Review Summary: An Early yet Uniquely Beethoven Work.
Technically part of his “Classical Period” — sometimes referred to as the “Early Period”, the 9th piano sonata features all the tell-tale signs of Beethoven the “Romantic”; the features of which sound in his most famous “Heroic” piano sonatas. Diminutive compared to many of his “Middle” and “Late Period” sonatas, the 9th is not well-known outside the classical world, yet the music is as robust as any of the other more popular “Early” sonatas. Fans of the “Moonlight” eat your heart out.
Composed in 1798, the sonata opens in the bright key of E major with an almost crude sounding melody that ascends for three measures in half-beat perfect fourths. Following are a series of four flashy ascending 16th note diatonic runs; the final of which leads into a descending diatonic scale darkened by two carefully placed D# diminished harmonies. Ending the theme is a resounding modulation to the key of F# major with three potent fortissimo Major chords. After a repeat of theme A, varied with a chromatic rising alto, we transition to the B theme, a single descending chromatic vocal line in four 8th notes that lands on a half note dominant walked back up in a six quarter note chromatic line.
I pause here to mention that Beethoven is known mostly for his magnificent drama; almost any person alive can hum the tune to the “Ode to Joy” or the 5th Symphony. It is true that the thematic material of op. 14 no. 1, does not rival the “bigness” of, say, the “Moonlight” or the “Pastorale”, yet, as Edmund Morris eloquently put it, Beethoven, “had an almost cubist ability to visualize planes and dimensions from many different angles at once, […] Beethoven’s sound structures are full of disproportionate rooms and inner voids, with surprise changes of level, and windows full of sky, but they always balance out as total buildings, no matter how large their size.”
The 9th’s third theme demonstrates that Beethoven could build titanic and microscopic cells of sound. What we have are ten units of two beats, each divided into one beat of pickup and one beat of destination. The first unit sets the tonal and harmonic nexus, a soft 8th note E on the pickup to a loud B sounded in four octaves. The second unit sounds a B Major chord on the pickup to a massive sforzando e minor chord, the first two notes of the arpeggio (e and g) suspended into the first beat of the next unit. But it is beneath the suspension where Beethoven’s unique style truly shines. A lightly played quarter note A# sounds in the tenor followed by a sforzando diatonic 16th note homecoming bass note run from F# to B. This structure repeats thrice more with the 2nd and 4th units suspending an E Major, instead of an e minor, chord. What stands out about this theme is what stands out about Beethoven in general, his ability to take units of sound so juvenile in stature and turn them into full-fledged themes. The 5th Symphony, after all, Beethoven built on a single unit of four notes, three of them exactly the same in note and duration. The third theme of the 9th plays off motifs already sounded in the sonata, and that is precisely what makes it so satisfying. Like elsewhere in the exposition, just like the third theme, the first theme sounds repeated units of two beats, again each divided into one beat of pickup and one beat of destination. In fact, you can divide most, if not all, of the exposition into two beat units. Yet, this organic style of composition did not originate with Beethoven; Mozart and Haydn before him were masters of the form.
What makes Beethoven’s “Classical Period” sonatas stand out from his predecessors is his ability, seemingly at will, to dramatize. His use of resounding dynamics, like in measures 17-18, his expansion of the “Development” section, which Beethoven often carried to harmonic soundscapes considered too rough for polite Viennese society, such as in the introduction of a theme not sounded in the exposition composed in the shocking key of a minor, and his use of methodically placed non-diatonic tones, such as the powerful chromatics in measures 150-153, all jolt the listener to attention. It is as if he meant to say, “You will pay attention to Herr Ludwig van Beethoven.”
Like nearly every piece of music Beethoven ever composed, movements II and III demonstrate that Beethoven had an almost maniacal obsession with balance and proportion. Each movement is a self-contained unit, yet also designed to add balance to the sonata as a whole. I’ll leave it to the reader to seek out the piece and give it an attentive listen, such an activity should, I think, grow attention around a lesser-known Beethoven work, and hopefully lesser known classical music in general.
4.3/5.
