Hammerklavier: Revered and feared unlike almost any other work

The rising and descending scales at the end of the second subject of the slow movement are similar in character to the scales heard towards the end of the Missa Solemnis, as the words “Dona nobis pacem” (grant us peace) are sung. Ascribing adjectives to such moments exposes one to the danger of falling into the trap of cliches; but in both instances, I cannot help but think that Beethoven is describing eternity and consolation.

The common challenges of the Kinderszenen and the Hammerklavier

The inexhaustibility of the great composers is such that we can only begin to scratch the surface of what they offered us, and connections and threads we haven’t previously noticed are bound to appear. Ideally, I would want to bring myself to the point where, on stage, I can empty my head of everything I discuss in this post, and all these connections would somehow instinctively emerge. When I go off stage, they would pop back into my head and I’d be reminded of how baffled I was when I first discovered them.

Beethoven’s unusual poetry

Beethoven’s relatively late piano sonata, no. 27, from 1814, has often been called “Schubertian.” What is it that associates this two-part sonata with the style of Schubert? One possible answer is the strophic meter of the music, which is characteristic of song writing but rarely appears in Beethoven’s later works. Schubert, by contrast, whose “core genre” was the Lieder, naturally imparts strophic rhythm to his music. In Beethoven’s sonata Op. 90, the strophic meter can be heard throughout the work, without the rhythmic irregularities characteristic of Beethoven’s writing. As I show in the blog, this kind of rhythmic writing is rare in Beethoven’s later works, so in this sense, in the Op. 90, he harks back to his earlier music, much of which he had by then disavowed.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis in Beethoven’s Tempest sonata

Composers are experienced practical dialecticians, routinely engaged in reconciling opposites. A prime example, with a twist or two, appears in Beethoven’s Tempest sonata. After a disorienting and relentless first movement, and a dignified, spiritual second one, Beethoven combines organization and chaos in the final movement, before it winds down dynamically and suddenly fades away.

Beethoven’s “Tarnhelm” variation

Once you put on Wagner’s magic helmet (Tarnhelm), there’s no telling what you’ll be transformed into. Maybe a toad… Fittingly, its associated leitmotif is harmonically ambiguous, and while you wear the helmet you’re in tonal no man’s land. But Wagner didn’t invent the idea of transformation through ambiguity. As I show here, Diabelli variation 20 serves precisely as such a magic helmet that mediates the transition between the second and the last part of the work.

The wide expressive panorama of Beethoven’s sonata Op. 10/2

Can the beauty and glory of Viennese classicism all be reflected in one Beethoven sonata? Beethoven’s two great predecessors, Haydn and Mozart, are often present in his works. But in Sonata No. 6, in F major, like in a Gestalt figure-ground image, both are present simultaneously; now you hear one, now the other, in the course of the many transformations that take place in this exuberant sonata.

The “Szymanowska” Klavierstück: Beethoven in a nutshell?

Beethoven’s oeuvre is one of the richest in all of music. It straddles the classical and romantic idioms, and includes abundant elements of both. But it also harks back to the baroque period and foreshadows the future, reaching as far ahead as the 20th century. Can all this variety be encapsulated in a practically unknown bagatelle that doesn’t even have its own opus number?

William Kinderman: Beethoven’s thirteenth Diabelli variation

The comic Vivace that forms the thirteenth of the 33 variations exploits contrasts of rhythm, dynamics, and register. The initial dotted figure energizes the thrust to the downbeat, reflecting but intensifying the model of Diabelli’s waltz, as Beethoven employs full-voiced A-minor chords in place of the lighter sonorities of the waltz. While so reformulating Diabelli’s […]

Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and the “three periods” fallacy

Did Beethoven, just as he was putting the finishing touches on the last chords of the 5th symphony, say something like, “Now that I’m coming to the end of my heroic middle period, and starting my late period, I should be thinking seriously about some greater intellectual depth, more polyphony à la Handel and Bach, and somewhat longer and more involved compositions?” Unlikely. It is entirely in the nature and spirit of Beethoven to give pundits the lie and defy any attempt to categorize, rank, or classify his work.