Sonata in F Major: iii. Adagio molto espressivo/Prestissimo

The sole purpose of this sonata is to evoke the musical world of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as vividly as possible, in much the same way that good historical novels, plays, or motion pictures attempt to revisit the past with both authenticity and imagination. It is one of a growing number of works, including several previous keyboard sonatas and a piano concerto, that Dillon Ford composed with a view towards fostering a renaissance in music of the kind that renewed the art, architecture, and literature of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The "Adagio molto espressivo" begins with a plaintive theme in d minor which descends a full octave over a simple chordal accompaniment. The gloom is only momentarily dispelled by a new pianissimo theme in A-flat major which soon darkens again to c minor, but an abrupt shift to the parallel major brings with it yet another theme over a simple Alberti bass, which is at once urgent and hopeful. The melodic line in the treble becomes increasingly florid as its beats subdivide again and again into fluid tuplets, culminating in a rapid scalar descent into the darkest depths of g minor. After a short modulatory dance-like section in which staccato sixteenth sextuplets in the right hand play spritefully against groups of four sixteenths in the left, the meter shifts suddenly to six-eight, the tempo abruptly accelerates, and all gives way to a frenzied two-part contrapuntal section whose concluding scalar descent leads to a tonic six-four on F major. Thus, this movement has served as a type of bridge into the finale, which is immediately appended.