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Brian Chapman |
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BEETHOVEN'S " A Confidential Confession of Intimations of Deafness This essay invites the reader to forget everything that he or she has heard or absorbed about the romantic association between 'moonlight' and Beethoven's fourteenth piano sonata. All that is asked is that the reader should bear in mind that this work was composed by a musical genius who was facing the certainty of progressive and irreversible deafness and who had not yet found himself able to confide this tragedy to his closest friends. It hardly needs adding that the tragedy was more than a musical one; it was also a profound social tragedy that struck at the very foundations of Beethoven's livelihood, derived as it was substantially from the patronage of a social circle of aristrocrats. Once the tragic provenance of this sonata is acknowledged, its three disparate movements fall into place as integrated expressions of the three main acute responses to tragedy - grief (Adagio sostenuto), denial (Allegretto) and rage (Presto agitato). However, before this interpretation can be clearly appreciated, it is necessary to sweep away the widespread view of this sonata that has been conditioned by a number of extraneous factors, leading to what I believe are significant established departures from the composer's original intentions, particularly in the performance of the first movement. Firstly, the sonata's dedicatee – the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi – was erroneously declared by Beethoven's biographer Anton Schindler to be the composer's mysterious ‘Immortal Beloved' after Beethoven's death. Secondly, the German poet, Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860), was responsible for the idea of applying the nickname ‘Moonlight' to this work, again after Beethoven's death, when he wrote that the first movement reminded him of moonlight reflected on Lake Lucerne. Though the ‘Immortal Beloved' hypothesis relating to Countess Guicciardi was subsequently proved false and the dedication was in any case accidental and originally unintended, the work was nonetheless firmly linked in the popular mind with romantic images of moonlight. This misleading image has been almost universally reinforced by the manner of performance conditioned under the all-pervasive influence of the 20th century's most famous champion of Beethoven's piano sonatas – Artur Schnabel. There are four major instances in which the Schnabel edition (for example, that published by Edizioni Curci, Milano and emulated in many other editions and almost all recorded performances) differs crucially from the original score as given, say, in the Henle Urtext edition. ---- Firstly, while Beethoven gives an overall pianissimo (pp) directive at the outset of this movement, and reinforces it with the words sempre pp e senza sordino, he also marks the specific entry of the melody at measure 5 with its own pp sign immediately adjacent to the first melody note on the treble staff. This is also done in the recapitulation at measure 42 (treble staff - see Ex.1a) and where the left hand takes the same melodic fragment in the coda (bass staff). I interpret this to mean that the melody should not sing out too clearly from its accompaniment - that it should be subdued, perhaps even ‘difficult to hear' as might be experienced by a person who was going deaf, or as might be wished when uttering a confidence. On the other hand, Schnabel adds diminuendo and triple-piano (ppp) signs to the general accompaniment immediately prior to the entry of the melody, suggesting the traditional cantabile rendition of the right-hand melody (see Ex.1b).
Secondly, the repeated chromatic melodic fragment of measures 15-19 (and measures 51-55 in the recapitulation) is supported by a pair of crescendo-diminuendo ‘hairpins' that are placed centrally in the accompaniment within the confines of a single measure for each of measures 16 and 18 in the Urtext edition. As given, they cannot be intended to cause a ‘swell' of tone in the melody itself (Ex.2a). Schnabel replaces each pair of centrally located ‘hairpins' with two pairs, one applied to the melody itself and commencing half a beat earlier in the previous measure, the other applied to the bass octaves within the measure (Ex.13b).
Thirdly, the four pairs of ‘hairpins' given in each of measures 28-31 determine swells that climax at the fourth half-beat in the Urtext edition (Ex.3a) while Schnabel directs that they should climax at the second beat (Ex.3b).
Finally, in the coda commencing at measure 60, the Urtext edition contains a pianissimo indication given to the melody in the left hand as it appears for the first time in the bass register, consistent with the earlier pp indications for the original melody in the right hand at measures 5 and 42 (see Ex.1a). At measure 60 Schnabel adds another pp indication to the right hand for the first beat and then a ppp indication for the right-hand accompaniment commencing at the second half-beat. However, a greater discrepancy emerges over the four measures beginning at measure 62. In the Urtext edition (Ex.4a) there is a pair of ‘hairpins' given to the right-hand accompaniment alone through measures 62-63 while the left-hand melody remains subdued at a pp dynamic. The passage is repeated at measures 64-65 but with the pair of ‘hairpins' now given to the left-hand melody alone, thereby providing the only instance in the entire movement where this melodic fragment is intended to stand out from the accompanying texture. By contrast the Schnabel edition eliminates this distinction by placing both pairs of hairpins non-specifically between the staves (Ex.4b). The four departures from the Urtext edition quoted here may all be fairly described as sitting more comfortably with the nickname of this sonata, regardless of whether or not that was what Schnabel intended. It is therefore not surprising that generations of pianists, influenced by the nickname, the romantic images and Schnabel's changes, have come to play this movement so slowly as to make impossible the realisation of the alla breve pulse called for in Beethoven's time signature. This directive requires the pulse of the music to be felt as two beats in the measure, not four, and this will not be projected to the listener unless these two beats are fast enough to be perceived as such. It is no coincidence that standard metronomes offer no speed lower than 40 pulses per minute. In Beethoven's time, they probably went no lower than about 50 pulses per minute, judging by Maelzel's 1815 model pictured in The New Grove (edited by Stanley Sadie, 1980). This suggests that slower pulses might be below the physiological range of human musical appreciation. With these considerations in mind I choose to take the opening Adagio sostenuto at a pulse of around 40 minims (half-notes) per minute and I try to eliminate, wherever possible, any emphasis on the second and fourth half-beats (quarter-notes). I believe that this, together with adherence to the dynamics given in the Henle Urtext edition shown in Examples 1-4, supports an interpretation of this entire sonata as Beethoven's confidential confession to the keyboard of the ‘intimations of deafness' which, at the time of writing this work, he had not yet confided to his closest friends. Thus, the sonata's apparently disparate movements become psychologically linked together under this view, each reflecting in turn three of the primary emotional responses to tragedy - grief (Adagio sostenuto), denial (Allegretto) and rage (Presto agitato). As for the work's nickname, while Intimations of Deafness is hardly a label to conjure with, one wonders if, in the light of the later Appassionata Sonata (Op.57), the Sonata Op.27 No.2 might not wear the nickname Little Appassionata fairly comfortably? However, the problem with this idea is that the passion of the earlier sonata is not 'little' by comparison with that of Op.57. On the contrary, Op.27 No.2 is literally inarticulate with passion - inarticulate with grief in the Adagio sostenuto and inarticulate with rage in the Presto agitato. If the finale of the Appassionata Sonata may be characterised as defiance in the face of adversity then the finale of Op.27 No.2 borders on sheer panic. Even the Allegretto maintains this relatively inarticulate aspect in its Trio section, though interposing a welcome relief of light and playful dance rhythm - the ‘denial' between the ‘grief' and ‘rage'. But The Inarticulate is scarcely a label to be considered either. No, the nickname of this sonata is too ingrained to be replaced after nearly two centuries of misuse; the best that one can do is reproduce it in strikethrough typeface as a gesture of protest! Copyright © 2006, Brian Chapman Download samples from my latest recording of this work: Grief -Denial - Rage.
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