Another month and not nearly enough time spent with Beethoven. Many composers tell me that their New Years resolutions are to get more score study in, but that it never seems to happen. I guess I’m in that club, too. With that in mind, I’m going to confine myself to what has become by favorite movement of Op. 101 this month: the second, Lebhaft.
I suppose this movement falls into the Scherzo-and-Trio category, although it isn’t particularly schero-like in its character. It has the ternary form that one expects, and some other very interesting aspects. I’m going to skip over to the trio–the B-flat major section. Canon is the name of the game here. Hadyn and Mozart occasionally wrote minuet movements in their sonata cycles that were strictly canonic in construction, and Beethoven once again reveals himself to be a classical composer in outlook by doing the same thing. This two-page trio is filled with interesting exercises in canon and invertible counterpoint. There are no fewer than four canons–beginning in the 6th, 11th, 16th and 25th measures–and two uses of invertible counterpoint (the same material, appearing in the 3rd and 23rd measures).
For all this, Beethoven still manages to make music. There is both craft and art here, and one need not notice the canonic stucture to appreciate the good work that has gone on. An especially interesting moment is in the second and third canonic sections, when, rather than the very static harmony often generated in this type of piece, Beethoven uses the canon to move, first, away from the home key, and then, back to it–from Bb to C by falling thirds, then through a funny little progression back to the dominant-function.
Meanwhile, the economy of motive is staggeringly brilliant–only three or perhaps four motives account for the material of the trio, and they are mostly derived from the head-motive, which itself is derived from the material found in the march. In the fall, I will be teaching form and analysis, and I can promise my students that they will be looking into this piece.
Next month is the big one–the piece that I has loomed over me since the start of this project. The next sonata is No. 29, Opus 106, the “Hammerklavier.”