Decoding the music masterpieces: Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor

Clara Schumann, the wife of the great composer Robert Schumann, wrote in her diary on May 25, 1854:

Liszt sent Robert today a sonata dedicated to him and several other things with a friendly letter to me. But the things are dreadful!

[Johannes] Brahms played them for me, but they made me utterly wretched …

This is nothing but sheer racket — not a single healthy idea, everything confused, no longer a…