3rd Movement: Beginning with Defiance; Ending with Mystery

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Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas Part 3

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Curtis Institute of Music

Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas Part 3

39 ratings

Welcome to Part 3 of Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas! I'm delighted to launch another set of new lectures of this course as Part 3. As before, this class is meant for people of all levels of experience with Beethoven's music (including no experience at all!). Remember that you are able to watch the lectures as many times as you like, at whatever pace is comfortable for you. As I’ve done with the first two sets of Beethoven lectures, I look forward to meeting with students—online and in person, in various cities. The dates and locations will be posted in the Announcements and Events section, as part of the course content. So please remember to check back there for details. In these four new lectures, we will explore the following sonatas: • Sonata Op. 10, No. 1 • Sonata Op. 22 • Sonata Op. 31, No. 2 • Sonata Opp. 78, 79, 81a The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation supports Curtis’s lifelong learning initiatives.

Na lição

Op. 10 No. 1

Opus 10 number 1: The "c minor Mood"6:06

Opus 10 number 1: Extremes of Tempo and Character1:49

1st Movement: Pulse as a Source of Character9:26

1st Movement: High Drama within the Conventions of the Time2:38

1st Movement: A Development with New Material4:28

1st Movement: Hammer Blows in c minor4:37

2nd Movement: An Adagio Oasis9:36

2nd Movement: A Coda that Expands the Movement’s Scope8:16

3rd Movement: Prestissimo!5:04

3rd Movement: Short-Short-Short-LONG3:16

3rd Movement: Beginning with Defiance; Ending with Mystery7:20

Conheça os instrutores

Jonathan Biss
Neubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies
Performance Faculty

So, this brings us to the recapitulation, which is an altogether orderly revisiting

of the events of the exposition, with the usual restoration

of the second theme to the tonic.

(MUSIC)

Things get interesting again, however, in the coda.

The exposition had ended thus (MUSIC),

and really, it would be perfectly possible for

the recapitulation –and piece – to end in a similarly abrupt and brusque manner.

(MUSIC)

This would certainly be sudden, but sudden would be a fitting way

to end a piece that has no wasted bars,

and which never stands on ceremony.

But instead, the harmony – and the piece –takes a turn,

and we are launched into a coda.

(MUSIC)

This 11th hour dramatic twist is especially powerful because it is discursive, off-script:

the first time in such an unblinking, determined movement that Beethoven asks "what if"?

Interestingly, this harmonic diversion and hard stop on a fermata

is very much like the coda of the Pathetique.

(MUSIC)

You have all the same elements: the piece seeming to be all set to wrap up, the

sudden suggestion of major, the elongated stop at a point of harmonic unrest.

But while in the Pathetique this ends up being a tiny detour,

(MUSIC)

in op. 10 no. 1, this is a curveball with greater consequences,

as Beethoven presents the whole second theme

in far-off D flat major, and the pace, for the first and only time in the movement, slackens.

(MUSIC)

And then, all of a sudden, we’re back.

(MUSIC)

This ending is entirely in keeping with the work as a whole.

After that brief uncertain digression, once order is restored (MUSIC),

every single 8th note is played until the very end.

Just as in the first movement: small pulses rule the day.

The piece ends without the 8th notes letting up for a moment, without remorse.

Still, it is a curious, ambiguous ending.

First of all, obviously, it's very quiet.

For a movement that was this forthright and brash,

it’s certainly not what one would expect.

But more than the dynamic, what’s surprising here is the mode:

we end not in c minor, but c major.

(MUSIC)

Now, Beethoven wrote many, many minor key works that end in major –

the 5th and 9th symphonies are just the most famous examples.

The "tragedy to triumph" narrative is one of his favorites.

But this is not that.

We have not modulated; we have not truly left c minor behind.

It’s there in the violent answer to the fermata,

(MUSIC)

and there is a suggestion of it right until the very end.

(MUSIC)

This is what is known as a picardy third: a major chord that comes at the end of

a minor key work, as a sort of resolution.

Bach used it all the time, and one still finds it in the nineteenth century,

though with less frequency.

Here, it really adds a touch of emotional ambiguity to a work

that is otherwise straight as they come.

If the piece had ended without the Picardy third, in a pure minor,

(MUSIC)

even retaining the hushed dynamic,

it would have sounded much more normal; assured.

Instead, the eleventh hour – quarter to midnight, really –addition of the Picardy third

adds an element of mystery to this movement: an element that had been absent previously.

This is not the first time Beethoven has used this trick.

In the Trio op. 1 no. 3 - c minor, yet again! -

most of the last movement is VINTAGE c minor Beethoven:

determined, fist clenched.

But in an extended coda, the confidence disappears, and the work ends

on a very long, very soft C Major pedal.

It sounds like a ghostly apparition.

And again, it's not a real modulation – the minor still hangs in the air.

(I can’t effectively demonstrate this ending without the violin and cello, but I highly

recommend that you take a listen–

it’s a larger scale example of the same phenomenon,

and really puts the ending of Op. 10 no. 1 in context.)

So there it is: the sonata op. 10 no. 1!

Unlike the Pathetique, its closest relative, it didn’t break the mold

and change the sonata form forever.

But its extremities of tempo and pulse, and the way in which its movements relate

to one another, make it totally original, in addition to being, as ever, of the highest quality.

Beethoven never once painted by numbers in his sonatas, and this work is no exception.

It’s another one to treasure.

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