Composed: 2020 (incomplete)
Duration: ≈ 9 minutes (first movement)
Instrumentation: Solo Piano
The Coronation sonata was composed during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic, an attempt to reconcile isolation with grandeur. The surviving first movement evokes solemn majesty and suspended radiance, a sound world of ceremony and stillness. Large, Brahms-like harmonies enclose a lyrical core that alternates between exaltation and quiet reflection.
Though unfinished, the surviving sketches point toward an expansive, ceremonial work seeking transcendence rather than despair, where collective crisis becomes personal meditation. In its surviving pages, Coronation stands as both fragment and monument, capturing a moment when solitude became reverence and majesty a form of resilience.
RMM | Richard M. Martirosian 