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So, if the first two movements of Opus 109

are models of economy,
the last is spaciousness itself.
This is one of so many ways in
which the unchallenged dominance of the
finale is established.
It takes over twice as long to play as do
the first two movements together.
We have, as you'll remember, been leading
to this point.
I won't pause for review right now, but if you'd like,
go revisit our discussion of
the role of the last movement
in Opus 7, then in Opus 27, Number 2, and
then in the "Lebewohl."
Each made meaningful advances, each gave
the sonata
finale a new role and an increased
significance, but
none comes close to the last movement of
Opus 109
in length or, more significantly, in
emotional reach.
The movement is a set of variations, but
it reinvents
the form as profoundly, or perhaps moreso, as the
first two movements reinvent or
re-imagine sonata form.
Let's briefly review the old model for the
set of variations.
Not invented by Beethoven, but frequently
used by him early in life, more
or less faithfully, as he did in the first
movement of Opus 26.
In this model, the first several
variations
will feature incremental decreases of the
note values,
which translates as gradual increases in
speed.
Following this, there is often a variation
in a minor key, changing the mood, then
sometimes a variation in a slower tempo usually with a
move towards a bell canto vocal style
and then a sort of virtuoso finale.
Again, the point of this exercise is to,
in assorted ways, embellish the theme.
Profundity is not out of the question,
but it is usually not the
point, display being at the forefront.
But when Beethoven turns to the variation
form in his
late period and he does so
frequently, not only in
109, but in the last movement of Opus
111,
the slow movement of the great Opus 131
string quartet,
or in the Diabelli Variations themselves

he is invariably after something deeper.

What was merely embellishment has become psychology.
In these late sets of variations we see
the theme turned inside out.
Again, the theme and variations with its
frequent repetitions of the
same harmonic scheme, is in a way not
conducive to drama.
Certainly not structural drama.
When I say that these late movements are
psychological, I mean that the
purpose of the variations is to wring
every ounce of possibility from the theme.
To find corners and meaning in it that one
cannot perceive
upon hearing it unadorned.
And the theme of the last movement of Opus
109 already
has plenty of evident meaning when we hear
it initially.
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As you can hear, the spaciousness which I
mentioned,
and which is new to the piece, is
established instantly.
But in addition to its profound beauty,
this theme has another interesting
feature, one which has important
consequences for the movement as a whole.
Again, regardless of the nature of the
particular theme, we do not expect
a set of variations to provide drama based on
harmonic suspense out of a need for
resolution established over a long period,
like we have in the development of the
sonata movement.
That reality is heightened by the nature
of this particular theme,
which is notably repetitive in its
own harmonic motion.
The first half of the theme is subdivided
into four groups of two bars each,
and each features E moving to
B, I moving to V.
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In essence.
The second half of the theme is one
uninterrupted line, and it visits
more harmonic outposts, but essentially,
it is a movement from V back to I.
This has two primary effects.
First, given the lack of harmonic variety,
of harmonic fodder in the theme,
Beethoven will need to be fantastically
resourceful in other ways to create
sufficient material for the variations.
The harmonic outline is generally the
consistent factor in this form,
variation to variation, so
if it is not interesting on its own merits,

that increases the burden on the composer

to
unearth other aspects of the music.
Second, and to me, more crucial, is that this
I-V is established and
re-established absolutely relentlessly.
Even if our focus is placed on counterpoint, on rhythm, on color, this most
fundamental harmonic motion, I to V,
and then back to I, is ever-present.
Just as a side note, it is interesting
that for a composer
who was as enterprising as anyone
ever in developing his material
some might say wrestling with it Beethoven is
also the first composer to be attracted to the dramatic
possibilities that come from mere
repetition.
I was shocked when a composer told me that
he thought of the
second movement of the seventh symphony as
being the first ever work of minimalism.
But I am forced to admit that there is a
kernel of truth in the statement.
The first three variations do conform, at
least on one
level, to the old model of the variation
set:
the first...
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the second...
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and then the third.
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But while these variations are not nearly
as revolutionary as
what is still to come, they do serve to
open it outward, to add
dimension to the theme rather than merely
decorate its surface.
The theme itself is, among other things, a
chorale:
the voices are all close together, and they
move more or less in tandem.
In the first variation, this sort of writing is
immediately dispensed with,
the melody separated by a distance of
several
octaves from what is now very obviously an
accompaniment.
And that accompaniment itself...
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transforms what was very solemn music into
almost a dance,
or at least music with a suggestion of
dance behind it.
In the second variation the voices are
made truly independent, with the
two lines playing at different times and
assuming roles of equal importance.
And then in the third variation,

Beethoven increases the speed, not only by

changing the note values, as would be
traditional,
but by actually increasing the speed, with
the marking becoming allegro vivace.
In doing so, he creates a contrast of
speed so dramatic, so jarring, that we
feel we have not moved just from slow to
fast, but from chasteness to wildness.
So, these first three variations do, in
fact, go beyond the traditional.
But it is only with the fourth that the
floodgates open.
The only way I have ever been able to
describe this variation is as
a stream of consciousness.
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Perhaps the most significant aspect of
this is how much territory,
not figurative but
literal, is covered.
Despite its greatness, the theme did have
a certain modesty about it.
The spacing of its chords is very tight,
and its upper voice covers very little
ground.
From the bottom of its range to the top,
it's scarcely more than an octave.
Suddenly, in this fourth variation,
Beethoven needs
three voices, fully independent but woven
together,
and the entire span of the keyboard to
convey
where the theme has gone, what it has
evolved into.
The second half of the variation is still
more fantastic in all senses of the word.
It grows even larger, feels even more
uncontainable.
Listen again to the second half of the
theme.
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And now to the second half of the fourth
variation.
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Few things could make me feel so powerless
as attempting to explain the magnificence
of this.
Clearly it is drawn out of the theme.
And yet everything, even its fundamental
shape, is altered.
Its skeleton is almost imperceptible.
The harmony is essentially the same,
but it is obscured by the appogiaturas
and the figuration,
with this...
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becoming this...
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Even the climax, and it's a big one, the

most crucial moment in the
piece thus far, comes in a different place
than it does in the theme.
This...
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versus this...
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one bar earlier.
When I say that this movement is about
psychology, it never feels truer than at
this juncture.
We are now firmly in the world of dreams.
How does Beethoven find his way out of
this dream state?
With a fugue.
This is actually quite an influential
idea.
In the Romantic era, it became almost
standard practice to prove
one's mettle with a fugue in the middle of
a work's finale.
Composers as far afield as Tchaikovsky and
Dvorak did it frequently with, frankly,
mixed results.
But, at the time of Beethoven's Opus 109,
the idea is still a new one.
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The previous variation irreversibly
removed any shackles from the
material, but this fugue adds still more
to it.
The third variation had had a comparable
degree of energy and optimism.
But this fifth has a questing quality as
well.
And because here the emphasis on counterpoint is obviously greater than
ever,
it conveys an increased sense of the music
becoming more and more multilayered.
There is an additional surprise and one of
real significance in this variation.
It features an extra repeat.
Now, when I played the theme earlier, I
did so without the repeats,
but each half is meant to be played twice.
And as was the custom, every variation up
to this point has been shaped identically
with two iterations of each half.
Sometimes these are literal repeats, other
times they are
varied and therefore written out.
But until this point, nothing interferes
with the structural symmetry.
But now, suddenly, the second half of the
fugal variation appears not twice, but
three times.
Four variations in, we have structural
expectations which have yet to be
frustrated.

Here, they are.

This serves the dual function, one very
connected to the other, of making
the music seem to reach further into the
unknown, and of creating
a sense of uncertainty within a variation
that was launched with great confidence.
This could not be more timely, more
appropriate, because
it leads us to the last variation, which
is
as full of wonder as music comes.
It resurrects the shape of the theme and
returns to its speed.
And in fact, at first it resembles the
theme far
more closely that do any of the variations
that have come in the interim.
What is new is that, though
through virtually the whole variation, and with increasing
insistence,
there is now either in the bass or in the treble, a pedal point B, V.
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It's so fascinating how after all the
adventures this
music has gone through, none of them
really harmonic in essence,
in its final moments, it is
all about the B needing to resolve to an E.
Of course, that basic resolution is always
there
in tonal music, but it is absolutely
spotlighted here.
It's highly ironic.
In his recent sonatas Beethoven's interest
in the ultimate, this ultimate resolution,
once the central fact of sonata form, has
seemed to be waning.
Now, he chooses a theme and variation as
his form,
making that definitive V-I cadence
far less crucial,
and he is absolutely obsessed with it.
In the last moments of the work, in which,
as you will hear,
Beethoven tests the possibilities of the
instrument as stubbornly as he ever did,
he is fixated exclusively on this search
for the
most fundamental classical resolution.
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As you have heard, when this resolution
finally comes, it is into the theme
itself.
Unusually, but not unprecedentedly
I'm thinking of the Goldberg Variations Beethoven
offers us the theme as a recollection to
bookend the work.
But while the theme does arrive on the
heels of a massive V-I cadence,

this is not a recapitulation.

There is no alteration to the theme here
except for the one that has
occurred within us, based on everything we
have heard and all
we have come to understand about the theme
through these remarkable variations.
Unlike with the sonata form, nothing about
the structure here makes the return of the
theme a necessity, and again, it is
certainly not the norm within variations.
But on account of the way in which this
theme has been turned
inside out, compressed in the third and
fifth variations,
stretched in every sense in the fourth, grappled with throughout,
and
finally tethered to this maddening pedal
point,
we need to hear it in its original form
once again.
The only difference between the two
iterations of
the theme, in short, lies in what has
occurred.
The theme has taken on vast new meaning for
what it
has been through, through the past it has
now acquired.
This is such a gateway to the music of the
Romantic generation.
The need for harmonic resolution has
already,
thanks to Beethoven's own work, begun to
dissipate.
And structure, a.k.a., our need for things
to
follow one another in a particular way, is
more
and more based on our memory of what we
have already heard, even on our nostalgia
for it.
The reason we come back to great music
again and again,
as players or as listeners, is that you
can barely ever scratch its surface.
That is truer than ever in the case
of late Beethoven, with its vision of the
infinite.
I have played Opus 109 for something like
17 years now, and
I feel that I have come only marginally
closer to it with time.
But there is more sense of fulfillment in
inching towards this music than there is
in playing
just about anything else.
Let's take a short break for a review
question.