♫ When the slow movement comes to an end, we feel as if we’ve been put through an emotional wringer. This always raises a question: how do you follow music of such searing emotional intensity? Composers have answered this in all sorts of ways, and sometimes the most successful strategy is to banish every dark thought instantly. Mozart’s A Major Concerto, K488 comes to mind – the slow movement is among the most heart-rending things he ever wrote, and the tragedy persists to the very end; then comes the finale, which is instantly euphoric. You wouldn’t think it would work, but it does – not only does it work, it’s totally exhilarating. In Op. 10 no. 3, Beethoven employs a very different strategy: after the d minor slow movement, we return to D Major, but it’s a very gentle re-entry. Somewhat atypically, this is a menuet rather than a scherzo, and at its outset, it has a very dolce, somewhat hesitant character. (PLAY.) This is courtly, as is typical for a menuet, and even a bit shy, which is certainly not a quality I would normally associate with Beethoven. But coming out of that cataclysmic slow movement, it feels exactly right. Later in life, Beethoven developed more sophisticated, elaborate techniques for emerging from music of great darkness – the Hammerklavier and op. 110 sonatas are two spectacular examples – but in 1798, this gently menuet fits the bill perfectly. And it does grow more robust as it goes along. The second part of the menuet begins with a canon, each new voice introduced with an accent, making the music much more energetic and lively than at the outset of the movement. ♫ So, there are quite a few playful moments here, including the out-of-the-blue fortissimo interruption in the left hand. ♫ But we end in the same vein in which we began – gentle, even a bit chastened, with a b flat hinting at the minor we only recently emerged from, and then a pianissimo finish. (PLAY.) We are far away from the anguish of the second movement, but by no means are we all the way back to the rambunctious joy of the first movement either. With the trio, however, we go a few steps closer. This trio is high-spirited, rollicking, and brief: briefer, in fact, than any other trio section I can think of. ♫ Now, normally a trio section has two parts, both repeated – the same basic format as the menuet or scherzo itself. In this case, though, the expected second part never arrives. To break it down, here is the first appearance of the first…er…only section. ♫ And now the “repeat”, actually written out, because it is very slightly different from the first time around, mostly in the articulation of the main voice, staccato the first time, now legato. ♫ The fact that this is a variant, not a pure repeat, is not unusual: Beethoven did something very similar in the previous sonata, op. 10. No. 2, with ♫ becoming ♫ But in that sonata, as in really every other trio a classical composer wrote, a second section follows. ♫ Et cetera. So in the trio at hand, when the repeat ends in this series of fortissimo dominant chords, and then a silence, ♫ and then, ♫ the menuet is back! – that is not just a surprise, but I think a joke. It’s not just that our expectations have been subverted – the very proportions of the movement have been altered, and in fact feel off. To me, this sense that the trio has a missing part has the effect of really heightening the vulnerable aspect of the menuet when it returns. ♫ And this vulnerable aspect persists to the end – this menuet has no coda, so we end with the same b flat-b natural juxtaposition and pianissimo cadence that happened the first time around. ♫ This menuet is a modest movement, but it has a special character – an ambiguous, ambivalent one, which is pitch-perfect after the unambiguous despair we’ve just been through.
