Notes by Ted Libbey

Nowhere are Beethoven's gifts as a composer greater, or more apparent, than in his sonatas for the piano. They contain what was from the start his most personal musical expression: the piano was his instrument, and he was constantly pushing its capacities--particularly its range and dynamic gradations--as far as they would go. Even when he could no longer hear the results he continued to explore the instrument's possibilities, and had it not been for his deafness, he undoubtedly would have remained in later years the virtuoso interpreter of his own works that he was as a young man. While it may seem ironic that Beethoven was both a brilliant improviser and a composer who habitually sketched and re-sketched his ideas before committing them to a work, these two elements--the spontaneous and the structured--characterize all of his music for the piano, and give his sonatas a strength and vitality unparalleled in the keyboard literature.

Sonata 1 Op. 2, No. 1
Sonata 2 Op. 2, No. 2
Sonata 3 Op. 2, No. 3

In his life Beethoven had his share of acquaintances--a handful of patrons and princes, a few loyal supporters, and at least one "immortal beloved." But the closest thing he had to a lifelong friend was the piano. He was already on intimate terms with it when he made his way to Vienna in 1792, to "receive the spirit of Mozart from Haydn's hands" as Count Waldstein had put it, and in little time the instrument provided him with an entry into the salons of the Viennese nobility. It served thereafter as his introduction to the concert-going public, and it helped launch his career as a composer. In fact, of Beethoven's first 28 opuses, 20 involved the piano in one way or another.

Beethoven had written a good deal for the instrument before coming to Vienna, and his talent for improvisation, already noted in Bonn, quickly turned him into a celebrity in the Hapsburg capital. It is little wonder that even in his early works for the piano the touch of a master can be seen. Nor is it surprising--in view of the fact that Haydn was still very much alive and composing his greatest works in the genres of the symphony and string quartet--that in the mid-1790s Beethoven chose to give these more ambitious forms a wide berth and concentrate as much as he did on the piano. He nonetheless looked for ways to school himself in the principles on which large-scale forms depended. The piano sonatas of Opus 2--Beethoven's first published essays in the genre--were clearly fashioned to this end. At the same time, they served to announce that someone had arrived who had something to say.

Like the Opus 1 trios that preceded them, all three of the Opus 2 sonatas are four-movement works laid out according to the grand plan of Haydn's symphonies and string quartets. Composed during the years 1793-95, they were published in 1796 with a dedication to Haydn, whom Beethoven nevertheless refused to acknowledge formally as his teacher. While traces of the older master's method can be found in the first work of the set, the Sonata in F minor, there is already an "in your face" attitude toward convention in Beethoven's approach--as though the young composer were intent on showing that he knew the gallant style and could afford to be surprising in it. Throughout the sonata Beethoven delights in disappointing expectations and throwing syncopations and harmonic raspberries at an unsuspecting listener. He also indulges in his adored practice of tampering with the scansion to produce uneven phrases and measure groups.

The sonata opens with a rocket theme of the type Mozart had used in the finale of his Symphony in G minor--a bold, upthrusting call to attention. In the wake of this dramatic gesture the first movement strikes a remarkably dynamic balance between elegance and assertiveness, saving its most surprising effect for last, when Beethoven blithely tosses an unexpected harmonic digression into the oncoming path of the concluding chords. The Adagio, a sonata form without development, borrows its principal theme from a piano quartet Beethoven composed in 1785, when he was just 14 (nor was he finished with the theme here: a close cousin opens the variation movement of the String Quartet in A, Op. 18, No. 5). Quite lovely in its serenade-style expression, if slightly crude in its play of ornament and figuration, this movement climaxes, like the first one, with a wonderfully intensified final cadence.

The four-part texture of a Classical string quartet is mimicked in the ensuing minuet, which for all its contrapuntal propriety has unmistakable touches of the scherzo in it. The sonata is brought to a close by a turbulent finale whose forceful expression foreshadows not only much of Beethoven's subsequent music, but much that would come from later Romantics as well.

Beethoven's individuality, while allowing him to absorb stimulus, prevented him from imitating any model dryly. Thus, his treatment of protocol in the works of Opus 2, while rarely violent, frequently tends toward the subversive. The opening of the first movement of the Sonata in A major, the middle work of the set, incorporates a characteristic gesture of defiance: both hands play in unison, almost mockingly, a set of pithy motivic figures that together make up the movement's first subject. The remainder of the movement proceeds more or less in accordance with the standard sonata plan, but is hardly routine; the scale is daringly large, and the contrast between elements is consciously heightened. There is also a good deal of subtlety in the treatment of details, particularly noticeable in the relationship between motives and the way in which Beethoven prepares the second key area. The sonata's slow movement, a Largo that is rather unconventionally marked appassionato, is highly imaginative, and here too the writing mimics the texture of a string quartet. The movement is laid out in rondo form, and the harmony is strikingly balanced between passages in the home key of D major and episodes orbiting in related and not-so-related keys.

The ensuing Allegretto reflects the composer's playful, fresh, almost insouciant delight in extremes: the pithy, epigrammatic treatment of figure that comes to the fore in the movement's outer sections is completely overturned by the fluent writing of the trio. The rondo finale is among the most charming and Mozartian movements to be found in Beethoven's sonatas. It is a fashionable movement, full of gentlemanly grace, that harnesses its exuberance to the form yet retains a certain gruff stamp in spite of itself. It remained a favorite recital piece of its composer long after it was written. Considering the warmth of its sentiment and the balance it strikes between brilliance and finesse, it is easy to understand why.

The Sonata in C, Op. 2, No. 3, begins with an Allegro in conventional key-area form. While generally straightforward in its layout, the movement incorporates some advanced--perhaps non-conformist--harmonic thinking. The pianism itself is fairly brilliant: if Beethoven had died after writing the work, history might have said he was destined to turn out like Hummel and the other virtuoso-composers of the early 19th century--in other words, a good deal flashier and less substantial than he actually was. The rather luxurious opening movement is followed by an Adagio in rondo form in the far-removed key of E major. The play on key is especially lively throughout the movement, and a number of unexpected areas are reached through unconventional approaches.

The scherzo contains several examples of Beethoven's prankish "wrong-footing" of rhythms and phrases. The animation is intense, and the push and pull of accents lends the movement great momentum. A finale in rondo form, energetic and inventive, brings the sonata to a close.

Sonata 4 Op. 7
Sonata 5 Op. 10, No. 1
Sonata 6 Op. 10, No. 2

The Sonata in E flat, Op. 7 is perhaps the richest and most striking of all of Beethoven's early piano sonatas. Composed during the winter of 1796-97 and dedicated to Beethoven's pupil, the Countess Babette von Keglevics, it was for a time nicknamed The Lover, though there is no evidence that Beethoven was particularly enamored of the dedicatee. Nonetheless, Czerny claimed that the sonata was composed in an "impassioned" frame of mind; few sketches survive, which at least indicates that it was composed quickly, and Czerny's assessment is certainly borne out by the urgency of the sonata's opening movement, with its superabundance of seemingly disconnected ideas and its expressive, highly charged treatment of topic. If the prevailing mood of this sharply profiled essay is one of restlessness, that of the ensuing Largo is a sort of excited awe. Here, Beethoven brings into play a remarkable eloquence--a concentration of sentiment under very high pressure--along with a fantasy-like freedom of association that enables him to move from one gesture to another without losing the continuity of the musical argument.

Neither a real scherzo nor a minuet, but a cross between the two, the sonata's third movement might best be characterized as an intermezzo. The alternation between lyrical tenderness and a more forceful manner of declamation in this movement is not so much a study in contrast as a balancing act between grace and strength, to which the triplet figures of the minor-key trio add an unsettling emotional nuance. The concluding rondo, similar in spirit to the gracious finale of the Sonata in A, Op. 2, No. 2, calls for considerable virtuosity from the performer, but demands in even greater measure sensitivity of phrasing and a sure feel for the pacing and connection of ideas. There is a stormy episode midway through the movement and a rather surprising Neapolitan modulation in the coda. The movement ends, however, not with drama or flourishes but with the gracefulness of its opening pages gently restored.

The three sonatas of Opus 10 were completed in 1798 and published that year by Eder with a dedication to Countess Anna Margarete von Browne, to whose husband Beethoven had already inscribed the three string trios of Opus 9. In the first two members of the set, Beethoven temporarily dropped the grand four-movement layout he had used in the Opus 2 and Opus 7 sonatas in favor of the standard three-movement model of Mozart and Haydn. Part of the reason may be that Beethoven had become absorbed in Mozart's music, particularly the C minor Piano Concerto, K. 491, which he played in public around this time, and the Fantasia and Sonata in C minor, K. 475 and 457.

The key of C minor was especially significant for Beethoven. In his thinking it tended to have a dramatic and passionate quality, and the pieces he wrote with it as the home key--for example, the String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 4, the Fifth Symphony, and the Third Piano Concerto--are among the most gripping in his oeuvre. The Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1 exhibits many of the characteristics of these later works, particularly in its opening movement. Here Beethoven launches the work with a bold, rising figure outlining the C minor triad, which is followed by one of those characteristic gentle answers so often found in his first subjects. The movement is full of breathless agitation.

The slow movement of the sonata is in a key-area form without a development section. While not on the grand scale that will be seen later in works like the aforementioned symphony and concerto, it still conveys the intensity of thought that underlies the sonata as a whole, particularly some of its more violent and precipitous figuration. The finale, in sonata form, is a compressed movement with a short-tempered subject. To end the movement Beethoven employs a practice from an earlier style, closing in the major instead of the minor--something he will do to much grander effect later on.

The Sonata in F, Op. 10, No. 2 is a short work with a good deal of humor and a few touches of suppressed anger. Its opening Allegro, a lively and pithy movement with a hint of the buffo in it, indulges in a good deal of harmonic hocus pocus. The second movement is a scherzo, though it is not actually called one, and its setting in the parallel minor leads to more serious and emphatic expressions of sentiment. There is a Haydnesque quality to the finale, which opens with a mock fugue. This curiously fashioned movement retains a buoyant disposition through all its formal bluffs.

Sonata 7 Op. 10, No. 3
Sonata 8 Op. 13
Sonata 9 Op. 14, No. 1
Sonata 10 Op. 14, No. 2

Beethoven returns to a four-movement scheme in the Sonata in D, Op. 10, No. 3. The opening movement of this sonata, as Donald Francis Tovey remarked, "seems to spring out at us like a panther." The abruptness of the introductory gesture is answered a few moments later by a counterstatement that takes the exposition into the relative minor, a surprising turn of events that Beethoven then "sets right" with a substantial stalking of the dominant. The power of the whole opening is such that one may well imagine this movement coming more as a shock than a revelation to Beethoven's hearers; what it reveals to us today is Beethoven writing as Beethoven, perhaps for the first time in his piano sonatas.

The centerpiece of the sonata is its slow movement, marked Largo e mesto. It is a movement of enormous grandeur and feeling for 1798, openly tragic in character, pathetic in its declamation, and wrenching in its passion. The minuet is perhaps the only movement of the sonata that might have been acceptable to the orthodox musicians of 1798; but even it has many subtleties in its treatment of rhythm and harmony. There are more harmonic surprises in the sonata's finale. Here, Beethoven strikes a humorous vein, which he mines--if not on the grandest scale--at least for all it is worth.

Nowhere in Beethoven's early pieces for the piano is the touch of the master more readily apparent than in the Sonata in C minor, Op. 13. Completed in 1798 and entitled Grande Sonate Pathétique (by Beethoven himself), it was published the following year with a dedication to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky, with whom Beethoven had lodged upon arriving in Vienna in 1792, and at whose house his music was frequently played. Lichnowsky would become a formal patron in 1800, and the Pathétique, the most innovative of Beethoven's early sonatas, would decisively establish the composer's reputation in Vienna.

Beethoven's writing in the Pathétique is striking from the outset. The first movement's slow introduction, with its mix of French overture, funeral march and operatic recitative, is a masterpiece of the fantasy style in which poignant emotion and dramatic foreboding are conveyed with equal force. Even so, forewarned is not forearmed. The listener is prepared neither for the vehemence with which the precipitous opening subject of the Allegro rushes out of the gloom over a motoric, octave tremolo accompaniment in the left hand, nor for the movement's impetuous flight through the dark landscape of C minor. Surprisingly, Beethoven sets the second subject in E flat minor rather than E flat major, which serves to keep the mood of the entire exposition grim. And in a bold departure from 18th-century norms he twice reprises the material of the slow introduction, once prior to the development and again just before the coda. On an expressive level, the restless agitation of Beethoven's writing lends this movement an intensity that foreshadows some of his later treatments of the key of C minor (in particular, the first movements of the String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 4, and the Fifth Symphony).

With the ensuing Adagio in A flat, marked cantabile, Beethoven offers the listener a reprieve. Its main theme, one of the simplest and most consoling to appear in any of his slow movements, falls midway between hymn and aria; Beethoven is wise enough to leave it alone each of the three times it appears, instead targeting his invention on the serene 16th-note accompaniment in such a way as to virtually conceal the rondo framework on which the movement is built. There are two contrasting episodes, the first a rather florid vocalise in F minor, the second a more agitated section that begins in A flat minor.

The troubled feeling of the sonata's opening movement returns in somewhat softened fashion in its concluding Allegro, another rondo. There are elements of sonata form in the layout as well--but, as in the first movement, the structural seams are neatly fused by the intensity of Beethoven's expression.

The two sonatas of Opus 14 were composed in 1798 and 1799, and published in December, 1799. They are dedicated to Baroness Josefa von Braun, wife of Peter von Braun, a wealthy manufacturer who was raised to the nobility and for a time was manager of the opera in Vienna. The Sonata in E, Op. 14, No. 1, is a work in which, to quote Eric Blom, Beethoven "turns every pianistic device to an expressive purpose." The opening movement begins very much in an expressive vein, with a gently rising subject in half notes accompanied, in deceptively simple fashion, by repeated chords in the left hand. The movement follows an involved harmonic plan, while on the surface a battle rages between delicacy and the clash of dissonances and displaced accents at several points. The so-called development is actually taken up with the exploitation of an entirely new tune that is given out in octaves; a series of modulations leads to the recapitulation, which has a few surprises of its own, and the movement ends in stillness touched by a hint of apprehension. The unrest continues in the Allegretto, whose mood is that of a humoresque. The finale incorporates elements of sonata form into its rondo structure, and leads the listener once again through short-lived clashes on the way to an energetic close.

The Sonata in G, Op. 14, No. 2, is one of Beethoven's most relaxed sonatas, a slender work in a key that tended, for Beethoven, to evoke music of lightness and grace. The opening movement is endowed with a pastoral sweetness and simplicity, with imagery that looks forward to the opening two movements of the Pastoral Symphony. The Andante is a variation movement: a very simple, aria-like theme in C major is followed by three variations. For a finale, a classic rondo, Beethoven, creates cheerful movement that is both agile and delicate, pitting a brusque principal subject against episodes that are broader and warmer in aspect.

Sonata 11 Op. 22
Sonata 12 Op. 26
Sonata 13 Op. 27 No. 1
Sonata 14 Op. 27 No. 2

The Sonata in B flat, Op. 22, was completed in the second half of 1800 and published in 1802 with a dedication to Count Johann Georg von Browne (no relation to the von Brauns). As Donald Francis Tovey has pointed out, this sonata is "neglected by pianists and despised by the superior person, but Beethoven set great store by it." The first movement is a textbook example of sonata form, and the content of the movement inhabits the form beautifully. Of this "fit" between the material and the manner of presenting it, Tovey astutely remarked: "Beethoven felt that while dramatic force and surprising originality were all very well, it was a fine thing to achieve smoothness and show that he was no longer inferior to Mozart in Mozart's own line." The ensuing slow movement, in sonata form, has something of the quality of a nocturne; its long-breathed first subject is given extra lift by the 9/8 meter. The minuet is a real minuet, not a scherzo, at least for the opening few bars. Before it is over, however, Beethoven has achieved a violent overthrow of the dance's courtliness. The finale, a rondo, ends the sonata much as it began--with a nod to convention, something soon to be banished from Beethoven's modus operandi.The years 1800-02 were a watershed for Beethoven, both in his personal life and his creative development. In 1800 he brought forth his first string quartets--the six magnificent essays of Opus 18--and his First Symphony, Op. 21. With these provocative and stylistically assured works he displayed a hard-won mastery of the highest forms of 18th-century composition. Yet all was not well. Even as he donned the mantle of genius, Beethoven was in a desperate struggle to come to grips with the fact that he was losing his hearing.

Because he was Beethoven, he did more than resign himself to his fate. He plunged into his work, forging away at scores of an increasingly bold and revolutionary cast. Another composer, in the midst of such turmoil, might have hoped to hold on to what was familiar. For Beethoven, the status quo no longer had much value.

All four of the present sonatas were completed in 1801. In each of them Beethoven can be seen trying to emancipate himself from the formal strictures, flexible as they were, of the sonata as it stood at the end of the 18th century. Part of his solution--substituting variation movements or pieces in free form for the traditional sonata-form opening movement--was a drastic step, but one that Beethoven would repeat in many of his later works. The resulting transfer of emphasis to the finale (another feature of Beethoven's late style), has remained an influence on serious composition for almost two centuries.

The Sonata in A flat, Op. 26, published early in 1802 with a dedication to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky, opens with a variation movement of remarkable beauty. The theme is an extended and stately one, its contours very "proper," its mood almost that of an aria. In the ensuing five variations Beethoven shows, in miniature, his extraordinary command of variation technique. A scherzo follows, setting the stage for the sonata's most dramatic movement, a striking essay in A flat minor subtitled "Funeral March on the death of a Hero." Foreshadowings of the marcia funebre from the Eroica Symphony lurk within, along with a good deal of the same sort of Revolutionary pictorialism--pianistic "drum rolls" and "musket volleys" to put one in the proper state of mind. The sonata closes with an effervescent rondo, which, like many of Beethoven's rondos, incorporates elements of the sonata as well.

The two sonatas of Opus 27 were published in 1802 with the descriptive legend "quasi una fantasia" attached to both. The first of them, in E flat, bears a dedication to the Princess Josephine Sophie von Liechtenstein, n‚e von F_rstenberg, the wife of Field Marshal Prince von Liechtenstein (the Marshallin had met Beethoven through Prince Lichnowsky, and had become his pupil as well as a patroness). The sonata, whose four movements are to be played without a pause, opens with a "fantasy" movement that has a simple, three-part outline. In place of a logical argument marked by a connection of ideas, Beethoven fancifully contrasts the opening and closing sections--based on gently repeated chords--with a breathless middle section that is all gruffly accented chords and flying sixteenth notes. A sequence of almost Brahmsian textures emerges from the ensuing scherzo, a study of arpeggiated triads in contrary motion in which a subtle rhythmic offset is used to enliven the reprise. The Adagio that follows is an aria, a beautiful, arching cantilena spun out across 26 measures. By far the sonata's longest and most involved movement, the finale is a rondo with some unusual formal characteristics, the most striking of which is a reprise of the aria theme from the Adagio. Also noteworthy is the appearance of a quasi-fugal episode involving the principal subject, and foreshadowing a similar treatment in the Opus 111 sonata. Once again, sonata form influences the layout.

The Sonata in C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2, bears a dedication to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, who in 1802 was seventeen, and whom Beethoven may have furtively hoped to marry. The sonata has been known since Beethoven's day as the Moonlight Sonata, a title bestowed on it by the poet Ludwig Rellstab, who likened the first movement's eerie calm to a moonlit night on the Lake of Lucerne. The famously repeated three-note figure here, most likely inspired by the Act I trio of Mozart's Don Giovanni (another "fantastic" nocturnal scene), becomes a fatalistic middle-voice ostinato under the movement's real melody, a tolling subject of truly desolate character. All of this in a movement that, while anything but simple, is essentially a prelude. The concluding Allegretto and Presto movements, more thoroughly worked out, present the sonata's true argument, and are a musical Scylla and Charybdis full of challenges to the performer's skill.

Sonata 15 Op. 28
Sonata 16 Op. 31 No. 1
Sonata 17 Op. 31 No. 2

With the Sonata in D, Op. 28 (Pastoral), dedicated to Joseph Edlem von Sonnenfels, Beethoven returns to the standard, four-movement layout that had characterized his sonatas of the 1790s. While the Pastoral harks back to those earlier essays in stylistic ways as well, it also foreshadows Beethoven's middle-period manner in its breadth and scope. It is a work of exquisite craftsmanship throughout and, for the most part, poetic content, particularly in the opening Allegro. This relaxed movement, whose amiable first subject is set over a drone, does, however, have a turbulent development section that stays mainly in the minor mode. The second movement, a somewhat darker Andante in D minor, has a three-part layout resembling that of a da capo aria. The marchlike topic of this movement is not really funereal; rather, it suggests something faintly archaic, like the duet of the two armed men from Mozart's The Magic Flute. The sprightly scherzo, built on a pair of melodic ideas presented as subject and answer at the movement's outset--an octave cascade in dotted half-notes, and a lurching phrase in eighths and quarters--contains a trio consisting of little more than an eight-fold repetition of a four-bar tune, with just one variation in the accompaniment. The rondo finale is probably what led an early English publisher to give the sonata its nickname, since the 6/8 meter and drone bass heard at the start were typical of pastoral evocations in 18th-century music. But Beethoven does not let this bucolic idyll run its course without adding a touch of the brilliant style, most notably in the galloping coda.

Soon after completing the Opus 28 sonata, Beethoven remarked to his friend, the violinist Wenzel Krumpholz, that he was "only a little satisfied" with his previous works. "From today on," he said, "I will take a new path." That "new path" would soon lead to the Eroica Symphony, the opera Fidelio, the three Razumovsky Quartets, and the great piano sonatas of Beethoven's middle period.

Great works poured from Beethoven's pen in the early years of the 19th century. Yet not all of them manifested the expansive dimensions and transcendental expression that have come to be thought of as hallmarks of the composer's middle-period style. Indeed, with a few notable exceptions, the piano sonatas from this period run counter to the heroic impulse that shaped Beethoven's other works, tending toward compression of form and a more intimate, at times even whimsical and reflective mode of thought. In some of them Beethoven can also be seen rigging the test bench for ideas that will receive full-blown treatment only in some of his late-period works.

The three sonatas of Opus 31 were composed in 1801-02 and first published by Naegeli in Zurich during the next two years. They are among the handful of Beethoven's sonatas that bear no dedication. The Sonata in G, Op. 31, No. 1 is a delightfully offbeat work. Some observers have seen in it a study--more in terms of harmonic applications than imagery--for the celebrated Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53. As in that later work, the opening material here is restated a tone lower, shifting the harmonic ground in a way that immediately catches the listener's attention. There are other interesting twists as well, among them the rhythmic tension generated by the opposition of on-the-beat and off-the-beat accents.

With the ensuing Adagio grazioso, Beethoven sets up quite consciously, a contrast of manners: the provocative and impetuous discourse of the opening movement runs smack into the florid elegance of an intentionally ornamental Adagio, a gracious evocation of an old-fashioned style. The finale is a light-hearted rondo in which the pot is always kept at a boil thanks to the near-continuous cascade of sixteenth notes. There is a wonderful, "you'll never guess where the end comes" coda that caps the humor of this extraordinary "ordinary" sonata.

Beethoven supposedly told one listener who asked him what was behind the Sonata in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, to "go read Shakespeare's Tempest." The first movement, with its mysterious Largo introduction, marks an advance in the composer's ideas on harmony and form; in particular, it points up Beethoven's tendency at this stage in his career to exploit the tonal ambiguity of the minor mode and to make the distribution of themes in a sonata-form movement less rigid.

The Adagio's long-breathed principal subject anchors a lucid and well worked-out sonata structure. But neither the outward calm of the movement nor the appealing gracefulness of the second subject can quite dispel the air of solemnity that gathers in these pages. The Allegretto finale, also in sonata form, is a gentle country dance of virtually unbroken sixteenth notes, with accents placed in such a way that any rhythmic monotony is avoided. The mood is sad, even somber, with a hint of wistfulness.

Sonata 18 Op. 31 No. 3
Sonata 19 Op. 49 No. 1
Sonata 20 Op. 49 No. 2
Sonata 21 Op. 53
Sonata 22 Op. 54

The Sonata in E flat, Op. 31, No. 3, was--with the important exception of Opus 106--the last of Beethoven's piano sonatas to contain more than three movements. What is especially remarkable about this is the fact that it contains both a minuet and a scherzo. Not one of the sonata's four movements is a slow one.

The opening Allegro begins somewhat mysteriously, over a sixth chord poised on the subdominant. Throughout the movement, the play of tonality is extremely subtle, though it takes place within a formal plan that adheres fairly closely to conventional sonata outlines. The ensuing scherzo, in 2/4 time rather than the usual 3/4, has a restless quality, enhanced by constantly shifting accents and cross-rhythms as well as some remarkable harmonic manipulations. Beethoven's gift for melodic invention shows in the theme of the minuet, and there is a subtle play upon expectations throughout the movement. Many observers have remarked on the "hunt" quality of the finale, marked Presto con fuoco. The movement is in sonata form rather than rondo, however, and leans more toward the development of thematic and harmonic elements than mere reiteration. Like the preceding movements, it provides a splendid example of Beethoven's ability to imaginatively manipulate the simplest of materials.

The two sonatas of Opus 49 were composed between 1795 and 1798, and given to a publisher years later, without Beethoven's consent, by his brother Caspar Carl, who caused the composer some annoyance by doing so. But as musicologist Donald Francis Tovey has suggested, that inconvenience brought good fortune to posterity, which might otherwise have been deprived of "the two most beautiful sonatinas within the range of small hands and young players." Both the Opus 49 sonatas are in two movements, of which the first is in conventional sonata form. Both carry the designation Leichte Sonate--"Easy Sonata"--which does not mean that they are inferior in any way, just relatively easy to play.

The Sonata in G minor, Op. 49, No. 1, is gentle in character and expression. The opening Andante, despite the regularity of its layout and phrase structure, hasn't a trace of squareness to it, but unfolds in a way that seems quite casual, even spontaneous. Indeed, its melancholy opening subject literally dissolves into B flat and a sweetly lyrical second subject without fanfare or the slightest hint of disruption to the music's flow. The Allegro finale is a sonata-rondo in G major with an episode in G minor that doubles as the second key area, and eventually recurs, true to form, in the major.

In the Sonata in G, Op. 49, No. 2, Beethoven again follows a standard key-area plan in his first movement, with a straightforward exposition section and a development of only 14 bars; the recapitulation is extended with a further working-out of the material. The easy-going minuet with which the sonata concludes might as well be a contredanse; it has a tune so charming and affable that Beethoven reused it a short time later in his Septet, Op. 20. As in Opus 49, No. 1 there is an element of the rondo in the way the movement is structured. The feeling throughout is decidedly homespun and old-fashioned.

Among the most impressive of Beethoven's middle-period works is the Sonata in C, Op. 53, written in 1803-04 and dedicated to Count Ferdinand von Waldstein. The Waldstein Sonata comes as close to formal perfection and total mastery of materials as any in Beethoven's canon, and its brilliance, harmonic daring, and sheer energy make it a shining example of the middle-period style, as outstanding in its fashion as are the String Quartet in F, Op. 59, and the Eroica Symphony.

The first movement of the sonata opens with a pulsating progression that approaches the home key by indirection, and at the same time takes advantage of the strikingly resonant sound in the lower register of the early 19th-century fortepiano. Contrast and momentum are the keys to the movement--an enormous amount of energy is released as it unfolds, the impetus toward C major gaining from each harmonic digression.

Instead of a slow movement (Beethoven originally intended to place an Andante here--the celebrated Andante favori--but thought better of it), there is an Adagio introduction to the finale. This brief prelude begins to spawn a melody in the warm middle range of the instrument, but its development is interrupted by a return of the Adagio's opening phrases, as Beethoven sets the stage for the work's conclusion. The rondo finale begins out of the mists, with the emergence of a beautifully consoling, almost hymn-like tune that builds by repetition into a paean of triumph. The intervening episodes set off the subject in a contrast of dark and light, until the movement ends, prestissimo, in an exultant delirium of sound.

There are few precedents in Beethoven's sonatas, or anyone else's, for the Sonata in F, Op. 54. This subtle and rather humorous work consists, surprisingly, of only a minuet and a moto perpetuo finale, the latter toccata-like in its treatment of the thematic material and its rhythmic drive. The opening minuet is admittedly rather speculative: it has aspects of the variation style, and its trio modulates. These offbeat characteristics do not keep it from being a minuet, however, even if they do give it more tension than the garden variety minuet one might have found as the second or third movement of an earlier sonata.

The finale is remarkable for the fact that, almost throughout, it is written in two single parts, like a Bach invention. The resultant counterpoint, while scarcely going "by the book," produces an alluring play of harmony and texture.

Sonata 23 Op. 57
Sonata 24 Op. 78
Sonata 25 Op. 79
Sonata 26 Op. 81a
Sonata 27 Op. 90

The Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata) was completed in 1805 and published in 1807, with a dedication to Count Franz von Brunsvik. It is among Beethoven's most popular and frequently played sonatas, in the same company as the Path‚tique, Moonlight, and Waldstein sonatas. It is also one of the most immediately recognizable of his works for the piano, thanks to the sinister opening subject that issues sotto voce from the depths of the keyboard. In the opening Allegro there are precipitous changes of mood--from somber, to elegiac, to darkly furious--which listeners will recognize as typical of Beethoven's minor-key expressiveness. Indeed, the accents and contrasts here are so intense that the piano itself sometimes seems to cringe from the task before it.

If the opening movement is as turbulent and towering an essay as Beethoven ever penned, the ensuing Andante is tranquility itself, a masterful evocation of contemplative inaction suggesting the calm in the eye of the storm. It consists of four variations appended to a theme of surpassing gentleness. The finale breaks upon the conclusion of this movement with terrifying suddenness. Its irresistible onrush and pained intensity sweep the whole sonata towards an ending in near-hysteria, reminiscent of the howling of the shades in Dante's Inferno.

Beethoven had a special affection for the Sonata in F sharp, Op. 78, which he composed in 1809 and dedicated to Countess Therese von Brunsvik. The writing is extremely concise and economical, the dominant affect one of ecstasy untroubled (except by occasional touches of the minor mode) and songful, skipping delight.

A truncated slow introduction--only four bars long--gives way to the placid first subject of the opening movement. Throughout, Beethoven spins a seamless web from the motivic material released in the subject's initial statement. Gentleness is everywhere, which is quite a contrast to the Beethoven with whom most people are familiar. Since the second movement is also the last, and is obliged to be in the same key as the first, Beethoven takes care to put off the confirmation of the key as long as possible, a wonderful example of his manipulative ability. The movement is energetic, a touch rambunctious. It takes off like a tightly wound-up toy and never stops, except for a single, delicious pause moments before the end.

Beethoven himself gave the Sonata No. 25 in G, Op. 79, composed in 1809 and published in 1810, the title "Sonate facile ou sonatine." But while the second and third movements are indeed slender and relatively easy to play, the first is neither as easy as Beethoven's title would suggest nor as uncomplicated. Its designation as a Presto alla tedesca should not be misunderstood; by "alla tedesca" Beethoven means "in the manner of a German dance." The dance in question is the L„ndler or a close cousin, the Deutscher or Swabian Allemande, and the "Presto" admonition simply means that it should not be played at a danceable tempo, but a good deal faster. It thus becomes a challenge to make the music seem "facile."

The sonata's Andante is a gentle siciliana, and it unfolds with all the ingenuousness of a short, simple song. It is probably the least complicated movement in all of Beethoven's sonatas. The finale is a tightly condensed rondo, light in texture and, like the second movement, straightforward in its line of action.Certainly the most programmatic of Beethoven's piano works, the Sonata in E flat, Op. 81a (Les Adieux) is also one of the most exciting of his pieces to experience, and among the most exquisitely fashioned of all his works. The "farewell" of its title refers to the forced parting of Beethoven from his patron and student, the Archduke Rudolf, in 1809. Although the score, completed the following year, does not explain how the advance of Napoleon's armies on Vienna had forced the Archduke and the rest of the royal family to flee the city while Beethoven stayed behind (spending one terrible night in his brother's cellar trying to protect the last vestiges of his hearing from the din of bombardment), the first page does show the three syllables of the word "Lebewohl" ("Farewell") over the three-note motive that opens the piece. Grounded in Beethoven's noble and heroic key of E flat, what follows is music of extraordinary power and imagination dealing with the emotions of separation and reunion--music meant to be listened to with the eyes and heart as well as the ears.

A sense of nostalgia pervades the opening measures of the sonata, an effect achieved partly through Beethoven's use of deceptive rather than authentic cadences. The main body of the movement plays upon the "farewell" motive, but in music of genial, easy-going familiarity, suggesting perhaps something of the nature of the relationship between Beethoven and the Archduke. In the movement's final measures, as the "farewell" motive is softly superimposed upon itself, one can almost picture the Archduke's coach disappearing around a bend.

The slow movement, subtitled "Abwesenheit" ("Absence"), is a study in subdued grief, with restlessly shifting sequences in the minor mode offset by a consoling section in the major. With characteristic suddenness, the finale, subtitled "Das Wiedersehn" ("The Return"), breaks the spell of sadness. With a flourish of excitement, the joyous music takes off at a tempo marked Vivacissimamente, replete with brilliant passage work that recalls the finale of the Emperor Concerto. At the movement's climax, one can easily imagine the Archduke's coach appearing at the same bend in the road where last it was seen, this time on a homeward course, and taking the curve on two wheels.

The publication of the Sonata in E minor, Op. 90 in 1815 was announced with the statement: "All connoisseurs and friends of music will surely welcome the appearance of this sonata, since nothing by L. van Beethoven has appeared now for several years." Indeed, it had been nearly four years since the publication of Opus 81a--the celebrated Les Adieux--and people were beginning to wonder whether the name of that work had been prophetic in some way, and had denoted Beethoven's farewell to the genre.

A review of the new E minor sonata that appeared in 1816 in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung was favorable: "With much pleasure the reviewer calls attention to this new sonata. It is one of the most simple, melodious, expressive, intelligible, and mild among all [the sonatas] for which we are indebted to Beethoven."

Yet, for all its surface appeal, the Opus 90 sonata, which Beethoven dedicated to Count Moritz Lichnowsky, is a remarkably concentrated effort. The economy of means by which effects are achieved in both movements is evidence of Beethoven's remarkable mastery, as is the utterly seamless way in which connections are made from one thread of the musical argument to the next. In its own way, then, this sonata is as progressive and subtle as any in Beethoven's oeuvre. A mercurial and blustery quality marks the opening movement, which remains nonetheless rather introspective in character. The second movement, in E major, is a rondo of unusual length and unfailing lyricism, almost Schubertian in places. Beethoven good-naturedly told the sonata's dedicatee, who was about to remarry, that the first movement represented "a struggle between the head and the heart," while the second was "a conversation with the beloved." Fortunate indeed, the couple who converse so radiantly.Sonata 28 Op. 101

Sonata 29 Op. 106

During the years 1812-15 Beethoven weathered the second great crisis of his life--really a series of crises involving his health (both mental and physical), his finances, and, most poignantly, his relations with others. His hearing had deteriorated quite badly over the preceding decade, leaving him ever more isolated and eventually rendering him incapable of performing in public. His last appearances as a pianist, other than for some accompanying, took place in April 1814, when he played in the premiere performances of the Archduke Trio, reportedly with disastrous results. By 1818, he would be as deaf as a stone.

Illnesses of various kinds came in what seemed a steady stream during these years, slowing the pace of his work, forcing him to take repeated cures. Worse still, depression--of the full-blown sort that had affected him when he first started to lose his hearing--once again held him in its grip. Late in 1812 he had confided in a letter to Archduke Rudolph that he was ailing, "although mentally, it is true, more than physically." In January 1813, his health was "pretty much the same, the more so as moral factors are affecting it and these apparently are not very speedily removed." By the summer of 1813 things had degenerated to an alarming point. Beethoven's friends Nanette and Johann Andreas Streicher wrote that they found him in Baden "in the most deplorable condition," unkempt and unwashed, and so malodorous that guests at an inn there avoided sitting near him.

Behind these "moral factors" were matters of the heart. Just as the crisis of 1802 had produced the Heiligenstadt Testament, this one, too, produced a document of searing intensity that leaves no doubt of the depth of Beethoven's suffering during this episode. The letter to the so-called "Immortal Beloved," dated July 6 and 7, was almost certainly written in 1812, and almost certainly intended for Antonie Brentano, a married woman ten years younger than Beethoven. It was never posted. Between its alternately passionate and despairing lines ("Even when I am in bed my thoughts rush to you, my eternally beloved.... Your love has made me both the happiest and unhappiest of mortals--At my age I now need stability and regularity in my life--can this coexist with our relationship?"), it is possible to read all the hopes and fears of Beethoven's middle age.

Later that same year, Beethoven had tried rather self-righteously to break up his brother Johann's illicit relationship with one Therese Obermeyer, a somewhat surprising step in view of his own feelings toward Antonie. Johann responded to Ludwig's meddling by marrying the girl and turning his back on the complaining composer. In 1815, Ludwig's other brother, Caspar Carl, died suddenly, naming his widow Johanna and Beethoven as joint guardians of his nine-year-old son, Karl. With that, Beethoven, who staunchly believed that his sister-in-law was morally unfit to bring up the child, became embroiled in a bitter struggle over Karl's destiny and affections. The custody battle, which Beethoven ultimately won, lasted until 1820. Even then, Karl was to remain a fixation in Beethoven's mind for the rest of his life, with unfortunate results for nephew and uncle alike.

Ironically, these years of turmoil also witnessed the high-water mark of Beethoven's popularity with the sophisticated though sometimes fickle Viennese public. Late in 1813, he had scored the most resounding success of his career with the so-called Battle Symphony, subtitled "Wellington's Victory," written to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon at Vittoria. The wild acclaim that greeted repeat performances of the work in early 1814 led to another milestone, the revival of Fidelio (with a newly revised libretto) in the spring of 1814.

Still, as he turned 45, it must have seemed to Beethoven that he had reached a turning point in his life, or perhaps a point of no return: his public esteem was at an all-time high, his private life was at an all-time low, his career as a performer was over, and his best works--to judge from what little he had produced for several years--were behind him.

Out of this impasse came an almost miraculous new surge of creative energy, along with an altogether new style of writing, that in tandem produced the greatest works of Beethoven's life. His "late" style had its roots, paradoxically, in his earliest training, which had emphasized contrapuntal and fugal elements--perhaps because his hearing was utterly gone, Beethoven needed to rely on what he had learned so solidly in his youth. But Beethoven's music now possessed a boldness of gesture and intensity of expression such as it had never had--perhaps in response to the intense moods and feelings he had experienced and, with supreme effort, had finally mastered.

Among the great works of his post-crisis period were three sonatas for piano (Opp. 101, 106, and 109) inscribed "for das Hammer-klavier," a notion that had more to do with Beethoven's rejection of things French, including the word pianoforte, than with any implication of forcefulness in their content, although all are works of the utmost expressive force. Composed in 1816, the Sonata in A, Op. 101 was published the following year with a dedication to the Baroness Dorothea Ertmann, a pianist of considerable distinction known for her sensitive interpretations of Beethoven's sonatas. The opening movement, comes prefaced by the marking "mit der innigsten Empfindung" ("with the deepest feeling"). There is a very different character to the ensuing scherzo, which is cast as a quick march: it is brash, forceful, assertive, with sharp dissonances and a tendency toward violence that stands in marked contrast both to the opening movement and this movement's own rather courtly middle section.

The slow movement, a mere 19 measures, is really more of a meditation. It closes with a cadenza in which there is a dreamy allusion to the sonata's opening movement, something new in Beethoven. The finale is clear and vigorous, a sonata-form movement with a fugal development section. Beethoven's treatment of the fugue serves as the dramatic climax of the whole piece, and is remarkable for its vitality and inventiveness.

The new vein of expression glimpsed in the A major sonata is industriously mined in the sequel work, the Sonata in B flat, Op. 106,®¯ to which the title Hammerklavier has justifiably stuck. This was the first of the monumentally large works to occupy Beethoven in his final decade--the others were the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony, and the Diabelli Variations--and its composition, which took nearly a full year, from the autumn of 1817 to the autumn of 1818, marks his full recovery from the years of crisis.

The first movement of the Hammerklavier contains some of Beethoven's most powerful, assertive music. Its exultant opening bars, in which fistfuls of notes are literally hurled at the keyboard, contain the chordal building blocks out of which the entire composition is constructed. They set in motion a brilliant study in contrast--between what Beethoven might have described as the "unbuttoned" manner and a more courtly, well-behaved style of playing. The potency of the various ideas, the unusual vehemence with which they are projected, and the linkage between them are all typical of Beethoven's late style. The ensuing scherzo shows how Beethoven could create music of remarkable complexity out of material that is actually quite simple, even aphoristic. Its subject, consisting of just a couple of notes, outlines the interval of a third, a pattern that links it to the opening of the sonata's first movement. Beethoven manipulates the figure with such skill and imagination that it seems utterly inexhaustible: it appears throughout the scherzo itself in dotted rhythm, and in the trio section it shows up in augmentation and in detached eighth notes. It is even hidden in the right-hand triplet figures that accompany a statement of the tune in the left hand. The sudden, violent disruptions of rhythm and harmony that occur during the course of the movement, including the hearty Bronx cheer that precedes the return of the scherzo, serve not to break the movement's flow, but to energize it.

The Adagio of the Hammerklavier has been described as everything from a "manifestation of sublime beauty" (Vincent d'Indy) to a "mausoleum of collective sorrow" (Lenz), and is--regardless of interpretation--one of the overwhelmingly affecting expressions in all of Beethoven's sonatas. The marking "Adagio sostenuto, appassionato e con molto sentimento" serves as a warning to the performer, in Alfred Brendel's words, "not to see the pain in the music from a position of calm, remote resignation." Up to this point in the sonata, Beethoven-the-thunderer has done most of the talking; here, it is "the still, small voice" that is heard. The movement opens in a contemplative frame of mind, a mood of detachment almost, and builds like a great hymn toward something approaching levitation. Just when one imagines Beethoven has reached the limit of spirituality, he goes off still further, into a quite ethereal realm. An entire line of development in Romantic music--passing through Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, and even Liszt--springs from this absolutely extraordinary music.

The finale of the Hammerklavier begins with a mysteriously schizophrenic introduction, a series of alternately slow and meditative, and fast and violent asides. This sets the table for a three-voice fugue so elaborate and eventful it seems more like a fantasy in which long arcs of invention are sustained by brilliant imitative writing. The marking "con alcune licenze" ("with occasional license") is a reminder from Beethoven that the academic strictures of conventional fugal procedure are here expanded. But the reason for the expansion--the almost volcanic expression underlying this musical outpouring--more than justifies the liberties that are taken.

Sonata 30 Op. 109
Sonata 31 Op. 110
Sonata 32 Op. 111

Beethoven's late style, heralded by the Opus 101 piano sonata and the two Opus 102 sonatas for piano and cello, had been brilliantly confirmed by the Hammerklavier Sonata. But still greater works were on the way. Among them were three more sonatas for the piano, Beethoven's final essays in the form, composed between 1820 and 1822. Although they bear different opus numbers and were published separately, it is likely that Beethoven conceived of them as a group. They bear noticeable stylistic resemblance to one another, although--as the pianist Denis Matthews has pointed out--each one is "a law unto itself."

The Sonata in E, completed in 1819, was published in 1821 with a dedication to Maximiliane Brentano, then 19 years old, the daughter of Beethoven's immortally beloved Antonie. Beethoven worked on it during the same part of 1819 that found him occupied with the Benedictus, Credo, and Agnus Dei of the Missa Solemnis, and it exemplifies the increasingly private and personal expression his music was seeking, along with the remarkable compression of idiom he had now attained. Although laid out in three movements, the sonata is nonetheless highly original in form, in part because of the way its individual movements are constructed, and also because it closes with an Andante, cast as set of variations, rather than the expected rondo in lively tempo.

At this stage in his career, Beethoven's tendency was to compose movements that evolved organically from a basic, often simple, cell. But the first movement of Opus 109--in which sections marked Vivace and Adagio alternate with one another according to a freely adapted, fantasia-like version of sonata form--is actually more Hegelian than Darwinian. Within its dialectic of contrast there is remarkable tension, which allows Beethoven a particularly wide range of expression. The sonata's second movement, marked Prestissimo, is a concentrated essay combining elements of sonata form with the functional aspects of a scherzo. The finale is a set of variations, based on a remarkably potent aria-like theme. The six variations, several of which are double variations, are followed rather exceptionally by a reprise of the original theme--a vanishing act that brings the work to an exquisite end.

The Sonata in A flat, Op. 110, shares with its predecessor a predilection toward intensity of expression and drama within a lyrical framework. This is not to say that Beethoven does not adopt a more angular approach to his material when it suits him, as is clearly the case in the sonata's concluding fugue. But connection and flow are now, and will remain, the essence of Beethoven's style.

The autograph of Opus 110 is dated Christmas Day, 1821, but the finished work bears no dedication. The composer Vincent d'Indy suggested that Beethoven could have dedicated to no one but himself "this expression in music of an internal convulsion in his life." The work clearly does arise from Beethoven's most deeply communicative vein, and few of his works in any form bear such detailed expressive markings.

The sonata's opening movement clings almost throughout to Beethoven's designation cantabile, what contrast there is coming not so much from the new ideas derived from the opening subject as from differences in rhythm and figuration that are explored within them. The second movement, another substitute scherzo, is similar in style to the late Bagatelles and plays extensively on the device of contrary motion. The finale follows a highly complex, subjective, even idiosyncratic formal plan. An Adagio introduction consisting of a recitative and arioso (both conventions borrowed from opera) sets the stage for a fugue that begins confidently in the tonic key of A flat. The exposition of the fugue is followed, or rather, interrupted, by a return of the arioso, now completely fragmented, a half step lower--marked by Beethoven "perdendo le forze, dolente" ("wearily, lamenting"). There is a sudden resumption of the fugue, and from here the movement takes on new life and a triumphant new trajectory. A series of modulations leading back to A flat prepares the movement's extraordinary conclusion, a hymnlike passage in which Beethoven, approaching something like ecstasy, almost runs out of keys at the top end of the piano.

The Sonata in C minor, Op. 111, Beethoven's last, was completed in 1822. Its two movements contain some of the most compelling and engrossing music ever penned, and represent perhaps the single most perfect crystallization of Beethoven's late style outside the final quartets.

The taut, fiery first movement is cast in sonata form, in which form and content have become highly schematized. There is incredible compression of material here; connections are made with no wasted motion, yet the bonds that hold the movement's strikingly expressive gestures together are absolutely sure. The finale, in which the intense C minor of the first movement is transmuted into an ethereal C major, was given the extraordinary designation Arietta by Beethoven. A variation movement of ineffable beauty and brilliant inventiveness, it remains a touchstone for the interpreter of Beethoven and also foreshadows much that is to come in late Romanticism, especially in the works of Bruckner and Mahler.

A pianist can say far more about this visionary movement than even a writer of the stature of Thomas Mann, who devoted a remarkable passage to it (probably suggested to him by Theodor W. Adorno) in his novel Dr. Faustus. Nonetheless, as Wendell Kretschmar is made to say in that novel, this is an altogether extraordinary leave-taking on Beethoven's part, "an end without any return."

Please note:  In several instances, Mr. Lipkin has chosen readings which differ from the accompanying text, basing his choices on the manuscripts and first editions.