Night and Day

Same as in the poem "Night and Day," here Tyutchev operates under the assumption that "nature is a full metaphysical being complete with a vaguely defined soul." [5] The forces of Creation and Chaos are equally valid reflections of the human soul, with Chaos being a "phenomenon" that is "part of man's own metaphysical essence." [6] This view belies Schiller's influence on the Russian poet:

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In the world as we now see it, all is rule, order, and form. But the unruly element still lies in the depths as though it could break out again. [...] Without this preceding darkness, there would be no reality in creation; the force of darkness is our necessary inheritance. (Schiller) [7]

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Although Medtner intended this Sonata as a one-movement work, its bipartite structure mirrors that of the poem, with two distinct halves joined by a transitional segment of improvisatory nature. Just like its literary equivalent, the first section begins with an imperative that draws the poems's voice, its lyric persona, further into the entrancing sound of the night wind. What this dark current could be telling us is suggested by Medtner's own note under the 'three-syllable' beggining motif: слушайте (slu-shay-te), the formal imperative of the Russian verb "to listen." [8]

In the first stanza, the persona gradually abandons his detached, initial position and recognizes his kinship with the night wind, a bond realized through an understanding of the heart (Понятным сердцу языком) rather than mind. [9] The language used reflects an increasingly affectionate attitude toward the strange songs of the wind, before it ultimately collapses into a sense of unshakeable pessimism:

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The real basis of this terror is the possibility that the night soul may wrench itself from the persona's mortal breast in order to join the infinite, leaving him with only a painful void instead of a soul, or else dragging him into the uncontrollable violence of the stormy world. Having journeyed to the brink of mystic transport and discovered the universal forces of chaos within himself, the persona becomes desperately afraid of losing himself and seeks to avert the experience altogether. [10]

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This loss of identity, of agency, of memory and cognition, is the semiotic imperative of the second half of the Night Wind Sonata, where the dialogue between the rational mind (represented by the traditional use of polyphony, especially the fugato sections) and the tempest of the 'night soul' (suggested by the Mephistophelian character of the dactyl-driven elegy, turned totentanz), collapses into the madness of an unbridled, chaotic, dionysian finale.

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To mark the last in a long row of daring compositional choices, instead of  providing the listener with an apotheotic finale, the piece ends with a sense of muffled implosion. The rage, the dramatic, pseudo-Icarian falls, the liminal triumphs, are all swallowed by the hostile quietude of dissolution. With a last, gargantuan effort, the poetic persona withdraws from the maelstrom and warns us not to listen anymore. The piece ends with an onomatopoeic figuration: two dissolving arpeggios, reducing the world of the night wind back to the reverberations of simple, physical noise. The tension is never solved, the descent into madness never completed; the Night Wind Sonata fulfills an undeniable katabasis that refuses to yield to either death or resurrection. However uncomfortable to both listener and performer, this retrogressive device achieves a mind-numbing effect, comparable to ataraxia, the suspension of judgement that comes as an inheritance of ancient skepticism. The Night Wind Sonata, and subsequently, our recital, thus ends like a proper philosophical dialogue: making us question the very nature of rationality and desire, and leaving us with many more questions than we started with.