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So, from one type of preamble to another.

Before delving into Opus 109, I'd like to
briefly backtrack
to the early period just so that its sound
and
its nature are fresh in the mind as a
point
of comparison as we enter the world of late
Beethoven.
The sonata I'd like to use to do so is the
C minor, Opus 10, Number 1,
written very shortly after Opus 7, which
we
dealt with in the second week of the
course.
It is in many ways a very different kind
of piece than Opus 7,
far more compact and in his fist-shaking C
minor moodthink the 5th symphony
but they are alike in that, despite being
early works, they are
not only fully mature, but fully
representative of his personality.
Opus 10, Number 1, vibrates with nervous
energy in
its outer movements, addresses infinity in
the middle one.
But, at the same time,
it in no way challenges the existing
concept of the sonata.
Let's listen to the exposition of the
first movement.
[MUSIC]
Again, Beethoven's voice is on full
display here.
But there is a certain formality to the proceedings.
We begin with a driving first
theme
musicologists often refer to this sort of
material as "masculine," to my irritation.
[MUSIC]
And then, after a suitable amount of
bridge material, we get the
contrasting"feminine"second theme in the
relative major.
[MUSIC]
Without getting hung up on this, that is standard procedure in a minor-key
sonata.
A major-key work moves to the dominant, a
minor-key one moves to the relative major.
The other movements, which I won't play
today,
similarly conform to tradition, without
compromising Beethoven's personality.
Only very near the end of the piece, in
the midst of a
rather remorseless prestissimo finale, is
there
a truly surprising event, with the

narrative
interrupted by a much slower iteration of
the second theme in a distant key
a small suggestion of Beethoven's desire
to give significance
to the last movement, which becomes such a
fixation later.
But in general, this is a work that plays
by the rules.
With the sound of Opus 10, Number 1 fresh
in the ears,
let's now hear the exposition of
the first movement of Opus 109.
[MUSIC]
It's really quite amazing.
Other than a certain forcefulness of
personality, there is no
suggestion that these two works are
written by the same composer.
In addition to the almost frightening
beauty of this,
which doesn't need to be explained,
and which I would
not be able to do in any case,
there are many things at work here.
First of all, the tempo flexibility.
I cannot think of a sonata movement
written before
this that is in two different tempi.
A slow introduction is always possible,
but that
is an addition, it exists outside the
form.
In some case, like the Pathtique Sonata,
the introduction might make
reappearances, but the material itself
remains external to the sonata form.
Then, there is the question of the
sonority of this music.
First of all, we have what I think of as
"late Beethoven position,"
with the two hands
positioned at the extreme ends
of the piano.
[MUSIC]
As we talked about earlier in the course,
this is already a much
bigger piano than the one that existed
when Beethoven started writing for the
instrument.
But this sort of writing demonstrates that
he still
regards it as a too-limited resource for
him.
This passage is absolutely not unique.
The last movements of both Opus 110 and 111,
in climactic moments, find the hands
separated by five, six octaves.
What is more impressive still about the
sound of this opening is its edgelessness.

The piano is famously the edgiest of all

instruments.
Think about how it is played:
The finger hits a key, which in turn
activates a complex mechanisma hammer,
damper, string.
First of all, as pianists, we have no
control over the
sound of the note after the moment at
which we play it.
But beyond that,
no other instrument emphasizes the moment
of attack in such an extreme way.
A string or a wind player can, if he so chooses,
begin a note nebulously, and
bring it slowly into focus.
With a piano, there is no disguising
the moment of contact between hammer and
string.
For hundreds of years, composers have
looked for ways around this.
But Beethoven, in his early works, is
often quite comfortable with this extra
degree of definition of sound.
It gives the music an extra thrust, which
suits him well.
How far from that is Opus 109, which, at
least in its
first theme manages to have no edges,
no points of gravity.
It shows Beethoven once again asking the
piano to go beyond its natural means.
The most impressive aspect of this music is not its
sonic nature, though. It is the
structural magic trick it plays.
For, while Opus 109's first movement has
such a feeling of freedom about it
and seems to have moved beyond the old forms entirely,
it is actually a perfect sonata
form.
In fact, it is a distillation of the
sonata form.
First of all, it is pared down to
necessities.
Unlike Opus 10, Number 1, with its lengthy
bridge, there is literally no material
between its first and second themes.
In fact, the first theme areathe first
theme group, I suppose
is eight measures long and takes no more
than ten seconds to play.
I also refer to it as a "distillation" of
the sonata because
of the contrast, because the contrast of
its two themes is so absolute.
On the most obvious level, there is this radical
difference of tempo, the vivace of
the opening
giving way to an unprecedented adagio
sostenuto.

But beyond that, there is the contrast of

the rhythmic
regularity of the first theme versus the
freedom of the second.
In the first theme, we have an undisturbed
pattern of two notes in
the right hand, then two notes in the
left, all the way through.
[MUSIC]
After this, the slowness of the second
theme,
combined with the length of its first
note
[MUSIC]
instantly establishes it as flexible,
improvisatory in a way that the first theme is not.
Honestly, coming on the heels of what it
does, the first chord here always
strikes me as being sort of a big bang
moment, a recreation of the universe.
Lastly, there is the contrast of harmonic
stability on
the one hand, and great instability on the
other.
The first theme has plenty of harmonic motion,
but first of all, the rate of this
motion is absolutely regular, one
harmony per beat, and on top of that it
doesn't take us anywhere unexpected.
By contrast, the second theme, while in
the dominant B major, as it ought to be,
takes several measures to establish it
and begins on a dramatic diminished
chord.
[MUSIC]
The B major arrival.
There is yet another fascinating aspect of
the construction of this exposition.
This is clearly a stripped-down sonata
form.
The second theme might feel generous, but
it is seven measures long.
And yet, he leaves room in it for a
variation, with this...
[MUSIC]
Turning into this...
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It is sort of miraculous how he manages to
take the second theme and make it
sound grand and generous, and then he
repeats
the whole thing in this more elaborate
version.
And he does it all in seven measures,
one fewer than the standard length of a single
phrase.
Without sacrificing economy one bit, this
is yet another way
he distinguishes the two themes, the first
being totally unadorned.

In the movement that is clearly all "about"

what is essential in
the sonata form, this inclusion of the
second theme "variation" is very revealing.
It demonstrates a very personal view of
what is and isn't essential in a sonata.
This movement takes about three-and-a-half
minutes to play in totality.
It is, if I'm not mistaken, the shortest
first movement Beethoven ever wrote,
and one of the shortest sonata four
movements
regardless of where they fall within the work.
He follows this without so much as a pause by upping the ante
with an even shorter
sonata movement.
[MUSIC]
Now, the way these two movements interact
with one another is really fascinating.
The first movement is a bit of a neat trick,
really, because again, it is
extremely terse in
construction with no wasted notes, and
even more
significantly, no auxiliary materials, no
excess of any kind.
And yet the overall impression it leaves the
listener with is one of great
spaciousness,
of a leisurely generosity.
I am, by the way, in awe of this,
at a loss at attempting to explain how it was
achieved.
But anyway, despite the record-breaking
brevity of
the first movement, due to its character,
when the
second movement arrives, it gives the
impression of
disturbing the peace, of interrupting
comfort with anxiety.
Or, more to the point, it creates a
massive contrast, a total contrast.
So, these two movements collectively
create a rather remarkable
effect, a bit of a nested Russian dolls
thing.
The whole point of these very brief first
two movements
seems to be to represent absolutely
opposed characters and ideas.
But then, if you look more closely at the
first movement, if you look within it,
you see that it, too, despite seeming unified
in
the grander picture, is a study in
contrasts itself.
This is not only a highly impressive feat,
it has a profound effect on
the way we experience the piece, and

demonstrates Beethoven's fascination with

and mastery of structure.
Based on whether we are zooming in or out,
figuratively with our ears,
the first movement becomes an entirely different sort of auditory
experience.
Only Beethoven with his uncanny gift for
slowing or
quickening time at will, could manage
to make a
movement simultaneously tightly
wound and relaxed,
simultaneously of a piece and a joining of
opposites.
What is unambiguous is that the first two
movements are dissimilar, foils really.
Again, they are united only in being
dramatically pared-down sonata forms.
One sees this not only in the expositions
but in the developments.
Each eschews the varied, exploratory
nature one often finds in the Classical
development,
and instead is based on one solitary idea.
Neither of these developments makes any
reference whatsoever to the movement's
second theme.
In the first movement, this means a return
after the chaos of the
second theme to the absolute
regularity of the opening.
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This continues as unvaried rhythmically as
the
opening for the whole development, a full
minute
absolutely an enormous length of time by
the standards of the movement.
In the second movement, the idea that
dominates
the development is the opening of the
movement.
But not the melody itself, the bass line.
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This bass line, minus the vehemence,
returns as a
two-voice canon to take over the
development.
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As you can hear, this initially highly charged,
highly determined music begins to lose its way.
Which creates the final paradox of these
two movements.
The second movementwhich initially in
comparison to the first movement,
or anything else really, seems to be
economical and purposeful as can be
ultimately has a moment which is more discursive and
open-ended
than anything that happened within the

first movement.
So there it is, two fully fleshed-out
sonata
movements, full of power and paradox, in
six minutes flat.
If you leave aside the two sonatas Opus
49 and the G major
Opus 79all three of them
sonatinas rather than sonatas,
reallythere is no other proper
sonata-form first movement
written by Beethoven as short as these two
are together.
If the sonata Opus 22, the last of the
early period proper,
was a perfected farewell to the
traditional sonata form, perhaps
Opus 109's first two movementswhich despite
their brevity, communicate more than
might be reasonably expectedform a
perfect elegy to the form altogether.
Let's take a short break for a review
question.