1

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,000

[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 clichs 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.