Piano Sonata No. 31 (Beethoven)
Encyclopedia
The Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110, by Ludwig van Beethoven
was composed in 1821. It is the central piano sonata
in the group of three opp. 109–111 which he wrote between 1820 and 1822, and the thirty-first of his published piano sonatas.
The sonata is in three movements. The moderato first movement in sonata form
, marked con amabilità, is followed by a fast scherzo. The finale comprises a slow recitative and arioso dolente, a fugue, a return of the arioso lament, and a second fugue that builds to an affirmative conclusion.
s and three piano sonatas at 90 ducats (Beethoven had originally asked 120 ducats for the sonatas). In May 1820 Beethoven agreed, the songs (op. 108) already being available, and he undertook to deliver the sonatas within three months. These three sonatas are the ones now known as opp. 109–111.
Beethoven was prevented from completing all three of the promised sonatas on schedule by factors including an attack of jaundice
; Op. 109 was completed and delivered in 1820, but correspondence shows that Op. 110 was still not ready by the middle of December 1821, and the completed autograph score bears the date December 25 1821. Presumably the sonata was delivered shortly thereafter, since Beethoven was paid the 30 ducats for this sonata in January 1822.
characterises the main themes of the sonata as all derived from the hexachord
- the first six notes of the diatonic scale - and the intervals of the third and fourth that divide it. He also points out that contrary motion
is a feature of much of the work, particularly prominent in the scherzo second movement.
describes the first movement as in "orderly, predictable, sonata form", and Charles Rosen
calls the movement's structure Haydnesque
. Its opening is marked con amabilità ("amiably"). After a pause on the dominant seventh the opening is extended in a cantabile theme. This leads to a light arpeggiated demisemiquaver transition passage. The second group of themes in the dominant E♭ includes appoggiatura figures, and a bass which descends in steps from E to G three times while the melody rises by a sixth. The exposition ends with a semiquaver cadential theme. Beethoven does not ask for the exposition to be repeated.
The development section (which Rosen calls "radically simple") consists of restatements of the movement's initial theme in a falling sequence, with underlying semiquaver figures. Tovey
compares the artful simplicity of the development with the entasis
of the Parthenon
's columns.
The recapitulation begins conventionally with a restatement of the opening theme in the tonic (A major), Beethoven combining it with the arpeggiated transition motif. The cantabile theme gradually modulates via the subdominant to E major (a seemingly remote key which both Matthews and Tovey rationalise by viewing it as a notational convenience for F major). The harmony soon modulates back to the home key of A major. The movement closes with a cadence over a tonic pedal.
are prevented by the short length of the bars implying twice as many accented beats - and had he wanted to, Beethoven could obviously have composed a Gavotte.
Beethoven uses antiphonal dynamics (four bars of piano contrasted against four bars of forte), and opens the movement with a six-note falling-scale motif. Cooper finds that Beethoven here indulged the rougher side of his humour by using two folk songs, Unsa kätz häd kaz'ln g'habt (Our cat has had kittens) and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich (lüderlich translates roughly as "dissolute" or "slob"). However, Tovey earlier decided that such theories of the themes' origins were "unscrupulous", since the first of these folk songs was arranged by Beethoven some time before this work's composition in payment for a publisher's trifling postage charge - the nature of the arrangement making it clear that the folk songs were of little importance to the composer.
The trio in D major juxtaposes "abrupt leaps" and "perilous descents" (Matthews), ending quietly and leading to a modified reprise of the scherzo with repeats, the first repeat written out to allow for an extra ritardando. After a few syncopated chords the movement's short coda comes to rest quietly but uneasily in F major via a long broken arpeggio in the bass.
conclusion.
The movement uses the scherzo's concluding ritardando bass arpeggio in F major to resolve to B minor, forming a seamless bridge between the rough humour of the scherzo and the doleful meditation of the Arioso, in A minor. Commentators (including Rosen and Kinderman cited) have seen the initial recitative and arioso as "operatic". The recitative, whose tempo changes frequently, leads to an extended arioso dolente, a lament whose initial melodic contour is similar to the opening of the scherzo (although Tovey dismisses this as insignificant). The lament is supported by repeated left hand chords.
The arioso leads into a three-voice fugue, whose subject is constructed from three parallel rising fourths. The opening theme of the first movement carried within it elements of this fugue subject (the motif A–D–B–E) and Matthews sees a foreshadowing of it also in the alto part of the first movement's antepenultimate bar. The countersubject moves by smaller intervals. Kinderman finds a parallel between this fugue and the fughetta of the composer's later Diabelli Variations, also finding similarities with the Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem movements of the contemporaneous Missa Solemnis
(sketches of this work and the Missa Solemnis are to be found interspersed in the same notebook).
The subject of this fugue (
Listen) opens with three ascending fourths (A -> D - B -> E - C -> F) and then goes downwards in gestures outlining fourths (i.e. F - E - D - C). The counterpoint has two themes
working together to highlight the fourth.
At the point where Beethoven introduces a diminution of the subject's rising figure the piece comes to rest on the dominant seventh, which resolves enharmonically onto a G minor chord in second inversion, leading into a reprise of the arioso dolente in G minor marked "ermattet" (exhausted). Kinderman contrasts the perceived "earthly pain" of the lament with the "consolation and inward strength" of the fugue - which Tovey points out had not reached a conclusion. Rosen finds that G minor, the tonality of the leading note, gives the arioso a flattened quality befitting exhaustion, and Tovey describes the broken rhythm of this second arioso as being "through sobs".
The arioso ends with repeated G major chords of increasing strength, repeating the sudden minor-to-major device that concluded the scherzo - now a second fugue emerges with the subject of the first inverted, marked "wieder auflebend" (again reviving) ("poi a poi di nuovo vivente" - little by little with renewed vigour - in the traditional Italian). There are many performance instructions in this passage that begin poi a poi and nach und nach (little by little). Initially the pianist is instructed to play una corda (i.e. to use the "soft pedal"); Brendel ascribes an unreal, illusory quality to it. The final fugue gradually increases in intensity and volume. After all three voices have entered, the bass introduces a diminution of the first fugue's subject (whose accent is also altered), while the treble augments the same subject with the rhythm across the bars. The bass eventually enters with the augmented version of the fugue subject in C minor, and this ends on E♭, the work's dominant. During this statement of the subject in the bass the pianist is instructed to gradually raise the una corda pedal. Beethoven here relaxes the tempo and introduces a truncated double-diminution of the fugue subject; after statements of the first fugue subject and its inversion surrounded by what Tovey calls this "flame" motif, the contrapuntal parts lose their identity. Brendel sees the following, final section as a "shaking off" of the constraints of polyphony, while Tovey goes so far as to label it a peroration, calling the closing passage "exultant". It leads to a final four-bar tonic arpeggio and a last emphatic chord of A flat major.
Matthews writes that it is not fanciful to see the final movement's second fugue as a "gathering of confidence after illness or despair", a theme which can be discerned in other late works by Beethoven (Brendel compares it with the Cavatina from the String Quartet Op. 130
). Cooper describes the coda as "passionate" and "heroic", but not out of place after the arioso's distress or the fugues' "luminous verities". Rosen states that this movement is the first time in the history of music where the academic devices of counterpoint and fugue are integral to a composition's drama, and observes that Beethoven in this work does not "simply represent the return to life, but persuades us physically of the process."
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
was composed in 1821. It is the central piano sonata
Piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement , two movements , five or even more movements...
in the group of three opp. 109–111 which he wrote between 1820 and 1822, and the thirty-first of his published piano sonatas.
The sonata is in three movements. The moderato first movement in sonata form
Sonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
, marked con amabilità, is followed by a fast scherzo. The finale comprises a slow recitative and arioso dolente, a fugue, a return of the arioso lament, and a second fugue that builds to an affirmative conclusion.
Composition
In the summer of 1819 Moritz Schlesinger, from the Schlesinger firm of music publishers based in Berlin, met Beethoven and asked to purchase some compositions. After some negotiation by letter, and despite the publisher's qualms about Beethoven's retaining the rights for publication in England and Scotland, Schlesinger agreed to purchase 25 songs for 60 ducatDucat
The ducat is a gold coin that was used as a trade coin throughout Europe before World War I. Its weight is 3.4909 grams of .986 gold, which is 0.1107 troy ounce, actual gold weight...
s and three piano sonatas at 90 ducats (Beethoven had originally asked 120 ducats for the sonatas). In May 1820 Beethoven agreed, the songs (op. 108) already being available, and he undertook to deliver the sonatas within three months. These three sonatas are the ones now known as opp. 109–111.
Beethoven was prevented from completing all three of the promised sonatas on schedule by factors including an attack of jaundice
Jaundice
Jaundice is a yellowish pigmentation of the skin, the conjunctival membranes over the sclerae , and other mucous membranes caused by hyperbilirubinemia . This hyperbilirubinemia subsequently causes increased levels of bilirubin in the extracellular fluid...
; Op. 109 was completed and delivered in 1820, but correspondence shows that Op. 110 was still not ready by the middle of December 1821, and the completed autograph score bears the date December 25 1821. Presumably the sonata was delivered shortly thereafter, since Beethoven was paid the 30 ducats for this sonata in January 1822.
Form
Alfred BrendelAlfred Brendel
Alfred Brendel KBE is an Austrian pianist, born in Czechoslovakia and a resident of the United Kingdom. He is also a poet and author.-Biography:...
characterises the main themes of the sonata as all derived from the hexachord
Hexachord
In music, a hexachord is a collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...
- the first six notes of the diatonic scale - and the intervals of the third and fourth that divide it. He also points out that contrary motion
Contrary motion
In music theory, contrapuntal motion is the general movement of two melodic lines with respect to each other. In traditional four-part harmony, it is important that lines maintain their independence, an effect which can be achieved by the judicious use of the four types of contrapuntal motion:...
is a feature of much of the work, particularly prominent in the scherzo second movement.
First movement
The first movement is marked Moderato cantabile molto espressivo ("at a moderate speed, in a singing style, very expressively"). Denis MatthewsDenis Matthews
Denis Matthews was an English pianist and musicologist.Denis James Matthews was born in Coventry, the son of a motor salesman. He attended Arnold Lodge School, Leamington Spa, from 1927 to 1932 and Warwick School from October 1932 to the summer of 1936, when he left to study at the Royal Academy...
describes the first movement as in "orderly, predictable, sonata form", and Charles Rosen
Charles Rosen
Charles Rosen is an American pianist and author on music.-Life and career:In his youth he studied piano with Moriz Rosenthal. Rosenthal, born in 1862, had been a student of Franz Liszt...
calls the movement's structure Haydnesque
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
. Its opening is marked con amabilità ("amiably"). After a pause on the dominant seventh the opening is extended in a cantabile theme. This leads to a light arpeggiated demisemiquaver transition passage. The second group of themes in the dominant E♭ includes appoggiatura figures, and a bass which descends in steps from E to G three times while the melody rises by a sixth. The exposition ends with a semiquaver cadential theme. Beethoven does not ask for the exposition to be repeated.
The development section (which Rosen calls "radically simple") consists of restatements of the movement's initial theme in a falling sequence, with underlying semiquaver figures. Tovey
Donald Francis Tovey
Sir Donald Francis Tovey was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist...
compares the artful simplicity of the development with the entasis
Entasis
In architecture, entasis is the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes. Its best-known use is in certain orders of Classical columns that curve slightly as their diameter is decreased from the bottom upwards. In the Hellenistic period some columns with entasis are...
of the Parthenon
Parthenon
The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although...
's columns.
The recapitulation begins conventionally with a restatement of the opening theme in the tonic (A major), Beethoven combining it with the arpeggiated transition motif. The cantabile theme gradually modulates via the subdominant to E major (a seemingly remote key which both Matthews and Tovey rationalise by viewing it as a notational convenience for F major). The harmony soon modulates back to the home key of A major. The movement closes with a cadence over a tonic pedal.
Second movement
The scherzo is marked allegro molto. Matthews describes it as "terse", and Kinderman as "humorous", even though it is in the minor. The rhythm is complex with many syncopations and ambiguities. Tovey observes that this ambiguity is deliberate: attempts to characterise the movement as a GavotteGavotte
The gavotte originated as a French folk dance, taking its name from the Gavot people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné, where the dance originated. It is notated in 4/4 or 2/2 time and is of moderate tempo...
are prevented by the short length of the bars implying twice as many accented beats - and had he wanted to, Beethoven could obviously have composed a Gavotte.
Beethoven uses antiphonal dynamics (four bars of piano contrasted against four bars of forte), and opens the movement with a six-note falling-scale motif. Cooper finds that Beethoven here indulged the rougher side of his humour by using two folk songs, Unsa kätz häd kaz'ln g'habt (Our cat has had kittens) and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich (lüderlich translates roughly as "dissolute" or "slob"). However, Tovey earlier decided that such theories of the themes' origins were "unscrupulous", since the first of these folk songs was arranged by Beethoven some time before this work's composition in payment for a publisher's trifling postage charge - the nature of the arrangement making it clear that the folk songs were of little importance to the composer.
The trio in D major juxtaposes "abrupt leaps" and "perilous descents" (Matthews), ending quietly and leading to a modified reprise of the scherzo with repeats, the first repeat written out to allow for an extra ritardando. After a few syncopated chords the movement's short coda comes to rest quietly but uneasily in F major via a long broken arpeggio in the bass.
Third movement
The third movement's structure alternates two slow arioso sections with two faster fugues. In Brendel's analysis there are six sections - recitative, arioso, first fugue, arioso, fugue inversion, homophonicHomophony
In music, homophony is a texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords. This is distinct from polyphony, in which parts move with rhythmic independence, and monophony, in which all parts move in parallel rhythm and pitch. A homophonic...
conclusion.
The movement uses the scherzo's concluding ritardando bass arpeggio in F major to resolve to B minor, forming a seamless bridge between the rough humour of the scherzo and the doleful meditation of the Arioso, in A minor. Commentators (including Rosen and Kinderman cited) have seen the initial recitative and arioso as "operatic". The recitative, whose tempo changes frequently, leads to an extended arioso dolente, a lament whose initial melodic contour is similar to the opening of the scherzo (although Tovey dismisses this as insignificant). The lament is supported by repeated left hand chords.
The arioso leads into a three-voice fugue, whose subject is constructed from three parallel rising fourths. The opening theme of the first movement carried within it elements of this fugue subject (the motif A–D–B–E) and Matthews sees a foreshadowing of it also in the alto part of the first movement's antepenultimate bar. The countersubject moves by smaller intervals. Kinderman finds a parallel between this fugue and the fughetta of the composer's later Diabelli Variations, also finding similarities with the Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem movements of the contemporaneous Missa Solemnis
Missa Solemnis (Beethoven)
The Missa solemnis in D Major, Op. 123 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819-1823. It was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin; an incomplete performance was given in Vienna on 7 May 1824, when the Kyrie,...
(sketches of this work and the Missa Solemnis are to be found interspersed in the same notebook).
The subject of this fugue (
Listen) opens with three ascending fourths (A -> D - B -> E - C -> F) and then goes downwards in gestures outlining fourths (i.e. F - E - D - C). The counterpoint has two themesTheme (music)
In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based.-Characteristics:A theme may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found . In contrast to an idea or motif, a theme is...
working together to highlight the fourth.
The arioso ends with repeated G major chords of increasing strength, repeating the sudden minor-to-major device that concluded the scherzo - now a second fugue emerges with the subject of the first inverted, marked "wieder auflebend" (again reviving) ("poi a poi di nuovo vivente" - little by little with renewed vigour - in the traditional Italian). There are many performance instructions in this passage that begin poi a poi and nach und nach (little by little). Initially the pianist is instructed to play una corda (i.e. to use the "soft pedal"); Brendel ascribes an unreal, illusory quality to it. The final fugue gradually increases in intensity and volume. After all three voices have entered, the bass introduces a diminution of the first fugue's subject (whose accent is also altered), while the treble augments the same subject with the rhythm across the bars. The bass eventually enters with the augmented version of the fugue subject in C minor, and this ends on E♭, the work's dominant. During this statement of the subject in the bass the pianist is instructed to gradually raise the una corda pedal. Beethoven here relaxes the tempo and introduces a truncated double-diminution of the fugue subject; after statements of the first fugue subject and its inversion surrounded by what Tovey calls this "flame" motif, the contrapuntal parts lose their identity. Brendel sees the following, final section as a "shaking off" of the constraints of polyphony, while Tovey goes so far as to label it a peroration, calling the closing passage "exultant". It leads to a final four-bar tonic arpeggio and a last emphatic chord of A flat major.
Matthews writes that it is not fanciful to see the final movement's second fugue as a "gathering of confidence after illness or despair", a theme which can be discerned in other late works by Beethoven (Brendel compares it with the Cavatina from the String Quartet Op. 130
String Quartet No. 13 (Beethoven)
The String Quartet No. 13 in B major, op. 130, by Ludwig van Beethoven was completed in November 1825. The number traditionally assigned to it is based on the order of its publication; it is actually the fourteenth quartet in order of composition. It was premiered in March 1826 by the Schuppanzigh...
). Cooper describes the coda as "passionate" and "heroic", but not out of place after the arioso's distress or the fugues' "luminous verities". Rosen states that this movement is the first time in the history of music where the academic devices of counterpoint and fugue are integral to a composition's drama, and observes that Beethoven in this work does not "simply represent the return to life, but persuades us physically of the process."
External links
- A lecture by András SchiffAndrás SchiffAndrás Schiff is a Hungarian-born British classical pianist, who has won a number of awards including the Grammy and made numerous recordings.- Biography :...
on Beethoven's piano sonata op. 110 - For a public domain recording of this sonata visit Musopen