Doing well. Unseasonably warm here, but that’s going to change tomorrow. Got some wallerin’ music coming up.
In 1796, 25 year old Lou Beethoven went on tour. His usual routine was to blow into town, play some gigs, challenge local pianists to improvisation contests, collect gifts from the local prince, and split town a week later with the cash. Good work if you can find it.
The Prussian court was located in Berlin, a town almost as musical as Vienna. The current king, Frederick William II, like his uncle Frederick the Great, was a gifted cellist. He had given Mozart a vast sum of money years earlier, and Beethoven stayed in Berlin for much of the summer hoping for a similar windfall.
The Prussian court in musical terms was all about the cello. There was a decent pianist at court not in Beethoven’s league, and two excellent cellists who were brothers. King Freddy Bill commissioned Lou for two sonatas for piano and cello, which set the cash register ringing.
The two sonatas don’t look backward to Haydn and Mozart because neither composer had written a piece for that combination. This meant that for once Lou did not have to look over his shoulder. Beethoven understood that because the cello was coming into its own as a solo instrument, a well written sonata could carve out new territory for him that would make him the pre-eminent composer for that instrument and make him a lot of money in the process.
What daunted Beethoven was the idea of writing a slow movement for cello. He didn’t know if he had the compositional chops for the kind of slow movement that would have a fine sense of sentiment but not dip into the lugubrious. It would be nice to not have a dry eye in the house, but he feared not having a dry seat in the house. Lou decided to finesse the problem by writing a sonata consisting of two fast movements with a slow introduction in the first movement.
It starts with an introduction marked “adagio sostenuto” (“at rest and flowing”) in 3/4 time. This is Lou’s substitute for a slow movement.
At 3:16 he switches to 4/4 and “allegro” for the first subject.
At 4:30 the second subject appears in C Major. Beethoven executes some development of this material in place, working it out in detail.
At 7:00 the exposition repeats.
At 10:47 it’s development time. With the second subject given a work over in the exposition, Beethoven concentrates solely on the first subject, switching to A Major, D minor and then F minor, which you think would provide an easy transition to F Major for the recap. But Beethoven isn’t going to do something that easy, and he bends the listener’s mind as he moves to the remote key of D-flat Major. From there he executes a Reverse Neapolitan, i.e. a half-tone down, to C Major, which links back to the tonic at F Major. In other words, Beethoven returns to the tonic at the recap at 12:42 via the back door. Thirty years later, Schubert would turn this technique into an art form.
The second subject appears in the correct key of F Major. No surprises here.
At 16:17 he goes into overtime with a long, brilliant coda. He brings back six bars of introduction marked “adagio”, then goes split-C (2/2 time) and “presto” before returning to the “allegro” tempo and 4/4 for a bravura finish.
The finale is a rondo in 6/8 time and marked “allegro vivace” (“quick and lively”). In a rondo, you hear the first subject come back a number of times with excursions into other subjects and other keys. At 21:00 there is an astonishing moment when Lou switches to G-flat Major for a passage where time stands still. He repeats the moment in D-flat Major at 23:00. Again there is a long, brilliant coda with a short break for slower material.
This video is from 1985 with two greats at the piano and cello with a stirring performance.
Tomorrow night it’s the second cello sonata and an art song.
Hope it doesn’t get too cool and nip the buds on the trees there like it did here a couple of weeks ago.
Looking forward to wallerin’! :)