LESSON NOTES AND RESOURCES: EXPLORING BEETHOVEN'S PIANO SONATAS

Lecture 5: Towards Infinity

Key points from the lectures, by Jonathan Biss
© 2015 Jonathan Biss

Note about terms: To find definitions of musical terms, visit a resource such as On Music Dictionary (http://dictionary.onmusic.org).
For more detailed definitions, visit your local library to check Oxford Music Online (http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com) or Grove's
Dictionary of Music and Musicians. To listen to the complete sonatas, go to http://www.IMSLP.org.
Note: Whenever a composer is not mentioned, the work is by Beethoven . –Curtis Teaching Staff

LECTURE 5: TOWARDS INFINITY SONATA INFORMATION

Beethoven’s Late Style(s) Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109
The quality of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas is beyond all Average Duration: 20 minutes
argument unsurpassed, in terms of mastery, charisma, and Composition Year(s): 1820
the draw they have on the listener. On top of that, the
variety demonstrated in the sonatas is just tremendous. Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1
Average Duration: 19 minutes
The Beethoven Sonatas are incomparably more diverse Composition Year(s): 1795-97?
than the Mozart concerti in terms of style, of musical
language, of structure.

While Beethoven does sometimes careen wildly from

sonata to sonata in terms of character, there is undoubtedly
an overall direction in terms of structure, away from
“straight” sonata forms, away from the absolute primacy
of the tonic-dominant relationship, away from the normal
passage of time, away from this business of decreasing the
heaviness as the work progresses.

It was not possible to write a piano sonata in the 19th

century as if the Beethoven sonatas had not been written.
They set the agenda, and they established which elements
of the classical style and tonal system were still useable,
and which ones—many—were now obsolete.

Until the late period, despite the “New Paths” letter, and
despite some rather wild works, the development has been
stepwise, incremental.

The development found in the late sonatas is a leap. These

last sonatas step way into the unknown. The music world
is still trying to come to grips with what Beethoven
achieves here, and in the last string quartets, written
several years later. Coming to terms—to some very
limited extent—with late Beethoven is one of the central
tasks facing any serious musician.

© 2015 Jonathan Biss Lecture 5: Towards Infinity Updated: 05/31/2015 Page 1 of 7

Additional References
Sonata Op.110

NOTES

Circling Back and Moving Forward: Comparing the Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109
First Movements Op. 10, No. 1 and Op. 109 I. Vivace, ma non troppo
There are many things at work in the exposition of the II. Prestissimo
first movement of Op. 109. First of all, the tempo
III. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo
flexibility: I cannot think of another sonata movement
before this that is in two different tempi.
Score and recordings: IMSLP
No other instrument emphasizes the moment of attack in Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1
such an extreme way. A string or wind player can, if he so I. Allegro molto e con brio
chooses, begin a note nebulously, and bring it slowly into
II. Adagio molto
focus; with the piano, there is no disguising the moment of
contact between hammer and string. For hundreds of III. Finale: Prestissimo
years, composers have looked for ways around this. But
Beethoven, in his early works, is often quite comfortable Score and recording: IMSLP
with this extra degree of definition of sound. It gives the
music an extra thrust which suits him well. How far from
that is Op. 109, which—at least in its first theme—
manages to have no edges, no points of gravity. It shows
Beethoven, once again, asking the piano to go beyond its
natural means.

While Op. 109’s first movement has such a feeling of

freedom about it, and seems to have moved beyond the
old forms entirely, it is actually a perfect sonata form—
pared down to necessities.

I also refer to it as a “distillation” of the sonata because

the contrast of the two themes is so absolute. There is this
radical difference of tempo, the vivace of the opening
giving way to an unprecedented adagio sostenuto. Beyond
that, there is the contrast of the rhythmic regularity of the
first theme versus the freedom of the second.

Lastly, there is the contrast of harmonic stability on the

one hand, and great instability on the other.

The way the first two movements interact with one

another is fascinating. The first movement is a bit of a neat
© 2015 Jonathan Biss Lecture 5: Towards Infinity Updated: 05/31/2015 Page 2 of 7
trick, really, because again, it is extremely terse in
construction, with no wasted notes, and even more
significantly, no auxiliary material, no excess of any kind.
And yet the overall impression it leaves the listener with is
one of great spaciousness—of a leisurely generosity.

Despite the record-breaking brevity of the first movement,

due to its character, when the second movement arrives, it
gives the impression of disturbing the peace, of
interrupting comfort with anxiety. Or, more to the point, it
creates a massive contrast, a total contrast.

The whole point of these very brief first two movements

seems to be to represent absolutely opposed character and
ideas. But then if you look more closely at the first
movement, if you look WITHIN it, you see that it, too,
despite seeming unified in the grander picture, is a study
in contrasts itself! This is not only a highly impressive
feat, it has a profound effect on the way we experience the
piece, and demonstrates Beethoven’s fascination with and
mastery of structure: based on whether we are zooming in
or out—figuratively, with our ears—the first movement
becomes an entirely different sort of experience.

That the first two movements are dissimilar—foils, really.

Again, they are united only in being dramatically pared-
down sonata forms.

The first two movements of Op. 109 are two fully fleshed-
out sonata movements, full of power and paradox, in six
minutes flat! If you leave aside the two sonatas Op. 49,
and the G major Op. 79—sonatinas rather than sonatas,
really—there is no other proper sonata form first
movement by Beethoven as short as these two are
together!

Additional References
Sonata Op. 7; Sonata Op. 111; Sonata Op. 22

NOTES

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Variations as Psychology: Op. 109’s Finale
If the first two movements of Op. 109 are models of
economy, the last is spaciousness itself. This is one of so
many ways in which the unchallenged dominance of the
finale is established—it takes over twice as long to play as
do the first two movements, together.

The movement is a set of variations, but it reinvents the

form as profoundly—or perhaps more so—as the first two
movements reinvent, or reimagine, sonata form.

But when Beethoven turns to the variation form in his late

period—and he does so frequently—he is invariably after
something deeper. What was merely embellishment has
become psychology. In these late sets of variations, we see
the theme turned inside out.

The first half of the theme is subdivided into four groups

of 2 bars each—and each features E moving to B, 1
moving to 5. This has two primary effects. First, given the
lack of harmonic variety, of harmonic “fodder” in the
theme, Beethoven will need to be fantastically resourceful
in other ways to create sufficient material for the
variations. Second, and to me more crucial, is that this 1-5
is established, and re-established, absolutely relentlessly.
Even if our focus is placed on counterpoint, on rhythm,
and color, this most fundamental harmonic motion—1 to 5
and back to 1—is ever-present.

The theme itself is a chorale: the voices are all close

together, and they move more or less in tandem. In the
first variation, this sort of writing is immediately
dispensed with, the melody separated by a distance of
several octaves from what is now very obviously an
accompaniment.

In the second variation, the voices are made truly

independent, with the two lines playing at different times
and assuming roles of equal importance. In the third
variation, Beethoven increases the speed with the marking
“Allegro vivace.” In doing so, he creates a contrast of
speed so dramatic, so jarring, that we feel we have moved
not just from slow to fast, but from chasteness to wildness.

It is only with the fourth variation that the floodgates

open. The only way I’ve ever been able to describe this
variation is as a stream of consciousness. Clearly it is
drawn out of the theme, and yet even its fundamental
shape is altered; its skeleton is almost imperceptible.

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How does Beethoven find his way out of this dream-state?
With a fugue. This is actually quite an influential idea. In
the romantic era, it became almost standard practice to
prove one’s mettle with a fugue in the middle of a work’s
finale.

There is an additional surprise, and one of real

significance, in this fifth, fugal variation: it features an
“extra” repeat. The second half of the fugal variation
appears not twice, but three times. Four variations in, we
have structural expectations, which have yet to be
frustrated; here they are. This serves the dual function of
making the music seem to reach further into the unknown,
and of creating a sense of uncertainty within a variation
that was launched with great confidence.

This leads us to the last variation, which is as full of

wonder as music comes. It resurrects the shape of the
theme, and returns to its speed. What is new is that
through virtually the whole variation, and with increasing
insistence, there is now, either in the bass, or in the treble,
a pedal point B – 5.

After all the adventures this music has gone through—in

its final moments, it is ALL about the B needing to
resolve to an E. That basic resolution is absolutely
spotlighted here. In the last moments of the work,
Beethoven is fixated exclusively on the search for this
most fundamental, classical resolution.

When this resolution finally comes, it is into the theme

itself. Beethoven offers us the theme, as a recollection, to
bookend the work.

The only difference between the two iterations of the

theme, in short, lies in what has occurred—the theme has
taken on vast new meaning through what it has been
through, through the past it has acquired. This is a
gateway to the music of the romantic generation—the
need for harmonic resolution has already, thanks to
Beethoven’s own work, begun to dissipate, and
structure—aka, our need for things to follow one another
in a particular way—is more and more based on our
memory of what we have already heard.

Additional References
Sonata Op. 7; Sonata Op. 27, No. 2, the “Moonlight”; Sonata Op. 26; String Quartet Op. 131
Tchaikovsky; Dvorak; Bach’s Goldberg Variations

© 2015 Jonathan Biss Lecture 5: Towards Infinity Updated: 05/31/2015 Page 5 of 7

NOTES

Coda: The Sonata after Beethoven

From 1795 to 1822, over the course of 32 works,
Beethoven transformed the sonata. At the beginning, it
was the product of an enormously effective but rather
straightforward model; by the end, he had evolved it into
something so much more free-form and flexible, the
model had become obsolete, or at the very least, not the
point any more. Unlike music that is, in some way, the
product of a system, the sonatas are inimitable.

The tail end of Beethoven’s life turns out to have been not
only a huge turning point in the history of music, but a
moment of amazing creative flowering.

Beethoven died in 1827; Schubert died a year later, at the

age of 31.

Schubert is one generation younger than Beethoven, the

only truly great composer born in the years leading up to
the 19th century. Fifteen years later, however, there is an
extraordinary concentration of masters born at the same
time. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Verdi
and Liszt are all, amazingly, born between 1809 and 1813.
Which means that each of them was coming of age just
exactly at the time of the death of Beethoven. It also
means that they were coming of age just as diatonicism
was being seriously threatened for the first time, as the
classical style’s rubber band was being stretched
perilously. All of this, naturally, is thanks to Beethoven.
Amazingly, these composers mostly abandoned the piano
sonata—the form in which Beethoven was most prolific.

The Beethoven Influence is incessantly talked about, yet

in honesty, while it would be wrong to call it “negative,”
given that it spawned such creativity, it was in a sense a
“destructive” influence. Put another way, Beethoven
advanced the forms he worked in to a point where their
total destruction was probably inevitable if music was
going to remain vibrant.

The reason we are sitting here, talking about, playing,

© 2015 Jonathan Biss Lecture 5: Towards Infinity Updated: 05/31/2015 Page 6 of 7
grappling with Beethoven, almost two centuries after his
death: he is all-encompassing. In terms of his skill, the
emotional terrain represented in his music, and the legacy,
positive, negative and otherwise, that he leaves, he has
more to say about humanity than any artist whose work I
know.

Additional References
String Quartet Op. 131; Sonata Op. 101, Sonata Op. 31, No. 1
Schubert’s A major Sonata D. 959; Mendelssohn’s Sonata in E major, Op. 6

NOTES

Further Study
Compare finale of Beethoven Sonata No. 16 in G major, Op. 31, No. 1, to the last movement of Schubert
Sonata No. 20 in A major, D. 959.

Additional Research
These are composers coming of age at the time of Beethoven's death (1827):
 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809–47)
 Robert Schumann (1810–56)
 Frédéric Chopin (1810–49)
 Richard Wagner (1813–83)
 Giuseppi Verdi (1813–1901)
 Franz Liszt (1811–86)

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