piano.^[a][10]

Doris Humphrey set her one-act dance work, Day on Earth, to Copland's piano sonata. The work follows the lifecycle of a human from birth to death, and was first performed by the José Limón Dance Company at the Beaver Country Day School on 10 May 1947.^[11] According to the dance scholar John Mueller, Humphrey associates each of the sonata's movements with a theme: the first represents the "progress of life" and a career, the second represents family and offspring, and the third represents fate and demise.^[12]

Reception

The première performance was well-received by Argentine critics, who were not discouraged by the sonata's modernist leanings and critiqued it without prejudice. Juan Carlos Paz, a composer and music theorist, admired Copland's use and variation of rhythms, of which he dubbed Copland the "consummate master". A review in El Mundo described an "inescapable logic in [the sonata’s] working-out"; a similarly enthusiastic piece in La Nación, lauded the sonata's "zealous adhere[nce] to a strictly musical logic."^[13]

In a 1949 review of Bernstein's recording, Howard Taubman wrote that the sonata had an acquired taste, but thought the effort worth it for its "simplicity, clarity and great deal of touching, restrained feeling". He complimented Bernstein's interpretation, and also recommended Leo Smit's recording.^[14]

Reviewing Nathan Williamson's recording, Fiona Maddocks of The Observer wrote that the sonata is "striking and desolate", particularly the last movement's descent into a "quiet, mysterious retreat".^[15]

Tim Page agreed in an article for NPR, where he ranked Leon Fleisher's recording of the sonata as one of his best. He considered the sonata one of Copland's greatest works and commented on the finale's purity, which he likened to "a strange, disembodied afterglow" after the prolonged dissonance prior.^[16]

Anthony Tommasini highlighted the sonata's "spare-textured and rigorous character", as well as its unusual structure of a fast movement bookended with slower movements.^[17]

Writing for The Village Voice in 1974, Leighton Kerner called the Piano Sonata one of Copland's "more cerebral works", but found it "a bit fussy" compared to Copland's Sextet.^[18]

John Kirkpatrick thought the blend of Copland's serious and populist styles could let the Sonata serve as an introduction to his more complex pieces.^[19]

Movements

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External videos
Timo Andres performs Copland's sonata
Aaron Copland — Piano Sonata via YouTube

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A typical performance lasts approximately twenty-three minutes.^[4] Kirkpatrick described the movements as a rhapsody, scherzo and then an "interlude and hymn" respectively, with the last movement comprising two distinct parts. To him, the slow-fast-slow structure of movements was akin to an impressionist style, or Ives' Concord Sonata. ^[20]

Style

The sonata was composed during what is often seen as Copland's populist period, when he incorporated folk themes into his music to appeal to a wider audience.^[22] In an article for The Musical Quarterly, the composer Arthur Berger wrote in 1945 that the piano sonata could be taken as an "example of Copland's most serious and developed methods" of the time, as opposed to its contemporary works.^[23] The music critic Bayan Northcott agreed with Berger in an article for The Musical Times, providing it as an example contrary to the traditional groupings of Copland's compositions.^[22] He proposed that, along with his Piano Variations, the sonata could be the most prominent shift in piano texture since the compositions of Debussy, Ravel and Bartok.^[22] Berger did find the sonata to be lighter than Copland's similarly styled works, which he attributed to the influence of folk music.^[23] Kirkpatrick agreed, saying the piece "reveal[s] the well-known integrity, purposefulness and formal mastery" of Copland's early works, while avoiding overindulgence in complexity.^[19] Similarly, the musicologist Carol A. Hess considered the sonata a blend of Copland's modernist and populist styles, evidenced by the première’s approval by both mainstream critics and "staunch modernist[s]" like Juan Carlos Paz.^[13]

According to John Kirkpatrick, the sonata is subconsciously an "essentially religious work", detecting contrasts between Bible-like tradition and contemporary agitation. He viewed it as obviously tonal in most cases with mainly consonant harmonies, albeit with some intense dissonances. Movements have an individual similarity and symmetry, but there is an overall progression created by a cyclical use of themes.^[20]

Notes

References

Sources