Beethoven, in his core, is a composer of light, his music uplifting and life-affirming. But in a few works he addressed the darkness with a mastery just as absolute, giving us within the sonata cycle the Pathétique, Moonlight, and perhaps most vivid of all, the Appassionata.
The tension in the beginning is almost physically palpable, a coiled spring of dotted rhythms as the hands move in austere unison down and up the keyboard (it is only Beethoven’s magic touch that can transform something as mundane as an arpeggio - a broken chord - in a device of immense dramatic power). A trill - a shimmering shiver, more psychological effect than substance - completes the opening phrase. It is immediately repeated half a tone higher; a new, colder colour brought into the mix. The opening notes of the two phrases - D flat and C - then unite to form the famous four-note fate motif (0:38), not so much a menace but a doubtless promise of the eruption to come.
When we think we can’t stand the tension anymore, the music finally explodes in a raging passage of semiquavers, followed by barrages of fortissimo chords, pummelling the keyboard with wrath and abandon. This constant pull between frozen, static tension and searing hot outbursts of rage forms the body of the movement. Small islands of calm are present, for instance in the second subject (1:40) - thematically just an inversion of the opening broken chord - but they are very short-lived, leading every time back to one extreme or the other. There is no real respite within the movement.
The development section ends on a powerful climax which rushes down the keyboard into a particularly enraged and agonised repeated hammering-out of the fate motif (5:08). The last repeat dissolves into a roiling pulsation of triplets in the left hand, over which the opening is then repeated in full. This is pure genius: Beethoven not only creates tension which is extreme even by the standards of this tension-filled movement. He does it while also upsetting one of the core tenets of the sonata form: the warm feeling of homecoming and recognition we expect from the reprise. Here we certainly recognise the opening lines, but there’s nothing comforting in them; rather, we soberingly realise that this probably was their intended character all along.
After the reprise, a long quiet episode builds the tension towards the biggest climax of the movement (8:22), but even that is not the end. After the climax dissipates, a few pensive repeats of the fate motif lead into the coda, where the theme of the second subject changes into a minor key, becoming an imploring plea. But fate is not to be assuaged, and a real battle erupts between the hands, as they are vying for dominance using a truncated version of the fate motif (9:29). The battle’s aftermath, perhaps unexpectedly, is quiet and once again frozen, static, as if snow covers the scene, removing everything from view.
Similarly to the Moonlight and the Pathétique, Beethoven includes an oasis of respite in the second movement (10:08). It is a set of variations in D flat major, on a theme which, unusually, combines the deeply devoted feeling of a chorale with the dotted rhythms of a march. The variations increasingly add flow and life to the theme, while also pulling it away and up from the lowest reaches of the keyboard. After the third variation the music descends back and the opening chorale/march is repeated in full. This time, its ending is subverted, leading into a false cadence on a diminished seventh chord (16:24). This cues an immediate return of creeping tension in anticipation of the finale…
… which starts without a break, with insistent fortissimo repeats of the transition chord (16:30). A series of aborted phrases then leads into the finale proper: a dark, shadowy soundscape constructed of never-stopping semiquavers. The finale is full of a sense of danger, tangibly standing on the brink of disaster. Beethoven chooses the sonata form as a vehicle for this narrative, adding an unexpected repeat of the second (rather than the first) part (20:50). On the surface it is just an experiment with the sonata form, but in terms of dramaturgy, it’s a strong narrative device: I see it as an attempt to stave off the coda, with its impending doom. When the coda does, inevitably, come, whatever we feared is finally upon us. A kind of desperate dance at first (23:44) the bulk of the coda is a tragic denouement, with the music forcibly rising in waves to bury everything underneath it. In the memorable words of the great British musicologist D.F. Tovey, these pages are a ‘rush deathwards’; an unforgettable ending to one of Beethoven’s darkest - and greatest - works.
***
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
© 2020 Fly On The Wall, London
‪@FazioliPianos‬