Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata: A Successful Experiment
This well-known piano work was completed in 1801 when the composer Ludwig van Beethoven was 31. With the lengthy official handle of Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor “Quasi una fantasia,” Op. 27, No. 2, it’s not surprising that pianists over the years have preferred to call it by the much shorter nickname of “Moonlight Sonata.” This is perhaps the best-known and most frequently recorded of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. But did you know that it is not, in fact, a “pure” sonata in form?
The Moonlight Sonata departs from conventional sonata form, whose 3 or 4 movements are characterized by a structure of fast-slow-(fast)-fast. In the Moonlight Sonata, by contrast, Beethoven opens with an Adagio (slow) movement, a quite deliberate break with tradition. Beethoven was experimenting during the time of this work’s composition, and one of his experiments was to place the most important movement of a sonata last instead of first.
The second movement of the piece, Allegretto, is a fairly conventional scherzo, but the third movement, the Presto Agitato, is highly emotional, even stormy, and quite different from a more conventional sonata ending. While the more contemplative first movement may be attempted by an intermediate student, the last movement requires vigorous and energetic — and expert — playing.
The Moonlight Sonata is believed to have been dedicated to the Countess Giuliana Guicciardi, one of Beethoven’s pupils at the time he composed it. The musician and the young Countess fell in love after only a few lessons, and he is even supposed to have proposed marriage to her. By all accounts, she was amenable to the marriage, but because of her aristocratic station, her family forbade the match.
While this romantic mishap is historically accurate, some discount it as an inspiration for the Moonlight Sonata. This school of thought believes instead that the piece captures Beethoven’s reflections on the death of a friend. One of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, Edwin Fischer, pointed to areas where the Moonlight Sonata’s first movement bears a striking resemblance to Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, from the first act where the Commendatore is murdered. Thus the melancholy atmosphere created by Beethoven in the Moonlight Sonata’s first movement is associated with the idea of impending death, rather than thwarted love.
Whatever its inspiration, the nickname “Moonlight Sonata” was attached to the piece only after the composer’s death. In 1832, several years after Beethoven’s demise, the poet Ludwig Rellstab described the piano work as reminding him of “a boat visiting the wild places on Lake Lucerne by moonlight.” The name has stuck fast in the nearly two hundred years since.
If you have been taking piano for some time and have mastered popular sonatinas and sonatas by the likes of Clementi and Scarlatti, you may be ready to tackle the Moonlight Sonata, at least the first movement. Any serious student of the keyboard must become familiar with this work. Find a good recording — perhaps by Edwin Fischer or Andras Schiff — and take in the work of this master composer. Then, like Ludwig Rellstab and countless others the world over, you too may be deeply moved by Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
Tags: Beethoven, beethoven's moonlight sonata, beethoven's piano literature, beethoven's piano music, ludwig van beethoven, moonlight sonata, piano, piano literature, piano music
