We finally reach the conclusion of the journey. The last three sonatas were neither the last piano pieces Beethoven would write - he followed them with the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120 and the 6 Bagatelles, Op. 126 - nor were they his final works in the sonata form - those would be the late string quartets. But after Op. 111 Beethoven’s path did not lead him back to the piano sonata genre. In strong contrast to the Hammerklavier, where the bulging, straining creative muscles are evident in every note, the last three sound like an uninhibited stream of inspiration, captured mid-flow by Beethoven and shaped and moulded by him until they appear to us as near-miraculous acts of effortless creation. Whereas the Hammerklavier feels probing, exploring, challenging, the last three are completely at ease with themselves, reflecting not the struggles of a creative genius trying to unfetter himself from all convention, but the poetic utterances of a composer who has gone so far ahead of us that one cannot but feel awe facing these inimitable musical worlds, and gratitude at having been granted access to them.
Much unites the three sonatas, besides the overall sense of transcendence suffusing the music. Structurally, they all lead towards their respective finales. All three incorporate large vocally-imagined movements or episodes - a ‘song with the most heartfelt emotion’ in Op. 109, a ‘lamenting arioso’ in Op. 110, and the simply named ‘Arietta’ as the magnificent theme of Op. 111’s finale. All three are also obsessed with polyphonic writing - a growing interest of Beethoven in his late years. It’s most overt in Op. 110, which contains two fully fledged fugues in its finale, but polyphonic sections abound in both Opp. 109 and 111 as well.
In terms of sound, Beethoven, who was almost completely deaf by that time, filled these sonatas with some of the most striking and memorable soundscapes he has ever created for the keyboard. His writing shows exquisite attention to colour and register throughout; to name just a few highlights - the angelic lightness of touch in the first movement of Op. 109, mirrored in the weightless floating in the middle of Op. 111’s finale; the muted grief of the recitativo in Op. 110, opening up to a line of 28 (!) repeated As, an unforgettable rhetorical gesture stemming from Beethoven’s contemplation of a single note; finally the overpowering wall of sound in the last variation of Op. 109’s finale, when the entire instrument seems to vibrate through the trills in both hands. But apart from these standouts, even the voicing and registration of the simple opening chords of Op. 110, or of the last movements of Opp. 109 and 111, have great impact, eliciting an immediate emotional response - the embracing warmth in Op. 110, the oil painting-like richness in Op. 109 and the pure, serene stillness in Op. 111.
Contrasts abound throughout. This, of course, has always been a feature of Beethoven’s music, but here, I feel, he reached new heights of not just juxtaposing utter extremes, but combining them into highly complex wholes. The macro-level contrasts are the major-minor keys of the movements and their respective characters: the light of the outer movements of Op. 109 contrasting with the intense darkness of its middle movement, or the boundless drive of Op. 111’s first movement contrasting with the tranquillity of its second. But it goes much further than this: the opening movement of Op. 109, for instance, is itself built from two highly contrasting elements: the unhurried opening flow, indescribably lovely in its simplicity, jars as soon as in bar nine with a prolonged Adagio espressivo section - it’s a clash of the narrative with the emotional, of the transparent with the dense, of the continuous with the hesitating and interrupted, of the serene with the turbulent. And this is just the beginning of the movement; Beethoven, inevitably, will develop both elements further, ultimately bringing them together...
... The finales of Op. 109 and Op. 111 are both sets of variations, following two different narrative arcs. In Op. 109, the variations are akin to a set of small self-contained worlds - a soaring aria over a waltz-like accompaniment in the first variation, a gentle interplay of crossing hands in the second, a fiery two-voice invention in the third, etc. The final, sixth variation, contains a tremendous build-up, culminating with an extended, piano-trembling climax, which subsides and dissipates at length, closing the movement with a full restatement of the opening theme. It’s a simple but powerful idea, as we perceive the same music differently, having passed through the journey of the preceding variations...
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Beethoven 32 - Over the course of 2020, I have learned and filmed all 32 Beethoven sonatas. Subscribe to this channel or visit beethoven32.com to follow the project.
Boris Giltburg, piano
Filmed by Stewart French
© 2021 Fly On The Wall, London
‪@FazioliPianos‬