(MUSIC) So, let’s start listening. Here is the exposition of the first movement. (MUSIC) So many interesting things here. First of all, just a note about the key: this is e minor, a key that Beethoven used very rarely. Unless I’m mistaken, the only other complete work in E minor is the quartet op. 59 No. 2, and then there are just a handful of isolated movements, here and there. Compare that to C minor, in which Beethoven wrote more than a dozen works: composers really do have attachment to certain keys, and specific associations with them. I’m always interested, when Beethoven uses a key that he does only very rarely, to know what it is that makes him decide to use that particular key for that particular piece. Why E minor now, all of a sudden, after so many years of passing it over in favor of other keys? I can’t answer the question, but I will say that op. 90 and the E minor string quartet share one striking characteristic: They are both poised between fight and resignation. When Beethoven fights in C minor, he fights, taking no prisoners. This E minor Beethoven, for whatever reason, wears his frailty more visibly. Op. 59 no. 2 is probably the most personal of the middle period quartets, and op. 90 is quite possibly the least rhetorical and most personal of ALL the piano sonatas. The first phrase of the sonata is really like the movement in microcosm: anger followed by resignation, twice in short order. (MUSIC) The first two notes of the piece, that repeated chord (MUSIC), they remain central throughout. At every corner, there are examples of two note figures – usually the same note twice-- always in that same rhythm. As ever, Beethoven is thinking carefully about what binds the piece together. So, after two alternations of forte then piano, forte then piano, we continue in piano, in the piece’s first long, interrupted line. (MUSIC) The sense of yearning is palpable throughout, and whereas the opening was decisive and highly structured, a question (MUSIC) followed by an answer (MUSIC), a second question (MUSIC), followed by a second answer (MUSIC), this second phrase has no answers – after eight bars, it trails off into a ritardando, eventually coming to a stop even though it's entirely unresolved. (MUSIC) The forthright character of the opening has, one phrase later, completed dissipated, and we're left with this incredible fragility: unlike the questions posed in the first two phrases, this one (MUSIC), doesn’t appear to have an answer. It does, of course – classical works don’t remain forever unresolved – but this answer has none of the forthrightness of the first two. (MUSIC) The yearning remains the most prominent feature, exemplified by those enormous melodic leaps (MUSIC). It’s not simply the distance between those two notes, but the fact the interval – a seventh – is a dissonant one. If Beethoven had made the leap an octave (MUSIC), which, in fact, is a slightly larger interval, it wouldn’t have the same tension. But the huge downward plunge is essentially the musical equivalent of a sigh, and the tension between the upper note and the lower note makes the mood more fraught still. The first question/answer phrase took 4 bars to unfold; the second, an identical four bars. The third answer takes 16 bars to arrive, and just like the question, comes with a ritardando, meaning that it has none of the surety of the first two answers. (MUSIC) Which brings the piece’s first paragraph to a fragile close. Now, two ritardandos in one paragraph of music is a lot for Beethoven: in the early and middle periods, more often than not, he would go an entire piece without using the marking even once. Part of what changed, I think, is Beethoven’s attitude towards notation. I’m not sure if it’s a question of him thinking more of posterity, or losing faith that people will instinctively know what he is looking for, but Beethoven’s notation grows fussier – I’d say more defensive --- as he goes along. By the end of the middle period, we start to see markings of pianississimo and fortississimo, neither of which appear early in his life, and even the phrasing and articulation markings become more convoluted. This is, really, the story of musical history more broadly: if you go back to Bach, virtually nothing is marked in the music. Most pieces don’t have tempo indications, many don’t have any dynamic markings whatsoever, and when they do, they are simply “fortes” and “pianos”, and generally the performer is given no direction at all. By the time we get to the 20th century, many composers have become relentlessly specific, in a way that is either useful or exhausting, depending on how artfully it’s done. There are probably many reasons for this, but the primary one is that over the centuries, bit by bit, the roles of composer and performer split off. This meant two things: first of all, that the composers would not be playing the work themselves. And second, since the performers were not themselves composers, composers had less and less faith that the performers would know how to make the right choices without having them spoon-fed to them. It’s a very interesting topic, and not one that we have time to properly explore here. But at any rate, by 1814 and op. 90, Beethoven had begun to spell out things that he would have left to chance back in the early period. Having said that, though, I do think there is something in the nature of this specific sonata that asks for a greater degree of flexibility than most of the rest of Beethoven’s music. Again, this movement is so much about the juxtaposition of a forthright kind of anger with tremendous doubt. And one of the many ways that that doubt is communicated is through those ritardandi – they lend the music a tremendous fragility.
