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Fantasy or Sonata?
Fantasy or Sonata?
Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major, Op. 26
Composed 1800-01, published 1802 Dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky I. Andante con variazioni II. Scherzo. Allegro molto III. Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroe. Maestoso andante IV. Allegro
Composed 1801, published 1802 Dedicated to Princess Josephine von Liechtenstein I. Andante II. Allegro molto e vivace III. Adagio con espressione IV. Allegro vivace
Composed 1801, published 1802 Dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi I. Adagio sostenuto II. Allegretto III. Presto agitato
Beethoven had been in Vienna for a decade. His reputation was burgeoning and he had plentiful commissions for new works. It was a time of professional success, but also of great personal turmoil as he was forced to come to terms with his increasing deafness. 1802 saw the publication of five Piano Sonatas (Opp. 22, 26, 27 and 28) but it was also the year he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, that most eloquent and enigmatic evidence of the anguished conflict between his sense of artistic destiny and his physical limitation. These years were among Beethoven’s most urgently productive, his music of the time characterised by a boldness that would find its fullest expression in the Eroica Symphony (1803). The inclusion of the Marcia Funebre sulla morte d’un Eroe in the Sonata Op. 26 suggests a direct link with the Eroica. This sombre movement, with its repeating chords using dotted rhythms, wide dynamic range and orchestral sensibility, suggests a musical language moving away from classical archetypes and an indicator pointing to the degree of fantasy that would erupt in the Op. 27 Sonatas. All of Beethoven’s previous sonatas had opened with a sonata form Allegro. Unusually, Op. 26 begins with a lyrical set of variations. This was not unprecedented – Mozart’s Sonata K. 331 had also begun with a variation movement – but it changes the structural dynamic of a multi-movement work, from a statement with consequences to a series of connected propositions. The lyricism of the variations is followed by a scherzo, which is playful, often capricious, with a contrasting, more earthbound trio section. After the funeral march comes the final rondo, beginning in a whirl of notes and a semiquaver motion which never abates. The rhetoric of the movement is curiously underplayed however, and the final rondo statement has no great structural force, gradually falling in register until absorbed by the tonic chord. This conclusion is entirely appropriate for a work that prioritises the contrasts of musical character in its four movements over the formal rhetoric of sonata form.
Beethoven’s next two sonatas were subtitled Sonata quasi una fantasia and, like Op. 26, neither begins with a sonata-allegro. Sonata and Fantasia are odd bedfellows, pulling in opposite directions; the former suggests something compositionally controlled within a limited set of generic possibilities, while the latter suggests something freer and more improvisatory. Beethoven is here pushing the boundaries of both formal logic and expressive potential. In Op. 27, No. 1 Beethoven instructs that the movements should be played continuously, presenting extended sections of contrasting moods and tempi. The same process also operates within the movements. The first movement has a sudden Allegro between two framing Andante sections; the abruptness of this juxtaposition shows Beethoven not merely dissolving sonata form but writing music predicated on a completely different set of principles. The opening Andante is a case in point, built from repeating four-bar phrases and frequent tonic cadences. The repeating sense of tonal closure is extreme – the exact opposite of the opening out of
a tonal drama that would energise a sonata form movement.
The Allegro molto e vivace that follows changes the mood again. This is one of Beethoven’s most lyrical and profound scherzos, set in relief by a trio section which is, provocatively, almost entirely devoid of melodic material. The Adagio con espressione begins as though it will develop into a large slow movement, but before a full structure can develop a cadenza-like passage leads directly into an Allegro vivace. What at first might have looked like an independent slow movement has become an extended slow introduction to the rondo finale. This rondo has a different tone from the earlier rondos. It takes on some of the structural weight of the absent sonata-allegro first movement. It is a rondo with clear sonata features. The movement ends in a dramatic fashion with a reprise of the Adagio music, followed by a vigorous, almost comic, Presto. The work maintains its sense of fantasy right through to its conclusion, but despite its frequent changes of direction it is defined as much by the structural continuity of its tonal and thematic elements as it is by contrast of mood and tempo. The idea of continuity within a multi-movement structure is continued in the second of the quasi una fantasia sonatas, Op. 27, No. 2. Here, there are three differentiated movements, the second following the first without a break, and the final movement acting as a point of structural culmination. The title ‘Moonlight’ was given to the work after Beethoven’s death; and though it probably has little to do with Beethoven’s conception, it has proved a powerful image for subsequent generations of performers and listeners. This is of course one of the best known of all pieces of piano music, but its popularity should not distract from its boldness and originality. The opening Adagio sostenuto is full of paradoxes, looking back to Bach Preludes and forward to Romantic character pieces, tightly structured yet improvisatory in feel. It is a movement of great melodic beauty, but where melody is often reduced to simple repeated note patterns. And formally the movement manages to be both like and unlike a sonata form, adopting its logic if not always the grammar. The second movement is in many ways more conventional, being a graceful, if slightly melancholic, minuet. But in following directly from the first movement it is given an unusual context. The finale, like the first movement, is full of paradoxes – a fairly conventional sonata form movement with an unconventional level of brutality and violence in its musical material. It shares with the first movement an obsession with arpeggios and in many ways can be seen as a transformed reworking of the earlier movement. Towards the end of the movement there are glimpses of the world of the first movement, but they are just backward glances in a work where energy and forward propulsion are always the guiding force.
