Rovshan Mamedkuliev performs Nikita Koshkin's Guitar Sonata II for solo guitar (complete), and I discuss the sonata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak3JegZMAGc 

I haven't managed to link to performances of Nikita Koshkin's two big guitar sonatas over the years.  It's time I fixed that.  I've wanted to discuss this sonata for years and now I figure since I have a recording that’s available from Naxos; have the score; and there's a publicly accessible video of the entire performed piece there's no time like the present.  So here we go, a discussion of Sonata II for solo guitar by Nikita Koshkin, which is published by Editions Margaux.

https://www.edition-margaux.com/en/de/sonata-ii

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I. Allegro moderato (00:00 to 07:07) 

II. Adagio - Con moto (07:08 to 13:24) 

III. Allegro (13:26 to 18:09) 

So let's jump into this sonata and if you have the score on you this will go more easily for you.

I. Allegro moderato (sonata form)

The opening theme is a 12-bar blues. It doesn't "look" like a blues and if you're a purist it won't sound like one but it's got the hallmarks of a blues. If you didn't know this already Koshkin made no secret of hearing Led Zeppelin but I'll let you find Gregory Cain Budds' Nikita Koshkin: Insights Into Compositional Process and Style however you can. I discovered it back around 2007 and blogged about it only too briefly. Go grab this book!

https://books.google.com/books/about/Nikita_Koshkin.html?id=A5jFNwAACAAJ

Which is to say, Led Zeppelin is in Koshkin's wheelhouse of listening. So Theme 1 is pretty literally the first 12 bars of the first movement with an appendix phrase from measures 13-15. In a blues this would be the turn-around after the V to I conclusion that prepares for whatever comes next. In this case what comes next is a transition. This is probably painfully obvious to many of my readers but I am saying it anyway, in the early 21st century blues how so saturated global music that you can't even listen to a contemporary guitar sonata for classical guitar written by one of Russia's most prominent guitarist composers and understand what's going on it if you have no familiarity of any kind with blues. There, I said it, now we'll move along to ...

The transition begins at measure 16 (00:44) and ends at measure 27 (01:10). If you're already familiar with Koshkin there's not much to say about this particularly but I suppose I might want to mention that in guitar sonatas there's a long tradition of having transitions that are more active than the themes in terms of rhythm and figuration. Koshkin's transition bursts forth with a super-expanded range of notes and sixteenth note riffs but it slowly and steadily winds down. Someone like Matiegka would have a flashy and buoyant transition that built UP to the arrival of a paradoxically lyric theme (Grand Sonata I, which I've discussed elsewhere back in 2015 and later in 2016 and along the way I had a full score of the first movement of GS I). A more through discussion of that sonata is something I want to do later this year drawing on earlier work. Before I get side-tracked further, the busy transition leading to a lyric second theme is a trope in guitar music and it's not a bad thing. Koshkin has given us a lively 12-bar blues for theme 1 and a spritely transition that winds down to the arrival of Theme 2 at measure 28.

Theme 2 is a lyric, melancholy theme in G minor (basically) played with tremolo from measures 28 through 48 (01:11 to 02:17). The contrast between the compact and aggressive first theme and this lyric second theme could not be starker in terms of mood.  In that sense it's "textbook" but something that textbook explications of thematic contrasts in sonatas can leave out is that the "punctuation" of first and second themes can be different (and should be according to 18th century aesthetics and treatises on form but I'm hoping to save a discussion of Journeys through Galant Expositions for later).

The main thing is that there's something about how Theme 2 is presented that presents a structural contrast to Theme 1.  If we're talking about a monothematic sonata form the distinctions could be simple but they need to be blunt.  Was theme 1 in minor?  Theme 2 can be theme 1 in parallel major.  Was theme 1 on top?  Bring back theme 1 as "theme 2" in a lower voice and change the accompanying figuration.  You can have a stringently single-themed sonata provided you highlight contrasts around that idea.  That's not what Koshkin did here, of course, he had a dramatically contrasting second theme that is melancholy and expansive as a contrast to the brisk blues.  

He also has his second theme in G minor rather than the "usual" F major or A minor or A major.  In "textbook" sonata forms if you start in D minor you would supposedly need to go to one of those three mentioned keys.  But in the 21st century key contrast is not as important.  Angelo Gilardino's late 20th century guitar sonatas don't use key contrasts at all.  Gilardino relied on thematic contrasts in terms of character and phrasing to ... wait ... let me stop myself from going down that path because I'm trying to point out that  one of the reasons Hepokoski and Darcy's Elements works so well is that even if they developed the idea to explain 18th century sonatas you can draw on those ideas to discuss even 21st century sonatas.  If the rhetoric and structure of thematic progressions is retained (i.e. Theme 1, Theme 2, Theme 3 then Theme 1, Theme 2 and Theme 3 and Theme 1 ... ) then the memory of your listener is primed to hear the "rotation" of the order of the themes regardless of whether the tonal or pitch zones fit "textbook" sonata forms.  Mnemonic devices such as "rotation" can work whether or not you obey "the rules" that were post hoc formulated by 19th century theorists.  

So we've got this established.  First theme (D minor) is a blues with a spunky transition that steadily and progressively winds down to allow for the arrival of a lyric, somber G minor theme with tremolo to bring out the long sustained notes of the melody).  A second transition goes from measures 49 to 51 (02:17 to 02:28).  This transition is a burst of ideas from the first transition that briefly seems to threaten that we're going to go into a development.  Nope, this is a feint, and it leads to Theme 3 at measure 52. 

Theme 3 goes from measures 52 to the first half of measure 59.  This is a chorale in G minor and it's a three-phrase theme built on, this might surprise you, one of the barest bones tropes in all of guitar music, the Andalusian cadence.  It's G, F, E flat and D in the bass, followed by D, C, B flat and A, which is followed by a reprise of the former lick.  The gentle but bleak melody up drops down to D natural to outline a triad that lands on the fifth of G minor just when the bass and harmony hit E flat, which creates a penultimate harmony in the phrase of E flat major seventh, but if you have ears to hear, there's no denying this is an Andalusian cadence-based Theme 3.  It's also short.  By 03:00 in (second half of measure 59, roughly) Koshkin is subjecting Theme 3 to ornamental development that reaches a firm cadence in G minor at measure 68 (03:27). I've mentioned this as something that happened in Beethoven's Op. 111 piano sonata, but some composers shift the weight of thematic development to zones outside the development.  Koshkin doesn't have a particularly big development section in this opening sonata form but he doesn't need one because he's put developing variations on his three themes inside the exposition and recapitulation zones.

So a development here can be proportionally small (and not explicitly marked out in the score by a double bar-line signal since Koshkin favors what Hepokoski might call a "continuous" exposition that has no real "medial caesura".  The development, as I see it and hear it, is a tiny stretch from measures 68-85!  There are hints and allusions to Theme 1 and scraps of Theme 3 but the development here is kind of a big build up passage that gets us back to Theme 1 and is not the kind of development that theory teachers in undergrad courses would ever pick as an example of "this is how you do it".  But there it is.

The recapitulation of Theme 1 runs from measures 86 to 98 (04:19 to 04:49) and Koshkin's opening blues theme has returned.  Only this time it's not even blues.  Koshkin has dramatically revised Theme 1 and develops it in new ways within the recapitulation zone.  The simplicity of the 12-bar blues realization of the idea is thrown aside and Koshkin develops a call and response contrapuntal variation on his material.  There is also no "retransition". Remember how I mentioned there was a "turn-around" in Theme 1 in the exposition?  Here there is no transition and Theme 1 is recomposed so that it resolves seamlessly into the return of Theme 2, which shows up at measure 99 and is now in D minor (04:51).

Theme 2 runs from measures 99 to 117 (04:51 to 05:50) and leads into the return of Theme 3 which is now in D minor.  Theme 3 runs from measures 118 to 124 (05:51 to 06:18) in the recapitulation.  Given that in its expositional form Theme 3 was such a skeletal Andalusian cadential peroration, and so short, you might wonder what Koshkin would do with it now? Will he present it as starkly as he did in the exposition?  No, he has a little surprise here, which is that as each phrase of Theme 3 ends there are commentaries in an inner voice evoking riffs from Theme 1.  Here, too, he's continuously recomposing and extending his material in the recapitulation rather than having done much with it in the development section.  I hope by now you have seen and heard why I have made a point of comparing how Koshkin plays with his material in his opening sonata form with how Beethoven played with his material in his last piano sonata, both composers shifting the weight of developmental processes into the expositional and recapitulational regions of their sonata forms and away from what would be the "expected" development section in the middle. 

Measures 125 to 134 (06:19 to 07:07) brings back the pulsing block chord motif from the development section as a kind of "theme 4" that rounds things off.  Hepokoski and Darcy might call this a big double rotation sonata form that hews to Type 3 structuring, at the risk of laying out contemporary formal analytical theories.  In Elements of Sonata Theory Hepokoski and Darcy explain that what a rotation is is a sequence of themes that are presented in a specific order.  Themes 1, 2 and 3 are presented in sequence.  If themes 1 through 3 are presented sequentially in a development section or two of the three themes, that can count as another "rotation", more or less.  If Themes 1 through 3 come back in the recapitulation zone, however much changed, that counts as a second rotation.  If themes 2 and 3 come back but not Theme 1 (here I'm thinking specifically of Simon Molitor's Op.7 guitar sonata) then the rotation is incomplete and this is where and why Hepokoski and Darcy call something a Type 2 sonata that doesn't have a recapitulation because it doesn't have the proverbial "double return".  Koshkin's sonata form, however, does have a double return. 

Not all sonata forms have it but many of them do. I want to digress into Yoel Greenberg's How Sonata Forms here but I'm trying to resist the temptation to rabbit trail into a bunch of books I've read or been reading.  Still, Greenberg's book is new and a big part of his "bottom up" approach to analyzing forms involves pointing out three different elements that can show up in sonatas and how not all of them show up across all examples.  We should not expect every sonata form to have a "double return",  whether because Theme 1 doesn't come back at all or because it comes back in a strange way.  I'm going to keep on this rabbit trail by reference to my past writing on these kinds of things.  

A warped "double return" is when Theme 1 doesn't come back in the key in which it first appeared.  Theme 1 may come back in a recapitulation but come back in an ostentatiously wrong key.  Wenzel Matiegka did this in his funny Op. 31 No. 1 sonata in C major by having Theme 1 start in C major in the exposition but it shows up in A major in the recapitulation and modally mutates into A minor before finally only recapitulating "properly" in C major in the second half of theme 1.  The absence of a "double return" doesn't mean there has been no recapitulation and this is where I simply differ with Hepokoski and Darcy.  But where I find their theory useful, I use it, and the idea of double rotation to describe what has happened in the first movement of Koshkin's Guitar Sonata No. II is useful indeed!

Something I want to point out about the nature of Themes 1, 2 and 3 in Koshkin's opening sonata movement is that Themes 1 and 3 are very simple and compact while Theme 2 is large and comparatively diffuse.  Because the differentiation between and across themes is very clear the exposition and recapitulation are memorable and effective.  What's interesting about the recapitulation is how little transitional materials there are.  Koshkin writes in a way where there isn't a strong demarcation between formal units in terms of transitions and, arguably, there are no retransitions as much as there are eliding cadential points of prior themes into the start of new themes.  The winding down of Theme 1 becomes the start of Theme 2 and so on.  

So that was our discussion of movement 1.

II. Adagio - Con moto

Theme 1a  (07:08 to 08:26) A minor  [refrain]
Theme 2    (08:27 to 09:10) C major [episode]
Theme 1b  (09:11 to 10:00) A minor  [refrain]
Theme 3    (10:01 to 11:28) E minor  [episode]
Theme 1c  (11:29 to 13:24) A minor  [refrain/coda]

Having written thousands of words about the first movement I don’t want to overwhelm a reader with too much about the second movement.  This slow movement can be thought of as … a five-part rondo?  Did I really just write that?  The music “can” be heard as a giant ternary form with an A minor, C major, A minor section and there’s a new theme that shows up in E minor before a truncated/revised opening theme comes back … but savvy readers will point out that  if the thematic groups are A minor, C major, A minor, E minor and A minor and each section is identifiable in its own right why don’t we just call it a five-part rondo that happens to be a slow middle movement instead of a lively finale?  Yeah, let’s do that.  For people who are used to the notion that a five-part rondo is a closing movement having the central slow movement of a sonata be a rondo is a pretty big subversion of expectations.  We might expect an aria (ABA) or a set of variations and there are slow sonata forms but we get none of those.  I highlight this because it’s such an unusual move on Koshkin’s part and because if you listen to it, and particularly if read through the movement with score in hand I think you’ll understand why I’ve decided to describe this movement as simply as I have and in the way I have.  It’s a fun slow movement but if you’re reading about a sonata online I can’t really be expected to convey what the emotional content of a guitar sonata is to you and I am not given to purple prose that tries to invoke all kinds of extra-musical or non-musical ideas to impress upon you the grandeur or solemnity or melancholy or this or that of a guitar sonata I like.  I’m not Hoffmann and the world doesn’t need another one of those anyway.

III. Allegro

This finale is simultaneously menacing and violent yet also very funny.  I think that Shostakovichian ambivalence might be hard for some listeners to relate to because they may perceive the menace and the violence but not the humor. 

This is an abstruse take on the finale but I have looked through the score a few times and suggest we hear it as a kind of variation form with different forms of a single theme.  I'd call it a double variation movement but the tricky part is that the choppy theme and the lyric theme are audibly derived from the same core materials.  It might be easiest to say the double variation element comes from having an initial version of the theme calling back to theme 1 from the sonata and the secondary variation invoking elements of theme 3 from the sonata.  I've got the score in front of me and perhaps you don't.  Don't feel like you have to take me word for it.  It's just that since so far as I know no one in the English-speaking and English-writing world has attempted to write this much about Koshkin's second sonata I'm kind of winging it this weekend.  

The opening theme from measures 1 through 12.  Between 13:26 and 13:45 we get a staccato reprise of the initial blues theme but there are two things off about it.  The first is that each phrase begins with a single measure burst of chromatic passage work followed by a measure and a half of silence before there is a pizzicato, quiet response to the initial burst.  This happens on i and iv in D minor before presenting a V version of the sequence that resolves to i.  It's a theme that simultaneously lurches forward yet kills its own momentum with large pauses followed by quiet answers to large, loud single-measure calls.  

Where the turn-around phrase was in theme 1 in the first movement there's a chromatic run-up to a new theme at measure 13 that starts at 13:45. This, too, can be heard as a a variant of the opening blues theme that has room for singing, sustained tones--measures 13 to 22.  The end of this theme elides with the return of the opening material, which comes back at measure 23 (14:07).  Now what was the opening gesture becomes a closing gesture as well as a push toward a new point of arrival.  Think of the self-interrupting theme as now having the role of both theme and transition and we zip along to a firm arrival at A minor in measure 34 (14:23).  This long-notes melody floats about violent figuration with rhythmic echoes of the third theme "chorale" from the first movement before landing squarely on the primary theme the finale keeps coming back to at measure 41 (14:38).

I'm going to skip ahead to measure 66 (15:22). Here the dotted rhythm marching theme comes back and now has the opening chromatic serpentine runs going up and down in an inner voice as the melody floats above a low pulsing D pedal tone.  The dramatic effect in play here is whether we'll finally get a melody that is allowed to run its course without being interrupted or commented upon by the chromatic riffs that permeate the finale.  

At measure 84 (18:38) Koshkin gives us thematic material that relies on the pulse of eighth notes.  The sixteenth note runs have dropped out. From measure 84 to 110 there's not a sixteenth note to be heard.  There's a steady dominant pedal point nested in an inner voice through this whole passage as a new kind of chorale with antiphonal response theme emerges that we hear from 18:38 to 

Well, okay there's a subdominant pedal at measure 102 (16:39).  This is a deceptive cadence to B flat with an added sixth and an upper voice augmented fourth (B flat, F natural, G and E natural).  The G pulses away as contrapuntal call and response passage works builds up to an explosive D minor chord at measure 110 (16:56).  Here we finally get the chromatic blues riff back but it's in eighth notes rather than sixteenth notes.  This is the big finale variation, the Great Gate of Kiev, if you will from Pictures at an Exhibition.  And so this variation goes from measure 110 to measure 120 where, at measure 121 after, we're back to the earlier opening form of the theme.  This is the reprise of the head tune if this were a jazz piece.  The finale ends with a burst of D's on three strings that are followed, once again, by a quiet pizzicato answer of the same material.  That contrast between explosive open strings and pizzicato responses has guided the finale from start to finish.  Koshkin has given us a finale that continuously calls back to thematic elements in a variation finale that first appeared as ideas in the opening sonata form.  He does it in such an abstract way that if you don't have the score in front of you you won't like catch this, or you'll hear it if you have trained yourself to hear these kinds of cyclical call backs.  Mileage may vary. 

So, I hope you've enjoyed listening to Nikita Koshkin's Sonata II for solo guitar.  I've wanted to write about this sonata for years but life and events didn't lend opportunities earlier and it slipped my mind.  I hope to have finally done some justice to Koshkin's second guitar sonata.  Later I hope to tackle writing about the first one but for now the second has gotten a discussion.  

Regular readers will know it's been a few years since I wrote about Koshkin's music and last time I did was a pretty serious marathon of going through the first half of 24 Preludes and Fugues.

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/03/scgs-newsletter-has-review-of-cds-by.html

I look forward to the second half being recorded and writing about that as opportunity should arise. 

Molitor Op. 7 Grand Sonata, movement 1: observations about the development and the recapitulation of Themes 2 and 3 without Theme 1

The development section begins with embellishments derived from the modulating transition. Eventually we get to material in G minor derived from Theme 1. The development, not particularly long, draws most from Theme 1 and the modulating transition before preparing the recapitulation section.

Molitor Op. 7 Grand Sonata movement 1: initial observations about the exposition themes

Simon Molitor's Op. 7 Grand Sonata, first movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOCS3kB5vAM

At the risk of being every so slightly lazy I'm not bothering to analyze the introduction. It's an introduction and so it does what it's supposed to do.  Instead I mean to discuss the exposition, development and recapitulation of Molitor's Op. 7 guitar sonata.

A survey of early 19th century guitar sonatas, starting at the end with this year's reading on sonata forms and a preliminary proposal about recapitulatory processes in sonata forms

ELEMENTS OF SONATA THEORY:
Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth Century Sonata
James Hepokoski & Warren Darcy
Copyright (c) 2006 by Oxford University Press
ISBN-13:978-0-19-977391-6

CLASSICAL FORM:
A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
William E. Caplin
Copyright (c) 1998 by Oxford University Press
ISBN 978-0-19-510480-6
ISBN 978-0-19-514399-7

Five years ago, when I was blogging about "an overview of structural concerns in the sonata forms of Sor, Giuliani, and Diabelli" I was unfamiliar with either of these books or their authors.  I only discovered these two books in the last year thanks to a couple of doctoral dissertations on the guitar sonatas of Sor (and Giuliani, in one of the cases) that can be read over here:


https://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/268374/1/azu_etd_12490_sip1_m.pdf

http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1889&context=oa_dissertations

The two books are treasure troves of study for 18th century sonata forms and they have different strengths and weaknesses.  The strength of the Caplin book is that Caplin explored each level of formal development in a sonata form; whether it's the four to eight-measure sentence or period, or compound thematic modules at the lower level; or ranging up to the highest intra-movement and multi-movement cyclical patterns.  The weakness is that such a general survey of music can skip over interesting details such as variants of forms.