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sounds familiar. It must surely have been this movement in which someone pointed out to the composer a reminiscence of Mendelssohn. "Anyone can find that out," was the rough-and-ready reply of Brahms. But if Mendelssohn be the prevailing influence in the Scherzo, Schubert has his turn in the Trio. The fourth movement is an Intermezzo, entitled "Rückblick" (Retrospect). The opening phrase, and indeed the whole of the short movement, carries us back to the picture of the lovers. Some change has taken place: have the lovers grown cold? or has death divided them? The themes are now sad, and clothed in minor harmonies. The Finale, perhaps, shows skill rather than inspiration; with regard to some of the subject-matter, it is, like the previous movement, also retrospective.
Liszt's sonata in B minor, dedicated to Robert Schumann, was evidently written under the special influence of Beethoven's later sonatas,—perhaps more particularly the one in A flat, Op. 110. There is by no means unanimity of opinion among musicians with regard to Liszt's merit as a composer; some consider that his genius has not yet been properly recognised; others, that he will not for a moment bear comparison with any one of the great masters who preceded him, and who wrote for the pianoforte. Among his works which have specially given rise to discussion stands this B minor Sonata, which has proved a stumbling-block, both on account of its form and its contents. It would simplify matters if the one could be discussed without the other; this, however, is not possible.
We have hitherto considered the sonata of three movements as typical, and from that type Liszt's work differs; yet not "so widely, as on a first hearing or reading may appear." Thus wrote Mr. C.A. Barry in a remarkably interesting analysis of the sonata which he prepared some years back for Mr. Oscar Beringer. He remarks further: "All the leading characteristics of a sonata in three movements are here fully maintained within the scope of a single movement, or, to speak more precisely, an uninterrupted succession of several changes of tempo, thus constituting a more complete organism than can be attained by three distinct and independent movements."
The idea of passing from one movement to another without break dates from Emanuel Bach, nay, earlier, from Kuhnau; and Beethoven occasionally adopted it, and with striking effect. The wretched habit at concerts of applauding between the movements of a sonata establishes a break where—at any rate in certain sonatas of Beethoven—the composer certainly imagined an uninterrupted succession. The second movement of the "Appassionata" breaks off with an arpeggio chord of diminished seventh, and the Finale starts on the same chord. Yet surely after the final tonic chord of the opening Allegro there should be no break, but only a brief pause. A fermata in the middle of a movement does not constitute a break, neither need it at the end. In Beethoven's sonatas we find many movements, outwardly independent, yet inwardly connected; those of the D minor and F minor may be named by way of illustration. The composer, however, in one or two of his works, revived, to some extent, the plan adopted in the suites of early times, of evolving various movements from one theme. Such outward connection may help to strengthen a bond of union already existing, but it will not establish it. The question, then, of Liszt's "more complete organism" depends, after all, on the contents of the music. So, too, when, in addition to uninterrupted succession, Liszt makes the one theme of the slow introduction the source whence he derives the principal part of his tone-picture, everything depends on the quality and latent power of this fertilising germ. Discussion of form per se is an impossibility. This Liszt sonata stands, however, as a bold attempt to modify a form which, as we have seen, Schumann thought exhausted (was it for that reason that Liszt dedicated the work to him?), and one in which so many soulless compositions were written during the second quarter of the present century. "La sonate," says Charles Soullier in his Nouveau Dictionnaire de Musique Illustré "est morte avec le dix-huitième siècle qui en a tant produit." Is Liszt's sonata a Phoenix rising from its ashes? Shall we be able to say "La sonate est morte! Vive la sonate!" Time will tell. Hitherto Liszt's work has not borne fruit.