It all began with a letter. A love story. Doesn't it always? In July 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a letter addressed to 'The Immortal Beloved'. Ever since it was found among his papers after his death, scholars have been trying to discover the identity of his secret love. When Bernard Rose's controversial film The Immortal Beloved was released in 1994, in which Gary Oldman's Beethoven was played off against three possible objects of his desire, the great composer's popularity seemed to soar. So what is it that makes the creator of such over-played classics as Für Elise such a popular figure, and why do his thirty-two piano sonatas still command the admiration of so many pianists today?
Youthful Genius
Beethoven was born in Bonn, in 1770. His father, Johann, was a court tenor and gave the young boy lessons on the violin and the piano. Their relationship was very different to that enjoyed by Leopold Mozart and his son, Wolfgang. Beethoven's father was a drunkard and a bully. He would drag his young son from his bed in the middle of the night to play for his drunken friends, and beat him and lock him in a cellar for the slightest infraction. Yet despite the unhappy circumstances of his childhood, the young Beethoven's talents blossomed. Johann realised his own limitations as a teacher and, after his son gave his first public concert at the age of seven, sent him to study with Christian Gottlob Neefe.
Through Neefe, Beethoven was introduced to the preludes and fugues of Bach which, at the time, were only available in manuscript form. Neefe published an account of Beethoven's progress in Cramer's Magazin der Musik, mentioning his excellent sight-reading ability and his interest in composition. He ended with the comments: 'This youthful genius is deserving of help to enable him to travel. He would surely become a second Mozart were he to continue as he has begun.' (Mozart later described Beethoven's playing as 'pretty, but studied', though when he heard him improvise he changed his mind. 'Keep an eye on him', he said. 'One day he will give the world something to talk about.')
Musicologists break Beethoven's work into three clearly defined periods. In the first period, covering compositions up until about 1802 (including ten of the piano sonatas, the first two symphonies, Creatures of Prometheus, the Op. 18 String Quartets and the first three piano concertos), he pushed the boundaries of piano technique and harmony and replaced the minuet with the scherzo. You can clearly hear the influence of composers such as CPE Bach, Clementi, Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven once said that he had learnt nothing from his time as a pupil of Haydn, an absurd remark that says much more about their fraught relationship than the musical productivity of their time together!
You only have to look at portraits of Beethoven to see that he probably wasn't the easiest of people to be around, and was not what German speakers would call gemütlich (which roughly translates as 'amiable' or 'good-natured'). Goethe probably spoke for many when he said: "A more self-contained, energetic and sincere artist I never saw". But he added: "Unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable but who does not make it any more enjoyable either for himself or others by his attitude." However, we should remember that Beethoven had already suffered much in his short life. And something far worse was about to happen.
Watershed Works
As he approached thirty and the turn of the century, Beethoven began to lose his hearing. In the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802 (an unpublished letter to his two brothers which may have been a will, a public confession or a suicide note), he wrote of his despair at his increasing deafness. 'I was on the point of putting an end to my life', he confessed. 'The only thing that held me back was my art. For it seemed impossible to me to leave this world before I had produced all the works that I felt the urge to compose; and thus I have dragged on this miserable existence.' Appropriately enough then, the Eroica Symphony (written in 1803) marked the start of the second period of his composition.
It was during this period that Beethoven would write some of his best-loved works, including the Razumovsky quartets, Fidelio and the 'Waldstein' and 'Appassionata' sonatas. The final period, from about 1816 onwards, produced the last six piano sonatas (with their widely spaced parts, profusion of trills and silences and increased contrapuntal textures) and the Ninth Symphony. By now Beethoven had largely abandoned the traditional three-movement form, with some works (such as the final sonata) having two and, in the case of the Op. 131 string quartet, as many as seven movements. It is quite remarkable to think that he was, by this time, unable to hear a single note.
Beethoven's cycle of piano sonatas is one of the pinnacles of all piano literature. They range from the exuberant and irrepressible early works, which take their lead from Haydn and Mozart, to the introverted late works that were so ahead of their time his contemporaries failed to understand them. And they are a vivid reminder of his musical credo: 'Whoever gets to know and understand my music, will be freed from all the misery that drags down others.' In the words of Edwin Fischer: "For Beethoven, the sonata form is not a scheme that can be used in caprice one day and abandoned the next. This form dominates everything he imagines and composes. It is the very mark of his creation."
In their entirety, the compositional development of the sonatas parallels the development of the instrument itself. During the twenty-eight years in which they were written Beethoven would have seen the typical five-octave Viennese fortepiano of the 1790s, witnessed the introduction of the sustaining and una corda pedals and enjoyed the six-octave Broadwood piano that he was given in 1828. And yet, typically, he was ahead of the game. Consider the 'Hammerklavier' sonata, for example, which he dedicated to Archduke Rudolph of Austria (his staunchest patron). It was completed in 1818, a full seven years before he had an instrument that could cope with its demands of register!
A Touch of Moonlight
Beethoven once remarked that music should "strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman". His music is certainly ideally suited to anyone who likes a full-blooded, passionate sound. In his hands the piano entered new territory, taking full advantage of the instrument's increasing range of colours. While Haydn and Mozart were content to indicate piano or forte, Beethoven habitually introduces pianissimo passages that anticipate Debussy and granite-like fortissimos. The opening of the 'Appassionata' sonata, arguably his most violent musical utterance, is a classic example. In the words of Hubert Parry: "The human soul asked mighty questions of its God, and had its reply."
The 'Moonlight' sonata, too, contains some of the most turbulent music Beethoven wrote. The most celebrated of all the sonatas, it is a perfect storm of emotional extremes. One of the most widely known pieces of classical music, it has become a European cultural icon much like the Mona Lisa. The 'moonlight' moniker comes from later editors with an ear for a snappy title, and at no point during its composition was Beethoven trying to describe moonlight. The work was composed in 1801 when, as well as trying to come to terms with his increasing deafness, he had fallen hopelessly in love with one of his pupils, the sixteen-year-old Countess Julia Guicciardi. Perhaps she was his 'Immortal Beloved'?
The famous opening movement has always seemed to me to be a love letter to the Countess, and her name vibrates throughout it. But many people miss the significance of the sonata as they are not familiar with the flirtatious and frivolous dance-like second movement, or the explosive and violent final movement. Marked Presto agitato, it proceeds with ever more fury and by the end Beethoven has almost torn his melody apart. It is the antithesis of the tranquil first movement, and amid the tumble of notes we see not only the anger of a passionate man rejected in love because of his status and looks but the fear of a brilliant man losing the one sense that made his world understandable.
It would take a lifetime to unravel all of the mysteries of Beethoven's sonatas (sometimes referred to as the New Testament of piano literature, Bach's Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues being the Old Testament). So, which are suitable for amateur musicians to play and where should you begin if you're coming to Beethoven for the first time? The music is undoubtedly difficult, but there is an unswerving logic which makes it easy to memorise. Each note that follows somehow has to be that note, and not any other. If you sight-read your way through some of the sonatas, mistakes and all, you will find an underlying rhetoric and intuitive phrasing. With some composers, this can be far more challenging.
Getting Started
The so-called 'easy' sonatas in G minor and G major (Op. 49, Nos. 1 and 2) were supposedly written as teaching material. They are certainly excellent pieces to begin with, and lie nicely under the hands. Beethoven's other early works, for example the C major sonata (Op. 2, No. 3) with its tricky opening thirds, can be quite awkward if you don't get the fingering right. Even the Haydnesque first sonata in F minor (Op. 2, No. 1), with its awkward turns and ornaments and prestissimo final movement, can be challenging for grade seven or eight pianists. But do consider the famous 'Pathétique', composed in 1797 and dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky (another of Beethoven's patrons).
Unlike 'moonlight', this moniker was Beethoven's own (its full title being Grande sonate pathétique - pathetic in the sense of 'suffering'). The beautiful slow movement comprises three heartfelt thematic statements separated by short episodes, and a brief coda. It fits the hands very well, and most amateur pianists will be able to play it to a reasonable standard. There is a strong rhythmic progression in Beethoven's music, as seen in the opening movement. The dramatic introduction is the most powerful opening to any of his sonatas up to this point and can, without care, sound slow and plodding. You have to enjoy the notes and rests, and feel the semiquavers and sense of forward motion.
Professor Barry Cooper's recent edition of the complete Beethoven sonata cycle also throws up some interesting material for amateur pianists to explore, as it includes not thirty-two but thirty-five sonatas! While he's not discovered any new works, Cooper has admitted three early sonatas to the canon. They would have been written when Beethoven was about twelve and, interestingly, were included in the first complete edition of the sonatas (published shortly after Beethoven's death by his friend Tobias Haslinger, who presumably knew what the composer wanted?). They show the longer trajectory of his musical development, and contain numerous ideas which resurface in the mature sonatas.
Although Beethoven can be uncompromising in his later sonatas, where intellectual challenges are paramount, they do still work under the hands if you set about them in the right way. They reveal a warmth and tenderness, and in the crucible of his suffering he perhaps distils the essence of human spirituality. "I will seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend and crush me completely", he once said. We hear Beethoven's will to survive, and his triumph in the face of pain and desolation, in work after work. Throughout his torment his devotion to his art kept him alive, and enabled him to express his heroic determination in music that still speaks to us nearly two centuries after his death.
