(MUSIC) Today’s lecture is on a sonata that could hardly be more different from the “Waldstein”: The transcendently beautiful op. 90. I must admit that, great as those big middle period works are, I do sometimes find them a bit exhausting. Beethoven is trying so hard to stretch the boundaries of the form, to break new ground, and to do so in a way that will make a big statement, occasionally I find myself aware of Beethoven gritting his teeth. Don’t misunderstand me: the Waldstein and many other works of the same era are utterly remarkable; they just aren't generally sources of simple pleasures or simple beauties. What a joy, then, to come to op. 90, which breaks plenty of new ground itself, but does so without a hint of rhetorical grandeur or self-consciousness. I always feel a little bit silly, referring to any Beethoven sonata as “one of my favorites”, given their insanely high general level, and given that each one is truly unique. But I really do love op. 90 beyond description, and I am always manufacturing excuses to come back to it. Easily overlooked, as it's on the short side, and comes from that awkward period after the “statement” works of the middle period, and before Beethoven had truly found his “late style", it is nonetheless one of the most touching of Beethoven’s works. Op. 90 was written in 1814, during a particularly difficult period of Beethoven’s life, and certainly not one of his more prolific ones. If you’d like to review the biographical elements that played into this, the lecture entitled “Crisis” covers this topic. But just as a reminder: the “Appassionata” was written nearly 10 years earlier, in 1804 and 1805. It is the sonata no. 23, and op. 90 is no. 27, which means that in the intervening decade, Beethoven wrote only three piano sonatas – a very paltry number by his standards, and anyway, two of those three are quite small. While in length, op. 90 is also a modest work, it has such a special and unusual character, I’ve always felt it represents Beethoven rededicating himself to the piano sonata – the form in which he was most prolific – and in doing so, laying the groundwork for the last five, unfathomable sonatas. So, the most immediately unusual thing about op. 90 is that it only has two movements – it's one of only six such Beethoven sonatas. To be fair, this depends a little bit on how you count the movements in certain sonatas – one could argue, for example, that the Waldstein is a two movement work – but only six sonatas are cut-and-dried cases, where the music is divided into two distinct sections, and no more. Now, Haydn sometimes wrote piano sonatas in two movements, but he did so less and less often as he aged and as the genre itself began to take shape. And Mozart’s sonatas are invariably in three movements, so it’s not just that two-movement sonatas were unusual for Beethoven: they fall well outside the norms of the classical era. Now, obviously, the relationship between the movements within a sonata has been one of the big topics of this course – because that is one of the most significant aspects of musical structure, and also because one can observe such a dramatic evolution in this area from op. 2 to op. 111. When the sonata only has two movements, rather than three or four, the way in which they relate to one another is naturally very different. So, the two sonatas Op. 49 were probably conceived as teaching pieces – they really not substantial, and they don’t add much to this discussion. Each of the remaining four two-movement sonatas finds Beethoven addressing in very different ways the questions of how the work is shaped, where its emotional heart lies, and how the second movement responds to the first. In the sonata op. 54, probably the most peculiar of Beethoven’s sonatas, the two movements are very much united in their quirkiness. They are, it’s true, quirky in very different ways, but they present a united front and the second movement doesn’t present any kind of dramatic shift away from the world of the first. Now then, in op. 78, which I talked about briefly in that same “Crisis” lecture, the wonderfully songful, tender first movement is answered by the brusque, almost lowbrow humor of the second. It’s as if the Beethoven of the second movement is telling the Beethoven of the first movement to get over himself. In op. 111, the last of the two-movement sonatas, and the last sonata Beethoven was to write altogether, there's a yin-and-yang quality to the two movements. The first movement is in a near-constant state of turmoil, Beethoven in his restive, combative C minor mood. At the very last moment, the anger dissipates – it’s less a resolutio n and more a giving up – and the C minor gives way to C major. This sets up the second movement, which remains in major, and is gloriously free of turmoil – it’s a very long and very complex movement, but it’s most prominent feature is its extraordinary serenity. Amazing on its own, it is more so, much more so because it has been earned, after the life-and-death struggle of the first movement. Op. 90, while not remotely of the same scope as op. 111, functions in a similar way: stress and anguish in the first movement are followed by the blissful calm of the second, and just as in op. 111, the presence of the former is what makes the latter so affecting. It’s been said about op. 90 that it represents a marital conflict and then its resolution: while that’s more than a little trite, when you listen to the piece, you can understand where the idea comes from.
