31 July 2004
WGDR Vermont Studios - Live Broadcast
Su Lian Tan, flute / Chris Molina, piano

flute and piano

15'

Composed eighteen years after the first sonata, the similarities between the two works are striking: the musical voice is the same, of course — Hagen had already settled on his musical style in his early twenties — and the love of traditional compositional formal structures remains. However, the latter sonata is more dissonant throughout, and the musical ideas are more epigrammatic in nature. Whereas in the first sonata, development of each theme is discrete from the next, and traditional contrasts between themes obtain, in the second, development of ideas is often simultaneous, and the ideas themselves more 'cellular' than traditionally tuneful.

The basic difference between the two works is that, whereas in the first sonata the second movment is in an ABA form, the entire second sonata functions as a rondo: Hagen's love of arch forms is fully expressed. That is, all three movements of the second sonata are rondos, and all of the movements share the same musical materials, which are alternated and overlapped.

Composed simultaneously with the song cycle for baritone and string quartet Alive in a Moment, the Sonata No. 2 shares several musical ideas with the first movement of the song cycle — notably, a rhythmic tattoo (based on the Morse telegraphic rhythm for S-O-S), and an artificial scale containing two augmented seconds. However, it also retains a good deal of material from Letter Home (2002) for oboe and piano, a three movement work commissioned by the Music Teachers National Association, premiered in Las Vegas by oboist Stephen Caplan on 15 November 2002 at the National Double Reed Convention, and subsequently withdrawn by the composer.

Sonata No. 2 was begun at Yaddo and completed in New York City on 23 July 2003. It is dedicated to Jeffrey Khaner and Lowell Liebermann. It was first performed on a live broadcast from WGDR's studios in Vermont by Su Lian Tan and Chris Molina on 31 July 2004.