[MUSIC]

So in the first two movements of

Opus Seven,
Beethoven has displayed daring on a whole
variety of fronts.
On the surface, the last two movements
seem
to represent a return to a more
traditional aesthetic,
even though the very existence of the
third movement is untraditional.
But in choosing a minuet as his third
movement, Beethoven shows that this
is not where the envelope-pushing in the
work is going to take place.
First of all the minuet is an older, more
traditional form than a
scherzo, which would have been his other
option at this juncture in the piece.
And the character of the minuet is less
typically Beethovenian than scherzo.
It's less acerbic, it has less bite. Here's
the opening of the movement.
[MUSIC]
A certain courtliness, entirely absent
from the first
two movements, is the most salient feature
of this.
What I always find myself noticing, when I
play the piece start to
finish, is how in every meaningful way
this is entirely unlike the second
movement.
The first two movements of the piece are
also utterly unlike, of course.
But they are united by their obvious
ambition,
by how big they seem to be aiming.
That quality is not especially in evidence
here.
Minuets are typically the shortest and
least enterprising
movements of the works they are a part of.
But still, the contrast here is of such a
degree, one notices it.
Some of the chutzpah of the piece
does return in the trio.
[MUSIC]
Interesting to note, the accented notes are
marked "fortissimo piano."
Now, "forte piano" is a way of notating an
accent, which should be rather sharp,
taking us out
of the dynamic we've been in, and
which
we return to instantly after the attack of
the note.
Forte piano is a fairly common marking,
but fortissimo piano is a rarity.
No one used it, in fact, prior to Beethoven.

In fact,
fortissimos of any kind are extremely rare
in the pre-Beethoven era.
If I'm not mistaken Mozart used it exactly
once in all of his piano
music: in the development of the first
movement of the a minor piano sonata.
So, the use of that marking and the
musical
gesture it supports is a kind of
innovation, certainly.
But on the whole a listener could be
fooled into thinking that this movement
was Haydn.
Not that there's anything wrong
with that, but it simply isn't true of
a note of the first and the second
movements.
The finale, also structured as an entirely
traditional rondo, has loveliness as its
most salient feature.
[MUSIC]
Beautiful as this is, listening to it for the first time,
without prior knowledge of the
piece, one might be led to assume that
the main thrust of the piece,
its greatest moments of innovation and
drama, are now in the rear view mirror.
That however else the piece might break
ground, it is still front-loaded
in the traditional way.
But Beethoven still has one more surprise
in store, and the end of the work turns out
to be one of its really greatest
inspirations.
This being a rondo, the main theme appears
many times.
Each time, we also have this...
[MUSIC]
This half cadence, every time it
comes except for the very last instance,
leads to the return of the opening theme.
This occurs three or four times over the
course of the movement.
But the final time, after the major
A-B-A-C-A-B-A
business of the rondo has all been
worked out,
At the moment the listener will expect the
simplest
of codas, devoid of any harmonic activity,
this happens.
I cannot help but play the whole,
extended ending.
[MUSIC]
This is remarkable for so many reasons.
First
of all, there is the introduction of a
very distant key,
and at a point when the piece really

ought to be winding down.

So far in this movement, we have ventured
no further than
c minor and b-flat major, which are e-flat's
two closest relatives-the relative minor and the dominant,
respectively.
Really, the movement, beautiful as it is,
has
been extremely staid harmonically, up to
this point.
But now we enter a foreign land.
The color of e major is so different...
[SOUND] e flat,
[SOUND]
e major,
[SOUND]
it paints the theme we have heard a
handful of times in a different, almost a
hallucinatory, light.
It's much like what he does in the c minor
concerto, only
in this case it's more arresting still
because it's in the same movement.
What happens in the c minor concerto is
shocking, but the movements of classical
works do function independently of
one another, at least up to a point.
When Beethoven introduces such
a distant key into
the rondo of Opus 7 itself,
however,
it really breaks the contract he has had
with the 18th-century listener.
To be clear, it was well worth it.
This kind of, step-wise harmonic shift...
[MUSIC]
is something that Beethoven later
utilized much more frequently.
There's one fantastic and really quite
similar example, is the transitional
passage at the end of the slow movement of
the Emperor Concerto,
a middle-period work, if there ever was
one.
But by then, this sort of harmonic
game changer has acquired a degree of
familiarity.
In Opus 7 it is a fantastic kind of
shock.
Once this is resolved,
the serenely beautiful conclusion of the
work features another kind of reinvention.
It is based on the central episode of the
Rondo, originally in c minor, and all sturm und drang.
[MUSIC]
This music, while dramatic, is so "correct" in
fulfilling its c episode function-it has a totally contrasting character
from the opening,

it's in the relative minor-that it actually doesn't make an enormous

impression the first time around.
We expect this sort of bluster that it
delivers at this point in a rondo.
Traditionally this c episode is of a
rondo, though,
makes only one appearance, so no listener
from Beethoven's era
would have expected to hear it again.
Its transformation in the coda become a tool
for Beethoven to tie up loose ends.
And in the process, give it and the last
movement
as a whole a significance that it would
not otherwise have.
Until that point, the lightness of the
last two
movements seems to be a purposeful
contrast to
the various types of hugeness we get in
the
first two, just as Haydn and Mozart would
have done.
And, I'm sure that I would find the work fully
satisfying if
the last movement ended on the same
wavelength as it begins.
But, at the last moment, Beethoven
transforms the last movement from
a formality to a suitably proportioned
conclusion to the whole work.
The first two movements are still where
the most
happens, but the last movement holds its
own now.
And the end is what really lingers in the
memory after hearing the piece.
This represents a significant first step
towards
a total reinvention of the shape of
a sonata, about which there will be much
more to say in the coming lecture.
I hope this will have whetted your
appetite to listen to the whole sonata.
Now, obviously, there are a host of
excellent recordings.
As I said in the syllabus, I grew up with
Artur
Schnabel's and with Richard Goode's
complete
recording of the sonatas, and I still
deeply treasure both of them.
Each is in its own way a document of its
era at its best.
The Schnabel is ever-imaginative,
headlong in the faster movements and
memorably searching in poise in the
second one.
Goode is somehow able to simultaneously

give
the impression of deep consideration and
total freedom,
which is a pretty neat trick.
In the interest of full disclosure, this is
also among the sonatas that I have
recorded already in
the second volume of my projected cycle,
God help us.
Anyway, thank you for watching, and for
listening once again.
The next time we meet the year will be
1801, which is one
of the most unsettled, and therefore
most interesting, moments in Beethoven's
compositional life.
There will be lots to discuss.
And since we'll be going through a lot of
music that day,
there won't be a lot of time for me to
play.
Which means it wouldn't be a bad idea for
you
to listen to the sonatas we will be
addressing in advance.
If you have time, those are the sonatas
Opus 26, the two sonatas Opus 27,
and Opus 28. No worries if you don't
have time to get to it.
Until then have a great week, and I'll see
you next time.
Let's take a short break for a
review question.