Composing A Piano Sonata For My Wife

Last year I started by composing a Piano Sonata for my wife Miriam to give her for her birthday. Miriam is a skilled pianist and educator, she also has perfect pitch so when she's in a choir it usually holds the key.

An interesting aspect of our relationship is that we attended the same music school, and had the same piano teacher. But eight years apart she is almost nine years younger than me. ( Both of our fathers were also priests in the Swedish Lutheran church, and had fabulous tenor singing voices!)

The Sonata is not the first piece I wrote for her, Part two of my Heavenly Mechanics suite is also composed for her and was given as a morning gift to her on our wedding day.

My Piano Sonata No. I - INNIO

First movement
I wanted back in the days to be able to compose a Piano Sonata but didn't seem to have the skill to fill it fully. I had almost three movements of what could have been when on the hard drive that crashed. But since that was lost, I had no idea how to start so I started Like this:

The theme is then repeated one octave high and with added thirds and fourths, that's repeated and then finally yet another octave higher focusing on fourths adding chords in the left hand. It then crescents into chords, leading into theme number two:

Theme two builds up to a crescendo where the accented figure is played in chords in both hands, leading into a sotto vocce part before going into then a repeat of the first theme, and the second theme that leads into a coda.

Movement two

The Adiagio, Miriam called it when she heard it first: "This your Ballade Pour Adeline composition"

It starts very silently with (if possible) una corda, which means the piano only uses one string of the usual three strings that are combined. The unevenness of the 5/4 beat makes it feel like you're waiting for something to happen.
Then the theme appears and it has a very romantic feel to it, It's repeated three times while it builds up with a more and more chord structure attached to it. After the culmination, the theme is played backward (I didn't do this intentionally, it just happened so). This also crescents and goes back adding a triplet on the first bass note to make it move more as the composition slowly descends into a niente (nothing) ending the adagio with a broken Ab13#11/C chord. Personally, I think this will be one of my most popular compositions, that people will play and use in their concert programs. Miriam performed it at a concert at the beginning of June 2024.

Movement Three

Although it has a beat of 7/8 I wanted the the movement to have the feeling of more jazzy, with a slight gospel piano feeling. You are the judge of how well I succeeded!

Movement Four

This movement is intended in a small way to be an homage to composers like J.S. Bach and other classic composers.

But it also reprises in varied ways themes from the other movements. BUT, hey, what's this?

In a way, it completes the Pianosonta and leads to a final repeat of the first theme from the first movement slightly altered, ending in a ritardando and the Piano Sonata ends with Db chord.

NB. *The name of the Sonata is also INNIO, meaning in this case Tenderness, or affection. *

You can find it here:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6avM5JxG5lNWou0tNDmujf?si=8HoGLwN_STSuMibEL-Ub_Q

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kndPAok6y6HzBR-T-ZAEVD4xJDAV3-bfo&si=FvyLNYei9Tb7Bqbf