[MUSIC]

The next of the experiments we are going

to look at
is the Sonata Opus 81a, the "Les
Adieux" sonata-"Farewell" in English, "Lebewohl" in the
original German.
The sonata, in addition to being a
tightly organized, yet wonderfully
generous masterpiece,
is notable for many reasons, foremost among them that
it is
Beethoven's most serious flirtation
with programmatic music.
A year or two earlier, he wrote the Pastoral Symphony,
which he gave
descriptive movement titles, such as
"Scene at the Brook" or "Joyful
Gathering of Country Folk."
But part of him clearly remained
slightly embarrassed about this, because
he remarked about the
symphony that it was to be "more the
expression of feeling than tone-painting".
In other words, just like all of his other
music.
The Sonata Opus 81a, however, has a
definite
story behind it.
It is dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph-by a significant margin, the patron who
paid the most important role in
Beethoven's life.
The composition of the work corresponds
exactly to the archduke's
forced evacuation of Vienna during
Napoleon's invasion in 1809.
The three movements are called
"Das Lebowohl," "Abwehsenheit," and "Das Wiedersehen," respectively:
farewell, absence, and return.
Surprisingly, a work attached to such an
occasion
has a precedent dating back to the
Baroque.
Bach wrote a piece with the exquisite
title
"Capriccio on the Departure of His Most
Beloved Brother." [LAUGH]
In spite of this, Beethoven's sonata,
which follows not just
an emotional trajectory, but is
descriptive of events
throughout, is revolutionary and was a serious influence in the
nineteenth century, when musical
storytelling became incredibly central.
One sees this not only in the rise of the song cycle-the ultimate musical form
of storytelling, naturally-but in the literally hundreds
of piano works of

composers such as Schumann and Liszt

with descriptive titles.
Or in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique,
which unlike Beethoven's
Lebewohl sonata, I would argue,
doesn't even make sense
if you don't know the story behind
it.
Nineteenth-century performers even gave names to
works that didn't already have them.
Both Liszt and the pianist Hans von Blow gave,
shall we say, enthusiastic titles to
Chopin's preludes:
"Presentiment of Death," "Thou Art so Like a
Flower,"
"The Polish Dancer." [LAUGH]
It is amazing how much the aesthetic
changed
in really just a generation or two.
What the story in the Lebewohl shows is
that his focus
was on the overall progression through the
work, not within the movements.
Or, put another way, his interest is less
in the
sonata form than in the form of the
sonata.
It's another chicken / egg question, but
really, from the moment at
which Beethoven introduced the mediant and
thus compromised the tonic-dominant
relationship,
the sonata form began to hold less
interest for him.
It's chicken / egg because it may well be
that the reason
he exploded the tonic-dominant
relationship in the first place
is that the form was already starting to
bore him.
Nevertheless, the first movement of Opus
81a
does contain an important innovation to
sonata form,
although it is one that arguably nudges
the traditional sonata form closer to
irrelevance.
The heart of the sonata form-the exposition, development, and
recapitulation-is extremely compact here,
taking less than four minutes to play,
including a repeat of the exposition.
These are flanked, however, by an
immensely long introduction
and coda, which at least equal the rest of
the movement in length.
Here is the magnificent introduction.
[MUSIC]
The programmatic aspect makes itself felt

at the very beginning.

The first three notes are a horn call, a
real performance of farewell.
And as if this weren't clear enough,
Beethoven
writes the three German syllables over the
notes:
[MUSIC] / Le-be-wohl.
How different this is from the funeral
march
of Opus 26, which, again, I find slightly
stilted.
There is nothing whatsoever stilted about
this.
With this horn call, it is tone-painting,
indisputably.
But that in no way compromises its ability
to convey feeling,
as I find the drums and horns of Opus 26
do.
This opening dominates the movement, not
only because
of its length, its gravity, and its
awesome beauty,
but because the whole work is infused with
this three-note idea.
When the second theme comes, it is flipped from
a falling motion
to a rising one, becoming less placid and
more of a challenge.
[MUSIC]
A challenge which is answered by the
closing theme
of the exposition, in which order is
restored, and it becomes
almost a literal quotation of the
opening, the same three notes,
in the same sequence, in the
same rhythm.
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
When the development comes, the three-note motive
continues to be ever-present,
alternating with the first
theme of the exposition, as we
hurtle from key to key.
[MUSIC]
The main body of the movement is
energetic,
even rambunctious at times, but the
constant presence of
this three-note horn call theme ensures
that
the "farewell" aspect is never out of our
minds.
This constant use of the material from
the introduction is, in itself, a real
innovation.
Even in the Pathetique Sonata, in which the
slow introduction makes two surprise

reappearances later in the movement, the

introductory
material plays a completely external
role.
When it interrupts, it interrrupts, but it
has
no connection to the main body of the
movement.
This really further confuses the issue of
the form of the movement.
If the introduction is the lengthiest part
of the movement, and its
material plays an essential role
throughout,
can it even be an introduction?
The confusion that the listener feels over
this is most likely subconscious.
But regardless, it definitely contributes
to the general atmosphere of the movement:
grave, to be sure, but also a little bit
lost.
There is yet one more way in which this
movement surprises.
Early in the introduction, Beethoven specifies
a fingering for the pianist.
Now, Beethoven does not do this very
often, and when
he does, it is never for the sake of
convenience.
On the contrary, it is to tell the pianist
not to use the most convenient fingering available,
but rather, to use a creative one which
will emphasize
a particular detail of the music.
In this case, in the middle of a legato passage,
he asks the pianist to play three
notes in a row with the same finger.
[MUSIC]
Five, five, five.
For years, I puzzled over why Beethoven
would do something
so bizarre, so antithetical to legato
playing, but finally,
I realized that Beethoven wants those notes
hammered out, because they-the final two in particular, B natural to
B flat-form an ide fixe in the movement.
They keep popping up throughout the
movement, and then they
make a surprise dramatic appearance in the
coda.
[MUSIC]
This is the most crucial cadence in the
work, and he arrives there by way of
this unexpected B natural, which he gives
an accent, just in case we might miss it.
[MUSIC]
In traditional harmony, there is no need
for that B natural,

but somehow in this movement, it is

exactly what we need.
Once we cross that hurdle, the rest of the
movement feels like a formality, simply
a long series of the horn call saying
farewell over and over and over again.
The sonata form may be obscured by all of
this, but this is an absolute
masterpiece of structure, where these sorts
of harmonic
and motivic details are what gives the
music
so much intensity, even if one isn't aware
of them on a conscious level at all.
In that way, it forms a total contrast to
Opus 78, in which lyricism trumps all.
This total contrast between two masterworks, composed in the same
year, makes them emblematic of the entire
period in Beethoven's life.
He didn't write a huge amount of music.
Neither of these pieces is long, but each
one of them has
its own shape, its own ethos, its own
reason for being.
It's equally true for the Sonata Opus
90, for the "Serioso" Quartet Opus 95,
for the tenth Violin Sonata
Opus 96, for the "Archduke" Trio Opus 97,
for the Opus 102 Cello Sonatas.
Idea by idea, structure by structure, piece by piece,
Beethoven built himself a pathway to an otherworldly future.
The progress was made in fits and starts,
but there are an amazing number of
jewels along the way.
Many of those pieces I mentioned in the last
paragraph
are not sonatas, but if you would like to
listen
to them, it will certainly give you a
greater
appreciation of this unusual and critical
period in Beethoven's life.
Listening to the two sonatas we discussed,
in succession, would be a particularly good
idea
as it will demonstrate the various
directions
his mind and heart were heading almost
simultaneously.
So, next time, we will come to the late period,
which produced music so
unprecedented we are still dealing
with it as modern music today, nearly 200
years later.
I look forward to sharing it with
you.
Til next time.
Let's take a short break for a review
question.