Two Sonatas of Contrasting Fortune

Two Sonatas of Contrasting Fortune

Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53, ‘Waldstein’

Composed 1803-4, published 1805 Dedicated to Count Ferdinand von Waldstein I. Allegro con brio II. Introduzione: Adagio molto (attacca) III. Rondo: Allegretto moderato – Prestissimo

Sonata No. 22 in F major, Op. 54

Composed 1804, published 1805 I. In tempo d’un menuetto II. Allegretto – Più allegro

The Waldstein, Op. 53 is one of the most celebrated and most performed of all Beethoven’s sonatas. The contrast with the Op. 54 Sonata could hardly be greater: despite its obvious beauties, it is rarely heard outside performances of the complete cycle, and has never caught the popular imagination. The two sonatas are very different in character, but they do share in Beethoven’s continuing exploration of possibilities for the arrangement and relationship between movements. Op. 54 is his first important sonata in two movements, and though the Waldstein is ostensibly in three movements, it is also essentially a two-movement structure, the middle movement becoming an introduction to the finale.

The first movement of the Waldstein Sonata is one of Beethoven’s grandest and most distinctive. It adopts a similar tonal strategy to Op. 31, No. 1, but in place of the playful style of that sonata we encounter a presentation which is bold, even heroic – an altogether more developed, more elegant, work. Beethoven’s control of form and material is formidable, with sophisticated interplay of major and minor modes, structural contrasts achieved with closely related musical materials, and the assured construction of larger musical paragraphs controlled by stepwise pitch progressions. The coda of the movement transcends any expectations of a simple closing passage by continuing the tonal argument, presenting all the main thematic ideas and creating a section of unmistakably Beethovenian structural weight. Beethoven’s original plan had been for a separate slow movement, later published as the Andante favori. This was replaced by the current Introduzione – Adagio molto which links directly to the finale and thus continues Beethoven’s experimentation, seen in the Op. 27 Sonatas, in linking movements together. It serves the dual function of slow movement and finale introduction. Its opening F major harmony is almost immediately destabilised by an augmented sixth chord, which marks the first stage in a large and dramatic preparation for the finale proper. The finale returns to C major, the key of the first movement, but is serene and expansive, presenting a very different type of soundscape. The form of the movement is a rondo, but it unfolds at a leisurely pace with much thematic repetition and an

extended central episode of considerable thematic development. Like the Moonlight Sonata, the finale is the culmination of a linked multi-movement structure, but where the former work storms to a ferocious conclusion, the Waldstein culminates in radiance.

The lesser-known Sonata Op. 54 sits chronologically between the Waldstein and the Appassionata, largely overshadowed by those two giants of the repertoire. But it has a strangeness and beauty all its own. Neither of its two movements is conventional (another contributing factor in its marginalisation). The first movement is an unexpected minuet, and not quite like the middle-movement minuets of previous sonatas. This minuet is particularly elegant and stately, and its trio provides a notably energetic contrast. More interesting still, it transcends the sectional implications of the form, partly because it behaves in some ways like a rondo, and partly because of the variational procedures Beethoven adopts. These produce an effect of structural arrival when we reach the coda, of something revealed – something, in other words, like the effect of a more usual sonata form first movement but in strikingly different terms.

The second movement of Op. 54 is even more experimental, with highly unusual formal proportions. The opening section is unconventionally short, the following section unconventionally long and for good measure is then repeated. The material is an almost continuous moto perpetuo, subsuming the formal divisions into the greater continuity. This constant patterning of notes has led to the movement being compared to an etude. It concludes a sonata which is unjustly neglected and intriguingly uncategorisable.