Two works by Richard Wagner -- the overtures to Rienzi and Tannhäuser -- are on my list of "Top 100" classical music favorites. Of course, there are many other pieces by Wagner that I enjoy as well, so for this week I thought I would find an orchestral work by him that I was not familiar with, and then listen to that; however, that task didn't turn out to be all that easy.
I found this list, HERE, of compositions by Wagner, and there wasn't a lot to pick from under the heading "Other Orchestral Works," so I opted to select one of his piano works instead, the "Grand Sonata in A Major." Two piano sonatas are on my "Top 100" list -- Beethoven's #8 and Mozart's #16 -- and others could have easily made the inventory -- for example, Beethoven's #14 and #23 -- so I thought why not give a sonata by Wagner a try? I mean, he wrote such grand pieces -- like Rienzi and Tannhäuser -- and just the title alone for the Grand Sonata in A Major sounded, well, grand. The sonata was composed in 1832, when Wagner was just 19 years old, and it is comprised of three movements:
And was the “Grand Sonata” grand? Well, yes, in just the way I imagine a “grand” sonata would be written by a nineteen-year-old student in an advanced composition class if challenged to compose a "grand" sonata. Of course, I’m not saying that Wagner was a student in an advanced composition class at the time he composed the piece nor that he was directed to complete such an assignment. I’m just saying the piece has all the hallmarks of a composition by such a student striving to make a work sound grandiose. There’s a great deal of pounding throughout the work, and there are plenty of plodding chords in the base. There seems to be an attempt to emulate revered composers’ works of the time – in this case, Beethoven (the first movement certainly calls to mind Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, though with a three note motif versus four) and Carl Maria von Weber (in the final movement). There are trills and flourishes galore (particularly in the finale) – and there are plenty of runs and broken chords a la Clementi. So again, was Wagner's Grand Sonata grand? As a piece composed by a 19-year-old, yes. Compared to the mature, resplendent and transcendent later works by Wagner? No.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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