Our relationship to Beethoven is a deep and paradoxical one. For many musicians, he represents a kind of holy grail: His music has an intensity, rigor, and profundity which keep us in its thrall, and it is perhaps unequalled in the interpretive, technical, and even spiritual challenges it poses to performers. At the same time, Beethoven’s music is casually familiar to millions of people who do not attend concerts or consider themselves musically inclined. Two hundred years after his death, he is everywhere in the culture, yet still represents its summit. This course takes an inside-out look at the 32 piano sonatas from the point of view of a performer. Each lecture will focus on one sonata and an aspect of Beethoven’s music exemplified by it. (These might include: the relationship between Beethoven the pianist and Beethoven the composer; the critical role improvisation plays in his highly structured music; his mixing of extremely refined music with rougher elements; and the often surprising ways in which the events of his life influenced his compositional process and the character of the music he was writing.) The course will feature some analysis and historical background, but its perspective is that of a player, not a musicologist. Its main aim is to explore and demystify the work of the performer, even while embracing the eternal mystery of Beethoven’s music itself. This season's Curtis courses are sponsored by Linda Richardson in loving memory of her husband, Dr. Paul Richardson. The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation supports Curtis's lifelong learning initiatives.
Psychological Extremity in Music: Op. 27, No.2
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Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas
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New Paths
Beethoven’s conception of the sonata was perpetually in flux, but the year 1801 is a particularly experimental one. The four sonatas Op. 26 through 28 (Nos. 14 through 17, chronologically) feature the most concrete innovations among the sonatas written up to that point, and are the focus of this lecture. There will be discussion of the relationship between the movements in a classical sonata, and the radical shift it begins to undergo at this point. We will also examine the ways in which these sonatas were influential to future generations of composers, which the earlier works, great as they are, were not.
As a special feature for this lecture, a recording by a current Curtis student of the first movement of Op. 28 will be available on Curtis Performs.
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Jonathan BissNeubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies
Performance Faculty
[MUSIC]
So if Opus 27, Number 1's innovations are, in a sense, skin deep,
Number 2's are extraordinary and rattle the listener to his or her core.
This work of course is typically known as the "Moonlight" Sonata,
a name which was given not by Beethoven, but by the poet Rellstab.
He wrote a number of poems that Schubert set as the first
half of his "Schwanengesang" cycle, so I suppose he wasn't entirely useless.
But honestly, "Moonlight" is a ghastly name for this piece.
It gets the basic affect of the work wrong, and in its dreamy
generic sentimentality, it robs the work of
its daring, and especially of its terror.
For, in fact, this sonata is a brand new conception
of sonata shape and probably the most astonishing one yet.
It moves from energy suppressed to energy unleashed,
from repression to the ruthless expression of something primal.
I'm sorry, I'm out of my element here, but I find it
impossible to talk about this sonata without using psychological terms.
Beethoven's conception of the sonata finale was ever in evolution as discussed.
In the case of the "Moonlight," the last movement is the sonata's terrifying id.
Now, I may hate the nickname, but I understand fully why this sonata
has so captured the public imagination,
even if I am occasionally grumpy that it has done so
at the expense of many of the other early masterpieces.
The first movement of Opus 27, Number 2 is one
of the most original and arresting ideas Beethoven ever had.
It is also the only movement in Beethoven's entire output I
can think of in which atmosphere is, arguably, more important than structure.
To clarify,
atmosphere is often very important in Beethoven,
but it is usually drawn from the structure,
from the way one event follows another, setting
up expectations, and then either fulfilling or frustrating them.
In the case of this movement, the atmosphere owes
very little to that, and that is exceptional for Beethoven.
I don't imagine this sonata will be unfamiliar to many
of you, but it's always better to hear the piece
one is hearing about. So here is the opening.
[MUSIC]
There are many things to be said about this.
The first is that surprisingly, and unlike anything in the
last two sonatas we have discussed, this is a sonata form.
However, it's so obscured by so many different things that I knew
the piece for years before I realized that this was the case.
I think there are three primary sources for this confusion.
First of all, the movement is so compact.
Because it's so slow, it takes about five minutes to play.
But the whole movement is a mere 69 measures.
The first movement of Opus 7 by contrast, 362.
What the compactness means for the movement is that between the
principal components of the sonata form, there is virtually no filler material.
This is highly unusual.
Usually there is a bridge between first and second
themes, one which is longer than either theme is itself.
And usually the second theme is described as a "theme group"
because it includes auxiliary material before the arrival of the development.
Here though, between the first theme, you know,
[MUSIC]
and the second theme,
[MUSIC]
there is precisely one phrase.
And as soon as the second theme is over, we are immediately in the development.
This is a sonata form stripped down radically,
and interestingly, one of the essential elements, or perhaps
I should say one of the essential conditions
of the sonata form turns out to be space.
Ironically, we need secondary events, material of lesser
import, for us to focus our attention on the primary ones.
The second thing that distracts us from the
movement's sonata-ness is that it is so very slow.
Very often sonata forms are actually
called sonata allegros because that's the norm.
Not that a slow movement can't be a sonata form.
A reasonable percentage of second movements
in the early Classical period were,
but this is just so revolutionary as the opening of a work,
we are conditioned to assume that it must
be something unprecedented, entirely outside of the norm.
It is, of course, just not in every way.
It fills an emotional function that is totally different from a
normal sonata movement, but that doesn't prevent it from being one.
The third, and ultimately main issue, is that the
movement is monochromatic, though what an amazing color it is.
As discussed, beyond mechanics, what sonata form is really about
is contrasts, and because both themes, most every measurement of
the movement, really, remain in the same haunted character and
sound world, the form really remains hidden, and frankly, incidental.
A sonata form that doesn't provide us with contrasts, with oppositions, really,
it doesn't carry the normal weight of the sonata form.
The normal opposition of keys does exist, although in a slightly
unusual way that isn't really worth us getting into here.
But that doesn't draw our attention, because for every single beat of every
one of the movement's 69 bars, the
triplet accompaniment remains unchanged, slow but relentless.
This creates a remarkable hypnotic effect, but
a movement that is hypnotic cannot, by definition be
rich in variety of expression.
There is another remarkable component to this movement, and that is that Beethoven
asks the pianist to hold the sustaining pedal down from start until finish.
Now, Beethoven was awfully fond of pedalings that blur harmonies together--
and, in fairness, his piano was able to do this
in a far less obtrusive way than ours can manage it--
on Beethoven's piano, the piano simply sustained
less, so even with the pedal held down, the chord
one was currently playing was just naturally in the forefront.
But, regardless of the instrument and of how judiciously
one uses the pedal--I had a teacher
who used to talk about using half-pedal,
and then quarter-pedal, and eighth-pedal, and even
[LAUGH] sixteenth-pedal--
keeping it down for that long will
inevitably lead to a serious haze of sound.
Now I know that plenty of people have described this sound world as
being romantic or nostalgic, but I hear this haze very definitely as menace.
For me, everything in this music that is not quite clarified--on
account of the constant triplets, on account of the pedal--feels dangerous,
because it is clearly so unfulfilled.
The menace comes a bit more to the fore in the coda of the
movement, when the theme that we had at the beginning plunges into the bass.
[MUSIC]
Even on a modern piano, this sounds quite different from what came before,
but again, on Beethoven's piano, the change in register will bring more,
more bite, more growl even to the sound than we've had before.
The second movement follows the first movement without a pause, and in
character, it is just about the most neutral thing Beethoven ever wrote.
I don't want to pile on the clichés and poor metaphors here, but this movement is [LAUGH]
a bit like the sorbet, clearing our palate--clearing our ears?--
between two of the most distinctive and highly defined movements imaginable.
And honestly, the first movement has, in every way possible, messed with our heads.
We really need this after it.
[MUSIC]
This movement, which formally is a very straightforward minuet and trio,
feels like the return to reality after some
sort of dream state. It's been a long time since I
read any Freud, but I suppose that makes it the ego to the last movement's id?
The first movement, despite feeling very suppressed, is probably not precisely
the superego, and anyway, I should probably dispense with this analogy
before I say something that's really spectacularly wrong.
Before the last movement, for the first time in
either of these Opus 27 sonatas, there was a silence.
And how we need it.
For what is about to come is truly harrowing.
[MUSIC]
I cannot think of a movement in
the Classical era that is simply unleashed in that way.
The last movement of the Appassionata
sonata is probably ultimately even more ruthless,
more hellbound,
but it takes Beethoven until the coda to reach that point.
Here, we begin at absolutely full throttle.
Again, however iffy my grasp of Freudian psychology might be, I really
believe that the reason we are able to launch into this without
standing on ceremony is that the last movement is really just
articulating something that was barely reigned in in the first movement.
This music is, in a perverse way, a fulfillment.
Interestingly, this movement is again a sonata form--
but again, with virtually no contrast between the themes.
In this case there are two themes in the
second group but none of them offers any real respite.
Here is the second theme...
[MUSIC]
And the third...
[MUSIC]
There certainly are differences between these, but in each,
drive is the most prominent characteristic.
It's very interesting that in both these movements we have
the novel idea of absolute concentration on a specific character.
It is again a new conception of the structure of a multi-movement work.
Instead of variety within the movements, we have variety between the movements--
the first movement representing one idea, which is addressed by the last
movement, which provides resolution by keeping
variety of expression to an absolute minimum.
It is certainly entirely successful in this case.
The piece is wildly compelling, and it
shows that by this point Beethoven's focus was much
more on the structure of the work than it was on the structure of the movement.
Does it perhaps also mean that at this point in his life
Beethoven was beginning to find certain conventions of the sonata form tiresome?
He abandons it entirely for two sonatas, and then when he does return to it,
he does so with these two examples which value continuity
more highly than structural clarity delivered by means of contrast--
contrast, again, being perhaps the central feature of the form to begin with.
It's unclear because Beethoven did return to
more traditional sonata form to often spectacular effect,
but these three works do in their refusal to be tied to it or to its norms,
form a kind of declaration of independence.
That he does so using three very different models--
first four wild children, then four diverse but tamer
children, and then this one terrifying trajectory in the moonlight--
that is more impressive still.
Whether bound by convention or totally indifferent to
it, Beethoven really had an endless supply of ideas.
And again, nearly all of them were bloody good ideas.
Let's take a short break for a review question.
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