Development Of The Romantic Period Piano Sonatas

The "piano sonatas", one of the most important, dominant, and widely used themes in music composition, can be dated back to300years ago, and had become perfection in the creation of Beethoven. Under the background of the19th century, composers in the "Romantic period" paid great attention to the individualism, focused much on the expression of inner feelings, created without any bondage, required individual liberation, and focused on the personality. Due to the development of the individualism and personality, many new genres appeared, such as the songs without words, Etudes, Nocturnes, Impromptus, Preludes, Fantasia, Ballade, Scherzo etc. Thus, the "’piano sonatas" are not taken seriously by the composers in this period. Although not dominant, there were still many "piano sonatas" works, and our aim is to study these works. In the "Romantic period", lots of pianists and composers had various tries and explorations in the genre of the sonata, with continuous innovation and constantly breakthrough. Especially, unprecedented innovation was obtained in the creative techniques and artistic style, which are assigned different romantic style. In this way, the traditional and new romantic musical structure forms are combined properly, and had a great impact on the development of20th-century "piano sonatas".The major research methods of the subject include:(1) the literature review, which is a comprehensive collection of the papers, scores and sound recordings related to this topic.(2) The inductive analysis, which is to perform detailed analysis of the collected materials from various views.(3) the comparison methods, which is carried out in three aspects:a) comparison of the works in different periods of the same composers; b) comparison of different composers; c) comparison of the different periods, i.e., the Classical, Romantic, and Modern period.(4) The summarization method, which is to study the development of "piano sonatas" by taking a deep insight of the obtained results.In this thesis, we explored the development of the "piano sonatas" in the "Romantic period", by analyzing the structure and morphology, musical characteristics, modal tonality, musical styles, and the playing characteristics of the piano sonatas wrote by different composers. Through the study of this subject, we can understand the evolutionary process from the "Classical period" to the "Romantic period" of the piano sonatas, which has basic academic significance.The first chapter is a description of the emergence and development of the "piano sonatas" In the second chapter, we present a comprehensive analysis and summarization of the musical structure, adjustable tonality, musical style and playing characteristic of the "piano sonatas" in the "Romantic period". The third chapter is a discussion of the significant impact of the19th century piano sonatas on the creation and performance of the piano sonatas in the20th century.