Piano Sonata no.3 in C-sharp minor, Third Movement, Allegro agitato

This is the third and final movement of my Piano Sonata no.3 in C-sharp minor. It’s probably the most perplexing movement of music I have ever composed. For me it’s a struggle between Beethovenian heaviness (Es muss sein!) v.s. Unbearable lightness of blues (trying to imitate the style). Even though the first and second movement of the same Sonata has been commented as “random” before, I believe this one the most random of all haha. I once challenged myself whether to keep the eclecticism of the movement or not, but decided to leave it unchanged since all the styles were what I was thinking of and feeling at the moment.

Here are the previous movements posted on YC before:

1st mov:

2nd mov:

Piano Sonata no.3 in C-sharp minor 3rd mov.pdf

The structure of the movement is a bit weird for me. It’s in Sonata form but the exposition and recapitulation never leave tonic key C-sharp minor at all, as the contrast of the 1st and 2nd subject is not achieved by key, but by style. In fact I only realized I was going for a Sonata form only when I almost finished the development section. Here is the structure of the movement:

0:00 Exposition, 1st Subject, 1st Theme: The falling fourth motive attacks immediately at the start of the movement in a passionate fashion, reminding himself of the pain he suffered after the more serene 2nd mov. It cools down in 0:31 and even keeps denying (or rather me denying my own sadness) by German sixth harmonic progressions, instead of normal dominant-tonic progression.

0:59 Exposition, 1st Subject, 2nd Theme: A deliberately repressed theme consisting of the inversion of a fourth, i.e. fifth, later gets more agitated with the Chopin Revolutionary Etude like L.H. accompaniment. It keeps on boiling until reaching the transition. I got crazy there thus I wanna try escaping…

2:28 Exposition, 2nd Subject: This section is made of 12 bar blues elements, thx to Arjuna’s @expert21 suggestion, although I already originally wanted some nihilistic jazz elements to contrast with the heavier 1st Subject. The pattern is repeated thrice, first just the “accompaniment”, then with the falling fourth motive theme added, and lastly an “electric-guitar-like” melody thx to of course my buddy Vince @Thatguy v2.0, as I won’t ever try to write something in jazz without his piano preludes. The locrian melody of course is a quotation from the 2nd mov opening!

3:46 Development, 1st Part: The opening falling fourth motive attacks again and modulates to keys I didn’t where it would go when composing lol, and finally reaches C# Locrian which confuses even me! It ends with a bridge of the locrian in L.H. quoting a little of the blues theme to the next part.

4:48 Development, 2nd Part: This part first develops the 2nd theme of 1st subject, then ends in confusion again. Suddenly a new theme emerges in the distant E-flat major and repeats again in relative major E major in a more passionate manner, until it boils down to a marvellously passionate retransition in 6:39 which I believe is the most beautiful section of the entire movement. It’s by composing this passage that I knew my creative power had finally come back. The passage ends in a desolation which leads back to the recap.

7:17 Recapitulation, 1st Subject, 1st part: A weird section. I finally could not refuse to admit my sadness by having a normal dominant-tonic progression, but still tried to escape by quoting the reminiscence of the blues themes like in a film montage jump cut in a Godard style (or, Stravinskian juxtaposition).

8:40 Recapitulation, 1st Subject, 2nd part: The 2nd theme of the expo 1st subject reappears in the L.H., and then a beautiful variation which I was probably laughing at myself for my weakness. The music goes on and gets more agitated until going to the 2nd subject.

9:32 Recapitulation, 2nd Subject: The previous “light-hearted” blues theme is transformed to an enraged Rachmanioffian roar. It subsequently cools down and tries to go for hope in the coda.

10:18 Coda, 1st Part: I tried to find peace by quoting the beautiful theme in the development plus 2nd mov’s 1st theme in counterpoint, repeat twice, 1st time in major and 2nd time pentatonic. The Locrian theme in the exposition is then transformed to a pentatonic plus the blue note of flattened sixth, signifying my attempt to find peace…

11:16 Coda, 2nd Part: However it’s futile. I realized that my sadness could not be “transcended”, at least not here, and finally realized my pain. The heavy falling fourth motive keeps attacking, and finally I was able to make a simple dominant-tonic chord progression to admit my pain, when the question is laid unanswered from the beginning of the entire sonata. The movement and the whole Sonata ended in utter desolation, as I had no energy anymore to fight as in the 1st mov and 2rd mov, nor create an imaginary utopia for myself as in 2nd mov and 3rd mov…

The movement was primarily composed from Dec 2024 to Jan 2025, under a state of depression and confusion, due to what I had suffered in my full time job. I struggled a lot whether I should have a happy or sad ending for the whole sonata, but my mind gave me the answer. I could not pretend to be happy or hopeful at that time by forcing a meaningless Picardy-3rd at the end as in many of the Romantic Sonatas or pieces. I had to admit my sadness then. Paradoxically by doing that, I left all the negatives here so I had the 200% positiveness for my Sextet, which is my best piece and probably the most optimistic piece I ever composed.

I tried my best at playing the movement already despite some slips haha. Hope you enjoy the movement and even go back to the 1st movement to listen to the whole Sonata! Thank you for listening,and possibly reading through this and commenting!!!!!

Btw, here's Vince Preludes which inspire me:

Prelude no.7:

Prelude no.9:

Prelude no.3:

Henry

Hey @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu!

Really great job!  My favorite part has to be measure 81 marked "Nihilistically Scherzando" and whenever that reoccurs.  It kinda reminds me of the following excerpt from Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.3 - 1st movement.  I know you don't like piano concertos since you think the interaction between the piano and the orchestra is too adversarial, but if there's one thing I wish you tried to compose sometime in the future is a piano concerto.  With your piano skills you could even play your own concerto and record your performance and mix it into the orchestral rendition!  I'm sure it would be awesome.  Btw - did you accidentally include two links to the 2nd movement of this sonata up above?  Thanks for sharing!  I will listen to the entire thing one of these days and hopefully give it a more thorough review.

Hey Peter, thx for your quick review!

23 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Really great job!  My favorite part has to be measure 81 marked "Nihilistically Scherzando" and whenever that reoccurs.

I don't know how on earth do I get the idea from, maybe from playing the naughty @Thatguy v2.0's preludes haha 🤪! But I really love that passage too!

23 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

It kinda reminds me of the following excerpt from Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No.3 - 1st movement.

This is wonderful and 10 times better than mine lol!

23 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I know you don't like piano concertos since you think the interaction between the piano and the orchestra is too adversarial, but if there's one thing I wish you tried to compose sometime in the future is a piano concerto.  With your piano skills you could even play your own concerto and record your performance and mix it into the orchestral rendition!  I'm sure it would be awesome.

I will if you commision me to write one and play me $99999999999999999999999999999! But I have to know how to orchestrate first of course!

23 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Btw - did you accidentally include two links to the 2nd movement of this sonata up above?

Yup, stupid me! I removed it immediately and thought no one would notice it, but thx to you everyone knows!!!!

23 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I will listen to the entire thing one of these days and hopefully give it a more thorough review.

Waiting for your book-length review!

Henry

I'll put the most notable parts of your movement in bullet points. Then I'll give you my thoughts at the end.

• Very powerful intro, that hooks right into your motif from the first movement.
• I definitely am getting strong Chopin vibes from 1:00 - 2:25.
• The blues section was definitely surprising to me, but it was a really fun section! 
• Then we get brief hints of Rachmaninoff at 4:30.
• At 5:30, this is a nice change of melody. Love how the right hand and left hand share the melody here.
• 6:40 looks brutal, 16ths notes against 16th notes at that tempo? I remember you telling me that this part was definitely as hard as it looks!
• Then you take the first motif from mov 1 and merge with the blues style, which is very fun.
• At 8:40, you have a nice variation of one of your first melodies, which is my favorite part.
• Then at 10:20, we have the return of the pentatonic! Without a doubt, the most most relaxing part of this piece, a nice contrast to the rest of your movement which is mostly energetic and fast paced.
• Love how the ending brings us back to your main motif from first movement again in powerful octaves.

I think this piece can teach us that music is more than just melody or harmony. It's also about structure and storytelling. And this is something that can only come from the heart and the creative mind. The fact that I was able to categorize your piece into the above bullet points shows us how well organized this movement is. You use familiar styles to convey your message, but you also broke out of your comfort zone with the blues style. The reason why this was so effective, is because you didn't go overboard, you gave it to us in small bite sizes. Very beautiful work, and excellent performance!

Chopin background with difficulties within difficulties

the transition to the blues section was impressive. the reversion less so imo. but then I have no solutions

I also felt the 2nd movement theme is a bit out of place in the middle of the piece, but then you do need it being there to prime for the coda for this theme to come out one last time