Archive for the ‘Beethoven Piano Sonatas’ Category

Symphony: Not Influences?

Friday, October 24th, 2025

Rehearsal Update:

Monday was our third-to-last rehearsal, and things are going well. Over the last two weeks, I’ve chosen two movements to rehearse and two to run-through: I firmly believe that a once-a-week group like ours needs to play most of the notes at every rehearsal whenever possible. The first movement is by far the toughest, and for us would be a challenging piece if it weren’t followed by four more. I feel like the fourth movement has gotten short shrift: maybe it can get a little love in our last two rehearsals… but we also have other priorities to get ready for the concert, so time will be of the essence.

I also came to the realization that we will likely need to run if not the whole piece, large swathes of it in our warm-up rehearsal on the day of. This is a little daunting, as endurance for all of us is a concern. Hopefully those who need to can mark a little.

The Not Influences?

Looking over my two posts on the influences on my symphony, I noticed some prominent names and pieces left off. That’s not to say that these composers and works haven’t been important to me at some point in the past, or that they didn’t influence me subconsciously, but they didn’t come to mind when I made my list the first time.

Haydn and Mozart

I mean, sure, the symphony as a genre exists in large part because these two got ahold of it and began to write pieces (sometimes) that would transcend mere entertainment. But were they at the forefront of my mind during this process? No. That said, the first time I tried to analyze an entire symphony movement, it was the first movement of Mozart’s 40th (and it was mostly Roman numeral analysis, which probably missed the point entirely). Haydn is even less on my radar, although his 88th symphony has long been my go-to “listen to a whole symphony” in music appreciation class (although, to be fair, I haven’t done that activity in few years). This was less because I was inspired by the piece than because it was part of the textbook I was using two textbooks ago (I still haven’t found a music appreciation book that I’m completely satisfied with, which could be the subject of a different post).

It’s hard to find anything to argue about with the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, which I suppose is a good thing in some ways, but any message they hope to communicate doesn’t seem to come through. It may be the historical distance, which in turn is a philosophical distance.

Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies are absolute warhorses, and of course I’m familiar with them. Tchaikovsky’s Fourth was one of the first orchestral scores I ever studied beyond excerpts in orchestration books, back in high school when I was writing my first orchestral piece, the trombone concerto with string orchestra that was my senior thesis (interesting story that one). His Fifth was one of the first symphonies I got to play, during my year in the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, and the Sixth… well, I have yet to dig into the Sixth. I also conducted Tchaikovsky’s Second with Lakeland back in 2017, although we ended up cutting the scherzo, because the piece was just too much to squeeze into the rehearsal time for one of our spring semester concerts–I learned from that experience and programmed my symphony in the fall, when we have only one on-campus concert and so more rehearsal to devote to it.

I certainly could have listed Tchaikovsky among my influences, most evident in parts of the last movement that may seem to borrow in approach from the last movement of the Fifth, but his work was simply not at the front of my mind as I worked. Where Copland’s Third was a “time to beat,” that simply wasn’t the case here.

Bruckner

My first encounter with Bruckner was in recordings from the public library as a high school student, particularly a sprawling performance of the Eighth Symphony that stretched across two CDs. I remember playing the finale before school one morning, and having those pounding rhythms following me around from class to class all day. In college, I had to prepare the Fourth for ensemble auditions one year, but other than transcriptions of the Adagio of the Seventh, I’ve never performed Bruckner’s music. I first heard his work live in a performance of the Seventh by the Cincinnati Symphony which also happened to be my brother’s first non-young-people’s orchestra concert. His response was, “It was awesome, but I had no idea it would be so long.” For a time in my mid-20s, I was most enamored with Bruckner’s Fifth, and in my early 30s made a transcription for concert band of his motet Locus Iste that worked musically, but had to abandon the composer’s dynamic plan.

Which about sums it up. Like Tchaikovsky, there is probably some un-spoken influence on my work, but no conscious imitation or inspiration. I didn’t imitate Bruckner’s scoring (soooo much tremolo strings!) or his grandiose architecture (the cliche of the cathedral should go here), but the spinning out of the melody in the first movement of my symphony has something Brucknerian about it.

Mahler

I admire Mahler; I appreciate him; I struggle to understand his work; but I am not a “Mahler nut.” I’ve spent time with his music, but only once as a performer: when I led the Lakeland Civic Orchestra in the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. As a trombonist, I wrestled with the solo from the Third Symphony, and studied the Fifth Symphony in preparation for auditions. The symphonies do not reward the casual sort of listening that I did as a beginning classical music fan: lots of listening to CDs while I did homework, or catching things on the radio in the car. Despite my best efforts, I have yet to hear the Eighth or Ninth in concert, but my checklist is otherwise complete, at least for the completed works. I also wrote a paper on the Tenth and its process of completion after the composer’s death that was, for me at least, enlightening about the process of writing pieces: Mahler’s short-score to full-score approach is essentially my own. Then, of course, in the early days of this blog, I worked my way through the nine completed symphonies, analyzing them for form and orchestration, and writing about them movement by movement. This was a follow-up to a similar project for Beethoven’s piano sonatas that I settled on as a project that would be a bridge between graduate school and whatever would come next: if I had ended up working at Starbucks, I would at least have a reason to keep my head in music.

But direct influence of Mahler on my work? Perhaps in the finale, when I bring in the flugelhorn, and certainly there has to be some connection between my sense of orchestration and Mahler’s. And then, the significance of the chorale–the basis for the entire piece, the masked versions of it that appear from time to time, and complete statement of it. In the second movement, there is the self-quotation that we find so often in Mahler as well. But again, my goal wasn’t the same as Mahler’s: he means the symphony to contain the world, and I don’t see that as a meaningful or even possible outcome. There is a statement in my piece, but it doesn’t wrap around all of existence.

Shostakovich

My first encounter with Shostakovich was, as is so often the case, with his Fifth, famously played ridiculously fast by Leonard Bernstein to fit onto an LP. Next came the Seventh, with its paralyzingly long march, and luckily, when I heard Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra for the first time, I got the joke. Then, in the summer before college, I got to know the First as I prepared for seating auditions. The Cincinnati Symphony played Shostakovich well and often when I was there–the Fifth, the Sixth, the Eighth–but he wasn’t a regular in Columbus when I lived there, and I’ve only heard the Eighth here in Cleveland. Has he perhaps fallen out of favor in this country?

That said, the influence of Shostakovich in my music is fairly clear even if I didn’t specifically have his work in mind as I wrote. But, there is a scale in his music that I don’t come to, and of course, like Mahler, I have much less of the tension of being an outsider or a dissident in my life and thus in my work. I want to make a statement, but I don’t intend to shock or to hide my intentions. To the extent that there is a hidden idea, it is more like Elgar’s Enigma: can the listener find the chorale that they know is supposed to be there (or, for the listener who doesn’t know the idea behind the work coming in, would it be evident and would the statement of the chorale seem inevitable)?

Maslanka

Other than conducting Rollo Takes a Walk many years ago as a band director, I have very little experience of the music of David Maslanka, something I mean to rectify. Maslanka was mostly a band composer, and mostly wrote pieces that require a strong college-level band or wind ensemble. I listened to the retirement concert of Dr. Mallory Thompson last year. I never worked closely with Dr. Thompson, but she spent a year at CCM when I was there, and I played in Michael Colgrass’ Winds of Nagual under her baton, which was a formative experience in important ways. Dr. Thompson had a strong connection with Maslanka’s music, and included the Fourth Symphony in her final concert as director of bands at Northwestern University. I enjoyed listening to the piece, and was then surprised to hear “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow” in a complete statement, right in the middle. I wasn’t stealing Maslanka’s idea–but I knew that I couldn’t possibly be the first person to incorporate “my hymn” into a larger instrumental piece. That said, I think it works pretty well.

Come to the concert on November 9, and see how you think my approach stands up.

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Opus 111

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Here it is… the last one. 

Two big, beefy substantial movements.  Lutoslawski justified writing one-movement symphonies by saying that Brahms’ and Beethovens’ symphonies tended toward two big-idea statements per piece, presumably the first and last movements, although it is often possible that Beethoven is trying for three or four (perhaps in the Eroica).  It would be impossible to accuse Beethoven of overreaching his grasp in this case.  The two movements are well-balanced–a muscular, decisive sonata-allegro paired with an expansive set of variations. 

First things first–the proportions of the first movement are not especially large or striking–in my (G.Schirmer) edition, the development section scarcely lasts a page.  Once again, Beethoven is not the composer of long, overwhelming development sections the way we were all taught.  A glance at the score suggests that the proportional model for sonata-allegro is largely intact.   Why do we teach undergraduates that Beethoven’s development sections are overgrown?  My experience with the piano sonatas suggests that they are not.  On the other hand, motivic development technique often appears in unexpected places–codas, transitional sections, and within themes–places that in Haydn or Mozart would be simple or sequential repetition in Beethoven are more fully ornamented.  An example is the second theme of this movement.

I have to admire Beethoven’s approach to the start of the Allegro con brio.  It is almost as though it takes three (or more) attempts to get the theme going, and the full theme doesn’t appear until after a fairly extended attempt.   There is wonderful invertible counterpoint in the transitional thematic area, and the ubiquitous fugato in the development.  Beethoven struggled in his counterpoint lessons with Albrechtsberger, but they seem to have paid off in the end, as his command of these devices is perfect.  I taught 16th-century counterpoint last semester, and we didn’t make it to invertible counterpoint.  I think that the next time around, I will take the option in our textbook (Peter Schubert’s Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style) to introduce it from the beginning, because of its power as a developmental tool in any style.

Stylistically, I’m a bit at odds with this movement–it doesn’t reek of Beethoven’s “late” style in the way that other pieces do.  Admittedly, I haven’t read up on current musicological ideas about this piece, but it seems as though it would fit fairly well with the Waldstein, and lacks the scope of Hammerklavier.  Note–this in no way detracts from my astonishment with this piece and my awe at its compositional greatness.

The theme and variations is masterful as well, despite some very interesting notational choices.  The tone called for by the first few notes is wonderfully dark and rich.  Finally, Beethoven has stopped writing full triads in the bass staff, an activity I am constantly telling my students to avoid.  The more open chord positions he chooses in the theme are dark but not muddy.  Has this composer finally come to terms with the more resonant instruments that were starting to become available to him?  What does it mean that, despite his deafness, he was able to figure this out?  More importantly, what does it tell the contemporary composer who must assimilate much greater and more frequent changes in technology that Beethoven could have imagined?

There is a wonderful sort of rhythmic accelerando amongst these variations.  The theme gives a basic compound-triple approach with homophonic chords.   Variation 1 now has an event on every division of the beat, and events are happening (roughly) two to three times as often.  Variation 2 is simply not in the correct meter.  6/16 implies two beats to the measure, and there are clearly three.  3/8 would make sense, if it weren’t for the marked metric modulation (eighth=dotted eighth) and/or the alternating 16th-32nd-note pattern that makes up the highest rhythmic level (highest in the Schenkerian sense of “most-complex”).  What appear as accompanying 16ths or eighths should be dotted notes… or the alternating 16th-32nd patterns should be under sextuplets… or the patterns should be dotted-32nd-64th!  What a mess!  I can only assume that in later editions to which I don’t have access, some wise editor has made a decision that clears this up.  On my reference recording, Ashkenazy plays the first and second options, at least to my ear.  The editors of my edition, Hans von Bulow and Sigmund Lebert chose to only comment on the situation rather than rectify it.

In variation 3 is another meter signature that would make my students cringe–12/32, again, not reflective of the triple-meter feel of the music.  What a mess, but the musical intent is clear enough.  The final four measures of this variation are wonderful.

In my own work, I need to accomplish what Beethoven does in the fourth and fifth variations–that is, build larger sections of single textures.  I feel like I accomplished this in several recent pieces, notably in South Africa.  It is, again, the old adage I’ve often told myself of letting the music breathe.  I have great admiration for my friend David Morneau and his cultivation of the miniature, especially in his project 60×365, but I feel that I need to cultivate a different approach.  Yes, brevity is the soul of wit, but our world is deprived of the long view, the long term and patience to understand them.  Film may be our best hope–I know so few people who really listen to music, but nearly all Americans shell out for multi-hour long movies.  All the same, music that is longer than three minutes and that doesn’t make its meaning purely through language is, I am discovering now more than ever, my big project for the time being.  As a composer, I need to be able to write a single movement that lasts 20 minutes while still saying something.  I don’t know where the commission, or even the performers will come from for this, because for the time being I’m not in the class of composers who get that type of work.  When I entered graduate school in 2004, I was writing movements of one-to-two minutes’ length on a regular basis, and a five-minute one-movement instrumental piece was a stretch.  I discovered the tactic of creating larger pieces by writing transitions–my Martian Dances is a fantastic example of this, and my Homo sapiens trombonensis has a fantastia-like form that is exciting, but lacks rigor and cohesiveness.  Nothing ever comes back.  I learned how to let a piece breathe and expand to its true length rather than simply become a rush of ideas.  Beethoven’s sonatas–indeed, the sonata principle–require that I build on this even more.  I need, simply, the right commission now, because a twenty-minute unaccompanied trombone piece just doesn’t seem like a good idea.  A string quartet, or a piano sonata.  My latest completed piece, my Piano Trio that I just shipped off to its commissioner, runs almost ten minutes in a single movement.  I’m getting there… I’m getting there.

I began my journey through Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in November 2006 as a way to start a project that looked beyong the end of my graduate work, and I feel that I have done myself a great service–so much so that July 2009 marks the beginning of a new project on the Mahler symphonies.  I kicked around some different possibilities–Bach, Chopin, a single large work like the St. Matthew Passion or a Mozart opera, but it seems that Mahler is calling to me the most, so it will be half of a Mahler symphony each month until the end of 2010 (yes, I may decide to include other Mahler such as the 10th symphony or Das Lied von der Erde, but I’ll think about that later).   Please feel free to join me on that trip.

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Opus 110

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Here’s the May 2009 installment of my series of posts on the Beethoven Piano Sonatas.  This month is Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110–next month will be the last month in the cycle, which means I will need a new analysis project–let me know if you want to start one with me and dialog on the compositional aspects of pieces from the standard repertoire.  I could, of course, spend another few years going back over the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, but there is so much great music out there that I’ve never even touched, that I feel like it would be better for me to move on.  So… I haven’t decided on my next project yet, but I do have some ideas… if one or more people were interested in working through some pieces with me, I would let them have some input in the decision.  I’ve considered the Mahler symphonies, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven’s string quartets, Chopin’s Preludes… let me know what you think!

On to the piece:  A study in contrast this one, and highly indicative of the “official” traits of Beethoven’s late style as it has been taught to me.  I’ll dive right in.

The first movement, if not in textbook sonata form, at least seems to reference it.  I’m not Donald Tovey, who looked for sonata form in every piece he ever analyzed (the last movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet is a Rondo with sonata aspects, not a straight sonata-allegro), but it seems reasonable to assert that Beethoven is working with thematic groups and a strong sense of motivic unity.  His use of core technique is somewhat fascinating, as it is built on a descending thirds sequence instead of the usual stepwise sequence.  I’m puzzled by the modulation to E major in what corresponds to the recapitulation.  This isn’t Beethoven opening up a window to another tonal world but rather knocking out a wall–a very unexpected place, although it makes sense that something different needs to happen where the exposition modulated to E-flat (the modulatory technique to E is an enharmonic respelling of a borrowed chord… IV becomes iv, which is vi in the new key; Beethoven gets out of that key by a fascinating use of common-tone technique and sequence).

To understand Beethoven’s use of sequence is often to gain understanding of his medium-scale structure (and in some cases, large scale, as in the “Spring” Sonata).  In Las Cruces last week, I spoke with Fred Bugbee about NMSU’s music theory track, and eventually the conversation came around to sequences.  One reason I’ve decided to part company with my current theory textbook, Kotska & Payne’s Tonal Harmony is that their treatment of sequences simply lacks body.  The new generation of theory textbooks is much more realistic about the use of sequence in tonal music, and, truthfully, it was teaching from Clendinning & Marvin’s The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis that really got across how important sequence is.  My study of Beethoven has only reinforced that.

The second movement, Allegro molto is diminutive in proportion, but as will all Beethoven’s scherzi, I am amazed at the sheer craft involved.  Every time I make the mistake of listening to a Classical or Romantic scherzo as merely a light, intermezzo sort of movement, I tend to realize that I’m not doing it justice.  With some composers, it’s an easier mistake to make than with others.  Much of Mendelssohn’s genius seems to lie in his scherzi, for example, while Dvorak has a tendency to revert to folk dances.  Nearly every time I look closely at a scherzo, however, I see a level of compositional craft that equals the outer movements.  It is as though composers were freed from the strictures of sonata-allegro or rondo (although most rondos have wonderfully original moments) and could pull out the tricks they worked on as students–canon, invertible counterpoint, rhythmic surprises, and the works.  What fun!  Beethoven doesn’t use contrapuntal tricks, but in this tiny scherzo, he gives us the most rhythmically ingenious and formally cogent plan of the piece.  Why should this tiny movement have a coda when the first movement has none?  I suspect it is more necessary here because we have heard the A-section twice, and the listener needs to have a fuller sense of closure than a simple cadence.

I could puzzle over the last movement for quite some time.  Here is Beethoven’s late-style interest in counterpoint (the fugue, complete with a second exposition in inversion), side-by-side with harmonic innovation (a common-tone diminished-seventh chord with a modulating function), and a confusion about rhythm and key signatures that simply doesn’t make sense at this point.  To wit:  for much of the piece, the key is A-flat minor, at least until the start of the fugue, but the expected seven-flat key signature never appears.  Instead, the movement begins in B-flat minor, shifts to E major and then is written in E-flat minor.  Are these key signatures simply flags of convenience?  At the same time, Beethoven indicates “Recitative,” and breaks out of the signified meter (common time).  How free is this meter?  And how, precisely, is the performer to understand the subsequent barlines?  The “Klagender Gesang” in 12/16 meter is another puzzling aspect–it is almost as though Beethoven is writing a fantasia, a written-out improvisation, at the end of which he launches into the fantastic three-voice fugue. 

Then this full-bodied G minor and G major review of earlier material–the “Klagender Gesang” in G-minor paralleling the A-flat minor section and the fugue (in inversion) in G-major (although we get only an exposition and a long episode).  At last, the retuirn (recapitulation?) of the fugue subject in the original key–part recapitulation, part coda, really. 

One more Beethoven sonata–I look forward to Ludwig’s valedictory effort in the genre.

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Opus 109

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Back to the schedule at last–it’s the last day of the month, and I’ve actually been around this sonata enough for a change.  May and June should be better, since the semester is ending.

After the massivness of “Hammerklavier’s” approach, this little gem in E major just blows me away.  It strikes me that what Beethoven is really doing in the first two movements is preludizing, and that the meat of this sonata is in the set of variations of the last movement.

I will have to dig deeper some day and do some research on the first movement, because there are aspects of it that suggest to me that it is also a variation on the theme from the last movement.  Beethoven isn’t the only composer to have put variations before theme, but I’m not aware of an earlier instance.  This movment is related formally to the second variation (Leggieramente) in the last movement, although the first movment features an additional reprise of the opening material.  The textures of the opening sections also seem to parallel each other.  As a non-pianist, I find myself thinking linearly in much of my instrumental writing, while Beethoven (and other great composers for the piano) are able to draw melody from texture in ways that I often don’t initially perceive by a glance at the score.  This is really the point of this survey of Beethoven’s piano sonatas–to help me understand the approach to composition of a man with whom I believe I share some stylistic traits, but whose life as a musician was completely different than mine.  Another way I heard the first movement is an an extended cadenza or fantasia, much like the beginning of the Choral Fantasy.  This only extends as far as the character of the piece, of course, because a true fantasia would probably not bear so much repetition.

The second movement, Prestissimo, brings to mind some of Beethoven’s bagatelles in both character and design.  I’m thinking particularly of the Opus 119 set in this instance.  It also has the feel of a prelude, and I’m beginning to wonder if this sonata isn’t purely a set of preludes.  More on that in the third movement.

I’m always a little taken aback when I see the title “variations,” because it inevitably brings to mind lightweight, virtuosic pieces by Rossini or Weber for clarinet.  The variation form is, of course, much richer than this, and I wouldn’t trade Bach’s Goldberg Variations for anything.  Beethoven’s Diabelli set is a close second, and he certainly knew what he was doing in this form.  I have also used variation form on occasion, and my first published piece, due out this summer, is a set of Variations on a French Carol for concert band.

I’ve decided that this set of variations–masterful, of course–continues the series of preludes in this sonata.  I’m thinking of the preludes of Bach or Chopin, which explore a texture to its fullest degree.  Some of these variations have very clear parallels in the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Theme–a homophonic chorale, in binary form, with an augmented-sixth chord placed ahead of the half-cadence.

Variation 1–a slow waltz or landler?  If the tempo marking were removed, it could look like Chopin.

Variation 2–I’ve mentioned the similarities to the first movement.

Variation 3–Ingenious use of invertible counterpoint… he only had to write half the variation.  In this sense, some similarities to WTC I, C# major prelude.  The texture is related to that of WTC 1, D major prelude.

Variation 4–This sort of counterpoint is almost a cliche of Bach’s style, but WTC 1, Eb major and A minor preludes come the closest, with G# minor not far behind.  One of my teachers, Gregory Proctor, mentioned Beethoven’s habit of opening a window, harmonically, letting the listener peek through it, and then abruptly drawing the curtains.  This happens at the end of the first section of this variation, where the German augmented-sixth chord is spelled enharmonically to resolve to F-major instead of to the expected dominant-seventh on B, but is immediately snapped back to the home key.  Beethoven is playing with equal temperament here in a way that Mozart or Haydn would never have dreamed of.

Variation V–I’ve studied the book by Beethoven’s counterpoint teacher, Albrechtsberger, and it’s clear that quite a bit rubbed off on his pupil.  This variation begins with a fantastic little canon in four parts, with entrances at the second.  The parts don’t all continue, but the effect is quite fun.    Again, Beethoven opens the window to F-major, but only lets us look out for a moment.  Bach’s Goldberg Variations make use of canon, so why should Beethoven not do the same?  There are similarities here to WTC 1, B-minor prelude in texture and form.

Variation VI–I am completely in awe of the compositional prowess on display here.  There is no parallel to this in Bach that I am aware of, but the idea of creating a sort of accelerando and building the tension through faster and faster note values is so simple as to be genius.  Absolutely fantastic.  Bringing the theme back at the end is a clear homage to the Goldberg Variations, in my opinion.

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Opus 106

Monday, April 13th, 2009

I am way behind on this, I know, but it is time to say something about “Hammerklavier” and move on.

But where to begin?  As a piano operator, I can’t even begin to touch this piece, and as a musician, I’m not sure where I land, to be frank.

It is simply bigger, fuller, greater, and deeper than any music I have ever tried to bring to life.  As a trombonist, I play an instrument with a distinct lack of serious music by great composers, and with the possible exception of the concert by Christopher Rouse, I would say that there isn’t anything that even comes close to this piece.  As an ensemble musician, my experience of a piece is very different from that of a soloist, or even of a clarinetist or violinist.  Yes, I’ve played a Brahms symphony, but I had to sit and listen to the first three movements before playing a single note.  And the conductor was in charge.  And of course, I conduct, but it has never been my privelege to lead any of the band music that begins to approach the level of this sonata–I’m thinking of Colgrass’ Winds of Nagaul or Husa’s Music for Prague.

So my encounter with Opus 106 has been somewhat stunning.  Of course I have listened to and studied epic music before, but to imagine the range of expression and technique required here of a single musician brings to the fore to an even greater degree the scope of this piece.

Beethoven has been percussive before.  He has been formally extensive before.  He has been contrapuntal before.  He has waxed philosophically before in slow movements.  But here, every measure seems endowed with a depth, a seriousness–this is truly what people mean by “late Beethoven.”  There is no orchestration to distract from the absoluteness of the music in piano writing–there is only music, on this very imperfect instrument where notes decay too quickly and half a composer’s energy is given to making them last longer.

If I tried to name specifics, this post would be pages long.  I could spend the next year working out this piece, but it is time to move on–to three more titanic pieces!

I’m still looking for suggestions for what to study next… lately I’ve thought about Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, as well as continuing to ponder the Mahler symphonies.

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Op. 90

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

I’m closing in on the end of this project–one Beethoven Piano Sonata each month until they’re done.  Today I’ll put down what I think about Opus 90, Sonata No. 27 in E minor.

The opening phrase reminds me of where Romantic piano music was headed–it could be a Schubert impromptu, and there is a great deal of music in here that sounds very off-the-cuff–Mozart would have probably called this piece a fantasia, not a sonata.  However, the colors that Beethoven obtains from the instrument over the course of the piece (both movements) are quite wonderful.  I don’t recall Beethoven changing key signatures within a movement before (although, now that I think about it, the funeral march of Opus 26 goes from seven flats to four and back).  The change to C-major (at least in name… the key is actually the Neapolitan, F at that point) is interesting, and happens in both movements).  Interestingly, the end of the development section seems to hang out on the tonic instead of the dominant in the first movement. 

The second movement–a lovely sonata-rondo.  Again, the improvisatory nature seems reinforced by things like the triplets in the accompaniment at the end of the first episode, when the rest of the piece is sixteenths.  I don’t know that I have ever noticed the trick in the 2nd episode in music prior to this–Beethoven is in the key of c-minor, and needs to be in c-sharp minor to get back to the home key… in a trick beloved by every choral arranger since 1975, he substitutes a dominant on G-sharp for one on G… who knew that Beethoven could be so lazy!?  I heard the funny movement, and expecting to see some crazsy enharmonic thing out of the back of the theory book, here is the lamest, least-tonal (what would Schenker say here?) way to get to the key you want.  I was shocked!  (Is there a name for this device?)

Some writing follows that is almost as if Beethoven wished he were writing for string quartet or orchestra–the tied half-notes just cry out for winds!  I wonder how much he was thinking about the seventh and eighth symphonies at this time?

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Opus 79

Monday, October 27th, 2008

This month, I actually had more of a chance to dig in to the sonata I’ve assigned myself.  I’m finding that the more I can do at the piano with each piece, the more I get to it… of course, we also had fall break, but the trend doesn’t bode well for Opus 106, which will be coming up in short order–March of next year.  Honestly, “Hammerklavier” has been looming on the horizon since the start of this project, but that was sort of the point all along.  I will not avoid the piece just because it is hard.

Back to the topic at hand, though, Opus 79.  What a little gem!  When I teach Forms next fall, we will be interested in this little piece.  Again, I should be reading Beethoven’s biographies along with this project, but it’s very interesting to me that just when much of his music was getting bigger he came up with these two littler sonatas.  Market forces, perhaps?

The first movement starts with a theme that feels like a rondo theme in a way, but the movement has nothing to do with that form.  If each of these sonatas is a different experiment, perhaps that is the idea in this one.  Not that it falls into the category of “sonata-rondo” like, say, the finale of the Schumann piano quintet, but more and more Beethoven seems to be trying to break out of the mold of the sonata, of writing music by formula.  I’ve always been taught that this was what Romantic composition was, but to see it in action is another thing entirely.  I think back–two years ago now!–to the Opus 2 sonatas that seem so much more “by the book,” as though Beethoven had read Caplin’s (amazing) book on Classical form.  At any rate, even though this piece is relatively small, it isn’t the same composer as those littler pieces.

The slow movement is fun, because I can nearly play it!  Again, one that will come up in Forms next year, because it is a wonderful example of a ternary form that also displays interesting motion (within the A sections) to the III chord in minor.

Then the real rondo–those triplets against the eighth-two-sixteenths are unforgettable, and I can again only admire the pianists who pull them off so smoothly.  I’ve been practicing that rhythm all month, and I hear it, but the hands don’t seem interested in playing it.  Too bad.

I’ve talked with some people in person about what set of pieces to tackle next.  Mariah Carrel-Coons, our accompanist at OPSU, jokingly suggested the Scarlatti sonatas.  More within my reach perhaps, as a pianist, but not quite what I had in mind.  Several pieces have suggested themselves to me.  The Mahler symphonies would be a heck of a trip, and I could spend two months on each, doing analysis in my spare time, as usual.  If I were to continue with Beethoven, the quartets would be the next logical direction–a section of his work largely unfamiliar to me, and a direction I would like to take as a composer.  The options are plentiful–the Ligeti Etudes for piano have been calling to me; I could take a tour through the Preludes of Chopin or Debussy, with a little less time for each piece.  Any suggestions?

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Opus 78

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Well, the end of another month, and I didn’t spend as much time with my Beethoven sonata as I had hoped, but there were other musical experiences taking place.  My first-year theory students are through the “fundamentals” and we can now start to talk to each other about theory–today we discussed a definition of “tonal harmony.”  On September 21, the Harrington String Quartet came to OPSU and played a fantastic concert of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, and last Sunday was my first premiere in Oklahoma.  Add to that a couple of football games to eat up a Saturday or two, and finishing the horn and marimba piece, and it’s been a little busy.  But mostly good work, and I can’t complain.

But the Beethoven sonata–No. 24 in F# major, Opus 78.  I did get a chance to revisit it this afternoon, knowing that I would need to write tonight.  It really is a wonderful miniature among the giants that precede it.  I’m always amazed that Beethoven wasn’t stuck on one plan or another for his sonatas.  Myself, I tend toward the three-movement fast-slow-fast structure, so much so that in this horn and marimba piece I’ve just finished, I deliberately departed from that model–it begins in a quick tempo and ends slowly (I couldn’t resist the four-mallet tremolo at the low end of the instrument, pianissimo with soft mallets).  We’ll see what the player who commissioned it thinks.  So many of Beethoven’s earlier sonatas have that “standard” sonata cycle–like a little symphony for piano–he clearly got tired of being stuck with that.

Some things I need to work out.  My second-year theory students are studying modulation right now, and it strikes me that the development section of the first movement of Op. 78 begins in the parallel minor.  Should the parallel key be added to the list of “closely related keys?”  It certainly is easier to get to than any other key–no real pivot chord is required, only a dominant function that remains a dominant function.  Something to think about.  Similarly, in the rondo, Beethoven visits the key of (yes!) D# major, and along with it, D# minor.  Where Schubert or Chopin would have changed the key to Eb, Beethoven soldiers on through with six sharps–a real stretch for an ersatz pianist like myself.  More than ever I am in love with rondo form–the last movement of Brahms’ second symphony is what I think music will sound like in heaven.

So–here’s to next month–may I get to this writing earlier and have more intelligent things to say.  Op. 79, here I come!

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Best laid plans…

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

As many of you know, in addition to everything else, I am in the midst of a project to study one Beethoven piano sonata every month.  August was Op. 57, “Appasionata,” and I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t get to it as much as I should have, between website design, composition and the start of school.  I got to spend some time with the first movement, and listen to the recording a few times, and read Charles Rosen’s analysis in The Classical Style.  Other than that, I just didn’t get to it.  There was music to write and there were students to teach.

So… I solicit the thoughts of readers–what have you learned from this piece?  It is a standard example in music history class, so many of you will have looked at it at some point.  Let me know.  In the meantime, perhaps next month will go better.

There were similar distractions in Beethoven’s life… notably his efforts to gain guardianship of his nephew.  Hopefully, I will be writing piano music soon and have that much more incentive to dig into my Beethoven.  On to #24!

In the meantime, be sure to enter the contest:  www.martiandances.com/contestcategories.htm

And you can always check out my previous rants about Beethoven piano sonatas on my facebook page (using the Notes application).

‘Til next month!

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