6 - Tonal elements and their significance in Tippett's Sonata No. 3 for Piano

Summary

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Enthusiasts of Tippett's piano sonatas might be surprised to read the words ‘tonal’ and ‘significance’ in connection with his Third Piano Sonata (1972–3). If the analytically palliative term ‘elements’ is interposed between these two words then their inclusion in the same sentence might at least enter the realms of plausibility. However, to effect the passage from plausibility to validity will necessitate the surmounting of serious, though by no means conclusive, aesthetic and historical objections.

Paul Crossley, who commissioned the sonata and gave its first performance, has commented that in its last movement, or section, ‘the actual pitches of the notes do not matter’, a remark that is more than a little reminiscent of Harrison Birtwistle's self-assessment, though one that arguably befits his more unambiguously modernist approach to composition. Drawing inspiration from the 130-bar palindrome in the sonata's final movement, Crossley pursues his point further by claiming that ‘it would hardly matter if one turned the score upside down and played it that way’. If there is any validity whatsoever to these judgements then the tonal elements uncovered in the sonata, particularly in the last movement, will have the unusual property of invariance not under the logical operation of inversion, but under the graphical operation of being turned upside down!

Consideration of the sonata's chronological context suggests a more ambivalent attitude to the study of tonal elements.