©Boosey & Hawkes/Barry Marsden
The sonata's two short outer movements frame the large and complex central movement - a proportional arrangement MacMillan had already employed in Three Dawn Rituals (1983), an ensemble work for eight players. The short movements therefore come to be seen as prelude and afterthought. Although not immediately apparent, symmetry is central to the sonata's structure: the last movement is constructed as a retrograde of the first, transposed down a semitone (the strange opening to the third movement can thereby be explained by careful listening to the end of the first!) and there are more complex symmetrical relationships at work in the middle movement itself. Any moments of relaxation in the work are shortlived and deceptive. The static first movement sets up an ominous undercurrent that runs through the work until the nervous and somewhat inconclusive chatterings of the sonata's final bars. The second movement breaks out at times into considerable violence in fluctuation with an uneasy stillness. In it,we find features such as the confinement of one hand to black notes and the other to white (often simultaneously, creating chromatic textures); rapid streams of notes grouped in quintuplets, fitting easily under the hand; a vast array of textures deployed, including the differentation of lines through subtle use of the soft pedal (indicated in the score). The pianist John York,
James MacMillan an autobiographical statement he had composed, at a time when his compositional style was changing significantly. The Piano Sonata antedates this quartet, the far more quintessentially modernist period of his output, whereas the smaller piano works all come after it. These two periods cannot be entirely disassociated from each other, however; they share a number of common features, most obviously a predilection for sustained, concentrated stillness, and violent contrasts, as well as the enduring influence of folk music. 5
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who has also recorded the Piano Sonata, has commented that he considers the work to be unidiomatic, and comparing the writing to that in MacMillan's two Cello Sonatas, describes it as "more abstruse, harder to grasp physically and mentally". I do not agree.
y the time I started writing the Piano Sonata in 1998 I had been thinking, for a while, about the possibilities of making works out of two separate parts that would balance one another. In order for this to be effective, I thought, the two parts would have to be more or less selfsufficient, and have their own internal balance: in fact, the first movement has been performed several times as a piece in its own right; the second movement has its own material until near the end when a sort of coda mixes the material from the two movements (albeit inconclusively).
Having established two distinct periods in MacMillan's output, it is interesting to see that his current compositional activity seems to be heading towards a fusion. The music remains less hard-edged and uncompromising, but his use of the piano, in chamber or orchestral contexts, is increasingly reminiscent of the pianistic style of the Piano Sonata. Good examples of this are the piano trio Fourteen Little Pictures (1997) and the two Cello Sonatas (1999 and 2001), all of which have prominent and challenging piano parts. The Cello Sonata No. 1, in particular, shows the composer exploring a new avenue, which had already been hinted at in the orchestral piano parts in works such as the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1996) and Quickening (1999) - namely the use of pure sonorism, through clusters, indeterminacy and extended use of the sustaining pedal to generate massive textures. In this aspect of his composition MacMillan may have been influenced by the Russian composers Galina Ustvolskaya and Alfred Schnittke, both of whom he greatly admires. One may only speculate on what, in solo piano terms, may come next.
People usually want to know about the movements' subtitles. What I had initially had in mind was that the first movement (Variation) was at the same time a set of fairly clearly delineated variations, and a progressive exploration, through variation, of the material of the opening. The second movement (Erosion/Glacial) has two distinct ideas, one of which is made of rather dense but quiet chords, and is gradually “eroded” by the second idea, which has much clearer polyphonic lines spread out across the different registers of the piano (and is “glacial” in character). As for the overall form of the work - two movements of approximately equal length and starkly contrasting character and colour - there is an underlying model for this shape in my main extra-musical passion: hill-walking. The somewhat violent first movement evokes
©2002 Simon Smith 6
