Description

PREFATORY REMARKS

The sonata is performed as a single movement lasting about three-quarters of an hour, within which the Classical sequence of allegro/lento/scherzo/trio/scherzo/finale is clearly perceptible. The title suggests a double play on words: The closing triple fugue—by combining the three principal themes of the preceding thirty-five minutes and incorporating most of the sonata’s subsidiary ideas as counter-subjects or episodes—in some sense goes over (Lat. ‘super’) the closing double fugue of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier”; at the same time, much of the sonata executes a reductio ad absurdum on Classical rhythmic iteration à la Beethoven by means of percussive gestures upon (‘super’) the fallboard, pedals, and cabinet surfaces of the piano.
As the ‘trio’ of the ‘scherzo’ is a further development of the central Lento, and the ‘finale’ the long-deferred recapitulation of the opening Allegro, the compositional design could also be said to apply cyclic principles in the manner of Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy, as well of Beethoven himself. In addition, besides the patent allusions to the structural principles of Beethoven’s time, elsewhere historical mannerisms (including a zither interpolation from mediaeval China—an autobiographical touch) are randomly dislocated, or fragmented by lacunae mathematically positioned by means of Fibonacci-related sequences and the mystical Hetu and Luoshu numbers of the legendary Chinese emperor Yu.