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In 1815, Beethoven sent away to the publishing house of Salomen in London for their expensive Collected Works of George Frederick Handel. Two things happened almost immediately. Up until now Beethoven had been saying that Franz Josef Haydn was the greatest composer who had ever lived. Now with Haydn safely in his grave, Beethoven said that Handel was the greatest composer who had ever lived. The second thing that happened was that fugues started popping up like mushrooms in Beethoven’s work. Thanks to this greater exposure to Handel’s music, Beethoven’s interest in counterpoint was rekindled.
The Heroic Decade of Beethoven’s life was over, and now the composer was looking back to earlier forms of music while attempting to leap ahead into the unknown. This marked the beginning of his Late Period, the years of groundbreaking works that were often not understood until the 20th Century.
His Sonata for Cello and Piano in D, Op. 102/2 is an example of this because the fugue in the finale is one of the compositional monuments of Beethoven’s output. The first movement, marked allegro con brio, one of Beethoven’s favorite directions, starts out with an attention-getting phrase in D Major, and from the beginning it is clear that counterpoint is the major idea.
Less than a minute into the piece Beethoven settles into a placid second subject in A Major. The exposition repeats.
At 3:48 it’s development time, and it starts by going in tonal territory that is unmoored from the concept of key.
The recap starts in the wrong key (G Major) and then slips into the correct key after a few bars. The second subject appears in the correct post-development key of D Major.
The coda at 6:26 shifts uncomfortably through a variety of keys before Beethoven brings it to a close with a final D triad. What is most noticeable with this movement is that Beethoven is working with a short, concise form, with the intention of making his finale the main movement. This is new for the composer.
The second movement, marked adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto, needs no translation. This slow movement in D minor, in ternary format, has a series of phrases broken by silences. It’s a good example of how to use rests as part of your melodic line. The middle section in D Major is a wonderful respite from the gloom and darkness. Just before darkness descends again, this is a little figure on the piano that Max Steiner stole for “Gone With the Wind”. He sneaks carefully into D Major at the end so that he can lay down an A7 chord to lead without pause into the finale.
Ron Thomas, who will be playing this piece, once told me he hesitated to program this piece for concerts because the fugual finale is so thorny for the listeners to comprehend. Late Beethoven tends to be like that, which is why a century – and Wagner – had to go by before people could understand the late works. When the second violinist of the quartet that premiered all of Beethoven’s string quartets told him that the members of the quartet had problems understanding his latest quartets, Beethoven said, “Oh, I didn’t write these for you! I wrote them for a later generation!” Rather than explain all the details of subjects, counter-subjects and stretti, the best way to understand the allegro fugato is to just lie back and let the sheer mathematics of the music flow over you like Bach.