Piano Sonata No. 28 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major, Op. 101, was written in 1816 and was dedicated to the pianist Baroness Dorothea Ertmann. This piano sonata runs for about 20 minutes and consists of four movements:
- Etwas lebhaft, und mit der innigsten Empfindung. (Somewhat lively, and with innermost sensibility.) Allegretto ma non troppo
- Lebhaft. Marschmäßig. (Lively. March-like.) Vivace alla marcia
- Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll. (Slow and longingly.) Adagio, ma non troppo, con affetto
- Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr und mit Entschlossenheit. (Swiftly, but not overly and with determination.) Allegro ma non troppo risoluto
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Composition [edit]
The Piano Sonata No. 28, Op. 101 is the first of the series of Beethoven's "Late Period" sonatas, when his music moved in a new direction toward a more personal, more intimate, sometimes even an introspective, realm of freedom and fantasy. In this period he had achieved a complete mastery of form, texture and tonality and was subverting the very conventions he had mastered to create works of remarkable profundity and beauty.[citation needed] It is also characteristic of these late works to incorporate contrapuntal techniques (e.g. canon and fugue) into the sonata form.
Beethoven himself described this sonata, composed in the town of Baden, just south of Vienna, during the summer of 1816, as "a series of impressions and reveries." The more intimate nature of the late sonatas probably has some connection with his deafness, which by this stage was almost total, isolating him from society so completely that his only means of communicating with friends and visitors was by means of a notebook.
For the first time Beethoven used the German term Hammerklavier to refer to the piano (although it was the next of his sonatas, Op. 106, that became widely known as the Hammerklavier sonata).
This was the only one of his 32 sonatas that Beethoven ever saw played publicly; this was in 1816, and the performer was a bank official and musical dilettante.[1]
Music [edit]
First movement [edit]
The tempo marking for the opening movement, Etwas Lebhaft und mit innigsten Empfindung is roughly translated as "rather lively and with the warmest feeling."
Though the sonata is marked as being in A major, Beethoven does not write any cadences on the tonic key; the exposition and development do not include a single root position A major chord. The first tonic chord in root position appears towards the end of the recapitulation. It appears once more at the end of the recapitulation, but even then is blunted by the omission of the fifth scale degree.
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Second movement [edit]
The second movement takes the form of a march in ternary form, and is characterized by dotted rhythms, harmonic dislocation and alternation between static and accelerando.
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Third and fourth movements [edit]
The opening melody of the first movement is recalled just as the third movement nears its conclusion.
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References [edit]
- ^ Joseph Braunstein, Liner notes to the Michael Ponti recording of Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7
See also [edit]
- Piano history and musical performance - Beethoven's unusual pedal direction in the third movement.
External links [edit]
- A lecture by András Schiff on Beethoven's piano sonata op. 101
- Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 28, Op. 101, Creation history and discussion of musical content at Raptus Association
- Piano Sonata No. 28: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project
