EP07 - Beethoven: Sonata No.29 in B-flat Major, "Hammerklavier" (Levit)

07/26/22 • 41 min

Beethoven: Sonata No.29 in B-flat Major, "Hammerklavier" (Levit)

Author: Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

And here’s the biggest one of them all. The weird, titanic, gnarled, joyous, grief-stricken monster that is the Hammerklavier. Where exactly to begin?

With the interval of a 3rd, I guess. It permeates the work at every level, creating close coordination between motivic/harmonic detail, and tonal structure. The main theme of each movement is built from the same motif: a rising and then falling 3rd. In the final movement the 3rd both defies the movement in the bass in the introduction, as well as the shape of the fugue theme: a rising 3rd (10th), following by a scalar figure that is repeated, each time descending by a 3rd. Harmonically, the development section of the third movement is built on a sequence of 3rds, and the trio of the scherzo oscillates between Bb Minor and Db Major, two keys separated by a 3rd.

At an even deeper structural level, the 3rd is all-pervasive. You’d expect, in a Bb Maj sonata, that the dominant key of F would play a major role, but in 40+ minutes of music there is not a single modulation to that key. Instead, Beethoven constructs an intricate system of four keys around Bb, and returns to them time and time again. Three of them, G, D, and F#, are all separated from Bb by the interval of a third. The final, the “black key” of B Minor, occurs in every movement and functions as an anti-thesis to Bb Major. The struggle between these two keys dramatically frames the entire sonata (just listen to the scherzo’s ending).

There’s lots more to the Hammerklavier than the 3rd. You’ve got structural innovations: in the 1st movement’s recapitulation the return to the stable tonic is heavily delayed (by, yes, the key of B minor), and in the 2nd the development is too short, but the recapitulation varies and decorates the theme so extensively that it becomes a sort of extended development. And you’ve got the sheer contrapuntal and dramatic genius of the last movement, where a huge number of traditional contrapuntal devices are wielded with a jaggedness and fury that belies their conservative associations. It's also worth noting how contrapuntal the writing in the 1st movement is -- one of the most striking features of Beethoven's late work.

MVT 1 EXPOSITION 00:00 – Theme 1 00:43 – Shift to D (modulating by 3rd), beginning of Theme group 2. 01:51 – Theme 2 (G Maj; modulating by 3rd) DEVELOPMENT 04:44 – Theme 2 04:58 – Theme 1 head 05:06 – Fughetta based on Theme 1 head 06:09 – Shift from D to B Maj (modulation by 3rd; note closeness to “black key”) RECAPITULATION 06:37 – Theme 1 06:48 – Shift to Gb/F#. Harmonic instability follows, and we move eventually to 07:29 – Bm (and then G, another modulation by a 3rd, and then back at 7:51 to Bb) 08:49 – Theme 2 09:19 – CODA; Theme 2 09:39 – Theme 1 head 09:50 – Theme 1

MVT 3 EXPOSITION 12:44 – Main Theme 15:14 – Transition 16:43 – Theme Group 2, Theme 1 17:25 – Theme Group 2, Theme 2 18:25 – Theme Group 2, Theme 3 19:27 – DEVELOPMENT 20:17 – RECAPITULATION [extended development]

MVT 4: PART I 29:52 – Introduction. Note movement by 3rds in bass, interspersed with episodes of original material. PART II 32:37 – Introduction and development of fugue theme [Theme 1] and countersubject. Note how long the theme is, containing a leap and trill in the head (ordinarily a concluding device), scalar descent in 3rds in the middle, and a long chromatic tail with much implied dissonance. PART III 34:07 – Introduction and brief development of new theme [Theme 2] in Gb 34:21 – Augmentation [doubled note value] of fugue theme, with countersubject (note the constant descent by 3rds) 34:49 – Stretto [overlapping entry] of the fugue theme’s head [leap + trill] PART IV 34:57 – Return to Theme 2, in Ab 35:34 – Theme 1 in retrograde [backwards] 36:10 – Stretti of Theme 1, initially in inversion, then including original (Note key of B) 36:46 – Entire subject in mirrored form 37:20 – Increasing focus on Theme 1’s head, leading to trill-laden passage at 37:30 PART V 37:41 – Ch...

Beethoven: Sonata No.29 in B-flat Major, "Hammerklavier" (Levit)

Author: Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

And here’s the biggest one of them all. The weird, titanic, gnarled, joyous, grief-stricken monster that is the Hammerklavier. Where exactly to begin?

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EP06 - Beethoven: Sonata No.30 in E Major, Op.109 (Goode, Levit)

Beethoven: Sonata No.30 in E Major, Op.109 (Goode, Levit)

Author: Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

Beethoven’s 30th Sonata is to the Hammerklavier what a koan is to a novel: ultra-compressed, terse, deeply enigmatic (so enigmatic, in fact, that we can’t even decide if it’s got 2 or 3 movements). It marks a return to intimate structures after the vastness of the Hammerklavier, but despite its beauty and warmth it’s as deeply radical as anything which Beethoven wrote.

In terms of large-scale structure, the Op.109 does a couple of very interesting things. There is the fact that Mvt 1 is extremely short, being built more around contrast (the old, “classical” ideal), and containing little thematic development (the new “romantic” ideal that Beethoven had done so much to build). Perhaps because of this, Mvt 2 (to pick up the slack?) is also in sonata form (a scherzo without the trio is also a good reading), another very unusual step. Add to this the fact that for the first time in Beethoven’s sonata output the focus is now the last movement (instead of the first, which is the norm), which is considerably longer than both Mvt 1 + 2. This pattern – of having a slow and large final movement which ends the piece with a kind of devotional intensity – is repeated in the two sonatas which come after the Op.109.

The relationship between Mvt 1 & 2 is also pretty interesting: they sort of function as a combined counterweight to Mvt 3. They are joined together (not by an attaca indication, which is unusual) by the thinnest of tissues – the holding down of the pedal. Both main (opening) themes of both movements are also very similar: the basses of both are built around a simple descending scale.

The sonata as a whole is also unified by the motivic interval of a 3rd. The 1st theme of the Mvt 1 has a principal melody (highlighted as quarter-notes) which basically consists of paired 3rds (G#-B, F#-A, E-G#), as is the 1st theme of the Mvt 2 (the RH basically goes G-E, B-G, E-G). The theme of Mvt 3 opens with a 3rd, which recurs throughout the variations. In Var.2 the 2nd and 3rd notes in the RH are separated by a 3rd, and the pattern recurs (F#-D#, then G#-E, F#-D#, F#-A#). In Var.3, the pattern is obvious: both RH and LH move outward in 3rd. In Var.4, the rhythmically important notes are also separated by 3rds (for the most part: B-G#-E in the opening phrased, for instance). In Var.5 the fugue subject closely resembles the sonata’s opening principal melody, and so on.

Last thing to note: the last movement, a theme and variations (unusual end to a sonata), contains much of Beethoven’s most beautiful writing. The bit from 35:19 to 36:17 (including the theme’s re-entrance at 35:40) must count as one of the most transcendent 1-min segments of music ever written. In fact, the 3 most lyrically intense/ecstatic/generous 1-min segments of music Beethoven ever wrote are probably all found in the last movements of his last three sonatas (the closing chorale of the 31st, and the brief moment in the 32nd when the theme and variation form is abandoned.)

MVT I EXPOSITION 00:00 – Theme 1 00:11 – Theme 2 (the culmination of Beethoven’s experimentation with quasi-recitative structures in sonata form. Note the sudden changes of harmony.) DEVELOPMENT 01:05 – Theme 1 RECAPITULATION 01:38 – Theme 1 01:50 – Theme 2 (Note the violent transition to C Maj at 2:11, which Levit emphasises very well [21:27]) 02:52 – Theme 1 03:22 – CODA

MVT II EXPOSITION 03:42 – Theme 1 (note the bass line, which is what the development will pick up on) 03:49 – Theme 2 (or the start of Theme Group 2) DEVELOPMENT 04:31 – Theme 1’s bass line is presented in canon in RH 04:42 – Theme 1’s bass line is presented against itself in inversion RECAPITULATION 05:02 – Theme 1 05:14 – Theme (Group) 2 05:49 – CODA

MVT III 06:02 – Theme 08:15 – VAR.1. A waltz. 10:21 – VAR.2. Three variations in one, the second of which features lovely contrapuntal writing [10:42; 11:33] and last of which is especially moving [10:55; 11:43] 11:56 – VAR.3 12:12 – VAR.4 14:53 – VAR.5. A spectacular little chorale-fugue, erupting out of an essentially lyrical movement. Oddly enough, Beethoven does not mark the final two variations in the score, instead leaving only tempo indications. No-one is quite sure why this is. 15:45 – VA...

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EP08 - Beethoven: Sonata No.28 in A Major, Op.101 (Levit, Lewis, Korstick)

Beethoven: Sonata No.28 in A Major, Op.101 (Levit, Lewis, Korstick)

Author: Ashish Xiangyi Kumar

This sonata is a little overshadowed by the Hammerklavier, which it precedes, but should not be. It’s the first of Beethoven’s late sonatas, and is groundbreaking in more ways than one. It might be the case that its ingenuity is overlooked because it is worn so lightly – this is the most tender and good-natured of all the late sonatas.

The first movement is this sonata is ultra-compressed, as is typical of the late sonatas (well, some of them at least: I’m looking at you, Hammerklavier). The most extraordinary feature of the movement is its quality of infinitude –it is constructed such that the melody unfolds forever like a Wagner “run-on” progression [see 0:14], and the method by which this is achieved becomes clear when you notice that in this A Maj movement, the root position tonic chord never occurs at all until the very end of the piece. So a movement which opens on the dominant (in a manner rather like a Bach prelude), really turns out to be single (interrupted and extended) dominant-tonic progression.

The second movement is a march where a scherzo would be, and has rather unexpected musical and dramatic heft. The movement is in F Maj, far removed from A Maj, and the movement also features prominent episodes in A Maj and Db Maj (even further removed from A Maj). The three keys are all related by the interval of a third, in clear anticipation of the Hammerklavier’s even more extensive large-scale deployment of the interval. The passage which leads back from Db to F Maj is one of Beethoven’s magical passages, where the pedal is instructed to be held down despite changes in harmony [5:21; more dramatically 52:00].

Note also the heavily canonic writing of the second movement’s middle (“sort-of-trio”) section, and the extensive canonic writing in the last movement [14:20, 14:49]. This is the most canon-heavy of Beethoven’s sonatas, but at lot of this stuff passes by almost without notice because the canonic writing is so unintrusive and joyous.

The third movement is essentially an intermezzo or introduction, which would make you expect it to lead straight into the final movement. Instead, extraordinarily, after a long pause on the dominant, it leads back to a repeat of the first movement’s main theme: one of the most moving moments in all of Beethoven’s music.

The final movement is heavily contrapuntal: even before we encounter the fugue which is the development, we’re given a main theme that is highly contrapuntal in a rather Bachian, imitative way. The fugue of the development section is the most good-natured one Beethoven ever wrote (all of the fugal episodes in Beethoven’s late sonatas have very distinct characters, and this one is certainly the nice guy in the family). It begins with a minimalist quotation of the sonata’s opening [16:33], and features a consistently gentle humour (see the unresolved trill at [16:56 and similar] and the fugue subject which enters at 16:51, which is described by Schiff as “a villain tiptoeing on a stage”). Formally, it’s also worth noting that the fugue employs an inventive harmonic scheme where the first entry is in A Min, the second in C Maj (E Min would be the “correct” key), and the third in D Min.

The movement also features a low E prominently because Beethoven had just gotten a new Broadwood piano with a low E the Viennese pianos didn’t have and was eager to show it off. See the wonderful passage that ends the development [18:28], where the bass features a heavily augmented version of the movement’s theme (A-F#-G#-A-B-E) embedded in a pounding low E, which Beethoven actually points out by writing “Contra E”(!) The sonata’s coda also features the low E recurring in the bass – as Schiff observes, Beethoven used the low E whenever he could, like a child with a new toy.

MVT I – Etwas Lebhaft und mit innigsten Empfindung (“Rather lively, with the warmest feeling”) EXPOSITION 00:00 – Theme 1 00:14 – Theme 2 [Note how fast we arrive in the dominant] 01:06 – A syncopated “floating” progression, where the resolution to the tonic is extensively delayed 01:20 – DEVELOPMENT [Note the integration of the syncopation into the texture] 02:13 – RECAPITULATION [Note the highly unobtrusive return of the main theme: it’s basically smuggled into the texture] 03:02 – CODA

MVT II – Lebhaft, marschmässig (“Lively, restrained march” – Note how Schumanesque this movement is) 04:18 – March [Note the chromatic fourth in the bass and the sudden harmonic disolations] 07:15 – Trio 08:32 – March gradually returns

MVT III – Langs...