Three days after Beethoven wrote about his hearing loss to Franz Wegeler, he also wrote to his friend Karl Amenda:
How often would I like to have you here with me, for your Beethoven is leading a very unhappy life and is at variance with Nature and his Creator. Many times already have I cursed Him for exposing His creatures to the slightest hazard, so that the most beautiful blossom is thereby often crushed and destroyed. Let me tell you that my most prized possession, my hearing has greatly deteriorated. When you were still with me, I already felt the symptoms; but I said nothing about them. Now they have become very much worse… [I]n my present condition I must withdraw from everything; and my best years will rapidly pass away without my being able to achieve all that my talent and my strength have commanded me to do — Sad resignation, to which I am forced to have recourse. Needless to say, I am resolved to overcome all this, but how is it going to be done? (Emily Anderson, ed., Letters of Beethoven, No. 53)
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 is the first known composition that deliberately takes advantage of the sympathetic vibration of piano strings within the piano. Beethoven labeled the first movement “Adagio Sostenuto” (“slow and sustained”) and instructs the player “Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamante e senza sordini” — “You must play this whole piece very delicately and without muting” — that is, with the foot holding down the sustain pedal to raise all the dampers off the strings.
With the dampers lifted from the strings, not only do the directly struck strings continue vibrating, but the strings corresponding to the harmonics of those notes begin vibrating as well, building up a mist of sound.
#Beethoven250 Day 140
Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight” in C♯ Minor (Opus 27, No. 2, 1st movement), 1801
The first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 14 played on a pianoforte with the sustain pedal held down for the duration.
The strings of modern pianos have a much longer sustain, so the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 can no longer be played as Beethoven instructs. The pianist needs to pedal periodically or the mist will turn to a dense choking smog.
Before Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 was known as the “Mondschein” or “Moonlight,” it was called the “Laube” because it was believed to been composed in an arbor. Imagine instead that the nickname of this sonata is “Nachtterror,” and listen again.
#Beethoven250 Day 140
Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight” in C♯ Minor (Opus 27, No. 2), 1801
Paul Lewis in a performance from earlier this year at a New Jersey church.
In Act 1, Scene 1 of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, while attempting to protect the honor and virginity of his daughter, the Commendatore has a sword fight with the libidinous Don and suffers a fatal sword wound. The tempo becomes Andante in 2/4 time, and a vocal trio is accompanied by the first violins playing 18 measures of ostinato triplet arpeggios, 4 to a measure. Beethoven is known to have copied this passage and transposed it to C# minor, the same key as the Sonata No. 14.
Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer is credited with discovering this connection. He wrote:
At the time one of Beethoven’s aristocratic friends died and was laid out in state in his palace. One night Beethoven is said to have improvised as he sat by the corpse of his friend; is it so unlikely that Beethoven was reminded of the similar scene in Don Giovanni and that this was the reason for the striking similarity which we have mentioned? In any case, there is no romantic moonlight in this movement: it is rather a solemn dirge.
In its simplicity, the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata has a timeless quality. Having never heard it before, one might guess it was Bach or Schubert or Mendelssohn or Chopin. Berlioz said “The Adagio is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify.”
The explosive third movement of the Moonlight Sonata can’t be more different from the first — “unbridled in its representation of emotion,” as Charles Rosen wrote. “Even today, two hundred years later, its ferocity is astonishing.”
#Beethoven250 Day 140
Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight” in C♯ Minor (Opus 27, No. 2, 3rd movement), 1801
The 78-year-old Rudolf Serkin playing the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata at the Reagan White House, 22 November 1981.
#Beethoven250 Day 140
Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight” in C♯ Minor (Opus 27, No. 2, 3rd movement), 1801
French guitarist Tina Setkic (@Tina_S__) in a breathtaking performance. Not sure the drums are necessary but I love the smile at the end!
What about the often neglected “middle child” movement of the Moonlight Sonata? Hans von Bülow called it “a lyric Intermezzo between two tragic Night-pieces” and Liszt called it “a flower between two abysses.”
Barry Cooper on the Moonlight Sonata:
The second movement provides a sharp contrast of mood, but its cheerful nature might be taken to imply past rather than present happiness, and it is only a brief interlude before the angry and agitated finale. Here the triplets of the first movement are expanded into surging arpeggios that cover almost the whole keyboard, in a sonata-form movement that carries the main weight of the work. Beethoven’s persistent desire to create unity, continuity, and forward thrust throughout a whole work finds a new manner of realization in this sonata. (Beethoven, pp. 115–6)
#Beethoven250 Day 140
Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight” in C♯ Minor (Opus 27, No. 2), 1801
If Harmony Zhu has truly waited 11 years to play this, it must be part of her DNA, as it is for rest of western civilization.