Grande sonate 'Les quatre âges'

Grande sonate: Les quatre âges (French for Grand sonata: The Four Ages) is a four movement sonata for piano by Charles-Valentin Alkan. The sonata's title refers to the subtitles given to each movement, portraying a man at the ages of 20, 30, 40, and 50. The work is dedicated to the composer's father, Alkan Morhange (who died eight years later, in 1855), and was published in 1847.

The sequence of movements is unlike the typical classical piano sonata, in that they become progressively slower; after the lively 20 ans (years), marked 'très vite' (very fast) and the complex 30 ans, subtitled Quasi-Faust, and marked 'assez vite' (quite fast), 40 ans is more sedate, marked 'lentement' (slowly), and 50 ans, dark and pessimistic in mood, is marked 'extrêmement lent' (extremely slow).

The sonata opens with 20 ans, a quickly played piece based in D major but also with many passages in the relative minor key of B minor. The young man's 'clumsiness' is marked for example by sudden 'wrong chords' – one in B-flat major is marked 'ridente' (Italian: laughing). The key, tempo and ternary form of this movement are similar to Frédéric Chopin's Scherzo No. 1 (Op. 20). The sonata thus marks itself from the start as different from any previous sonatas, by beginning effectively with a scherzo. The movement, albeit opens in D major, later changes into B minor after a slow, melodic section in B major, and ends with a B major flourish.

The second movement, in D-sharp minor (i.e. a key a semitone above the first movement) and ending in the relative major key of F-sharp major, called 30 ans and subtitled "Quasi-Faust", is the most substantial piece in the sonata, in a very extended sonata form. Ronald Smith comments on the first subject of this movement:

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