piano sonata

Since its publication in 1990, the First Piano Sonata of Carl Vine (b. 1954) has been enthusiastically received by critics, performers, and general audiences worldwide.  One recording review portrayed the sonata as “one of the most significant works in the form since the great Piano Sonata of Elliott Carter.”  It has been performed and recorded by Michael Kieran Harvey, the sonata’s dedicatee and the Grand Prix winner of history’s most lucrative piano competition, the 1993 Ivo Pogorelich Competition; by Armenian pianist Sergei Babayan and his pupil Caroline Hong; and by Joyce Yang, silver medalist in the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.  As one of the most widely performed and commissioned composers in Australia, Carl Vine is considered both a first-rate performer and one of the most articulate and gifted composers Australia has produced.  He remarks in an interview, “I fitted into that 20 minutes every technique, every gesture that I had in me for the piano,” and in another interview, “The work that currently enjoys the most evident critical approval would have to be my First Piano Sonata.”

While much has been written about Carter’s Piano Sonata and its predecessor, Ives’ Concord Sonata, there has been little writing devoted to Vine’s First Piano Sonata.  There is still no work that examines how Vine pays tribute to his original musical influences, or how he synthesizes these ingredients into an original artistic language through the piano.  In other words, the limited research on Carl Vine’s music tends to ignore its eclecticism.  Such an eclectic character can be found in the music of George Rochberg, William Bolcom, Alfred Schnittke, Frederic Rzewski, and many others.  Along the lines first boldly laid by Stravinsky, they create their idioms from very diverse sources, assimilating and transforming them into their own language.  In learning and performing contemporary works such as Carl Vine’s First Piano Sonata, it is essential to know where the influences come from, and what makes its eclecticism so special, especially for performers who have a limited contemporary repertoire.  Therefore, in order to better understand Carl Vine’s compositional and pianistic language in this sonata, and to stimulate performers’ creative thoughts for analyzing and performing this work, I intend to examine this work in terms of its root influences, the significance of its eclecticism, the performance practice relating to its extreme pianism, and the pedagogical issues it raises.  By fusing stylistic analysis with performance practice considerations and pedagogical concerns, this dissertation will provide performers, teachers and composers with a study guideline of this work, and perhaps will serve as a model for studying contemporary music by looking at a work not only from the angle of its score, but also from the angles mentioned above.