Piano Sonata No. 1 in F‑Sharp Minor

Most of the music of Schumann’s early adulthood consists of piano miniatures, many of them bundled up and published in sets with literary or extra-musical titles. He was aware, though, of the importance of essaying what he termed “the higher forms”—those bequeathed by the Classical quadrumvirate of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and his composing idol, Schubert—and combining his predisposition for technical virtuosity with established intellectual structures. His Piano Sonata No. 1 started out as a miniature: he wrote in 1832 that he had become obsessed with a fandango theme and resolved to compose a Fandango pour le piano. This ultimately became the main section of the sonata’s “Introduzione”, following a billowy slow opening, where it alternates with a pithy marching motif Schumann borrowed from a work by his beloved Clara Wieck, the daughter of his erstwhile piano teacher. In fact the work throughout refers explicitly to Clara and to the two sides of Schumann’s own personality, which he designated Florestan (robust, extrovert) and Eusebius (moody, introspective): when the Sonata was published in 1836, the title-page said only “Pianoforte Sonata, dedicated to Clara by Florestan and Eusebius”, with Schumann’s own name nowhere to be seen. After a brief, chaste “Aria” and a driving “Scherzo”, the finale is once again on a grand scale, impetuous and rhapsodic, showing both of Schumann’s contrasting musical personae and concluding a work he described as “one long cry from the heart” to Clara.