# BEETHOVEN piano Sonata 32



## juliante

One of the most admired of the master’s sonatas, many of which I adore. Particularly 29 and 30 and waldstein. But this one loses me completely half was through the second movement when it goes all glad handy suddenly - for me completely ruining the whole tone of the piece. 

Seriously folks can anyone turn me round here. I want to get this piece.


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## KenOC

It's pretty obvious that you hear the work differently from most people. But I can't really say how you _should _hear it, or even if you should want to. Tastes vary.


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## Triplets

juliante said:


> One of the most admired of the master's sonatas, many of which I adore. Particularly 29 and 30 and waldstein. But this one loses me completely half was through the second movement when it goes all glad handy suddenly - for me completely ruining the whole tone of the piece.
> 
> Seriously folks can anyone turn me round here. I want to get this piece.


Can you explain what you mean when you say "All glad handy"?


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## Alydon

juliante said:


> One of the most admired of the master's sonatas, many of which I adore. Particularly 29 and 30 and waldstein. But this one loses me completely half was through the second movement when it goes all glad handy suddenly - for me completely ruining the whole tone of the piece.
> 
> Seriously folks can anyone turn me round here. I want to get this piece.


I get the passage your talking about - I haven't a score in front of me but guess its the fast variation. I personally find this actually adds to the drama of the whole movement in a way only Beethoven can. When the major sections breaks into a minor key and this only adds another dramatic twist to the music. What makes this passage so effective for me is the following section which is almost heart-breaking in its intensity - like looking back on the rest of the sonata in a moment of contemplation.


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## MarkW

The sonata is a tough nut to crack -- and it took me nearly to the age of 40 to be able to partially "understand" it and elevate it to its proper exalted .place in the musical firmament. One way to look at the first three variations is to think of the music going wildly off the rails -- and then it suddenly reaches etherial heights which makes everything that went before seem earthly and insignificant. Of course, the foregoing can sound like -- and may actually be -- hooey. What matters is where you are left at the end. And that has to be earned. Don't rush.


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## KenOC

It may be helpful to listen to Schiff's excellent lecture on this sonata.


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## juliante

Triplets said:


> Can you explain what you mean when you say "All glad handy"?


 yes - when the tempo and mood shifts quite dramatically with what to what sounds to me quite a banal tune.


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## juliante

MarkW said:


> The sonata is a tough nut to crack -- and it took me nearly to the age of 40 to be able to partially "understand" it and elevate it to its proper exalted .place in the musical firmament. One way to look at the first three variations is to think of the music going wildly off the rails -- and then it suddenly reaches etherial heights which makes everything that went before seem earthly and insignificant. Of course, the foregoing can sound like -- and may actually be -- hooey. What matters is where you are left at the end. And that has to be earned. Don't rush.


 thanks this is helpful I think. As mahler might???


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## juliante

KenOC said:


> It may be helpful to listen to Schiff's excellent lecture on this sonata.


Thanks- fascinating! So itâs the third variation I am referring to. And schiff discusses exactly what I raised and uses the same adjectives- banal, jazzy and boogie woogie. BUT is very clear that those are not appropriate! As clearly this music is about 100 years before all that. Instead he talks of the Dionysian ecstasy of this variation. Now to revisit with a fresh set of ears. í ½í±í ¼í¿¼


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## Josquin13

(Juliante--I wrote the following comments yesterday, before your post today, but didn't get around to posting it. As you will see, I cover some of the same territory--i.e., Schiff's discussion of the "boogie-woogie" section, but I thought it was still worth posting anyway.)

Juliante writes, "But this one loses me completely half was through the second movement when it goes all glad handy suddenly - for me completely ruining the whole tone of the piece."

Andras Schiff describes it as the music suddenly changing into "boogie woogie". I think the change happens more organically, and is profound within the larger context & meaning of the sonata. It doesn't come out of nowhere and it certainly leads to what follows after. The architecture of the piece is carefully thought out and deliberate; though as always with Beethoven, the music can sound mercurial and improvised at times, and it should, as it's alive, there's nothing 'academic' about it.

I don't know why you would think of the "boogie woogie" section as a "banal tune". For me, it's not about the tune so much as it is about the rhythm, the complexity of the beat, it's a sudden release, a dance. The use of rhythm here is very uncommon for its time, and as a number of pianists have pointed out--Schiff & Uchida among them--the section bears a close resemblance to American Jazz and Ragtime (which would arrive some 70 years later). Is Beethoven not allowed to dance in his mind? I don't find it banal myself, but rather crucially important towards understanding the sonata as a whole.

Don't forget--just as Beethoven was acutely aware that he was reaching the end with his final string quartets, I expect he was also aware that his Op. 111 might be his final piano sonata: especially when we consider that he was suffering from several physical maladies at the time. So, he most likely realized that the 2nd movement could be the last movement of a piano sonata he would ever compose. Therefore, it is of vital significance that what follows after the 'boogie woogie' section is arguably the most transcendental passage in all 32 Piano Sonatas. I agree with Mark W. that the final part of the 2nd movement makes everything that came before it sound "earthly", or more earthbound. Indeed, all temporal human drama & passion are gone, along with a sense of physical, emotional, and psychological suffering: which have been so present & pervasive throughout much of Beethoven's opus (and are clearly evident in the first movement of Op. 111). I believe a contemplation of this juxtaposition or contrast is necessary for the sonata to make sense as a whole. I suppose we might even see the "boogie-woogie" section as the point of liberation, or a sudden release from the burden of oppressive confinement or enslavement (& possibly even as a kind of imagined 'dance of death', or liberation of the soul, if you will).

Indeed, if you think of the Arietta movement as a sequence with an opening theme and several closely tied variations, Beethoven seems to be aware of his troubled, sad existence in the opening theme--considering the plaintive emotions expressed in the music, but then he totally breaks free during the 'boogie-woogie' section, by the power of his imagination, and his soul dances. Then in the final part of the music, he seems to, at times, dance freely about the firmament (the word "ethereal" is too vague a description for me)--which makes me wonder whether Beethoven was possibly envisioning or at least yearning for a reunion with the divine and his "father beyond the stars".

Then the sonata simply ends, almost like Bach's Art of Fugue. It seems unfinished to me: Beethoven's thoughts quietly trail off & stop, without providing an adequate ending or denouement, as with the other 31 sonatas. (The fugal elements in this sonata may give further indication that he had Bach on his mind.) I suspect Beethoven deliberately left this sonata unresolved, that is, without a third movement (though Anton Schindler said otherwise), perhaps with a sense of resignation, in a similar way to the final notes of Mahler's 9th, where at the very end, Mahler returns from an incredible flight of imagination--like in a dream, back to the somber, solitary, banal reality of himself & perhaps to an acute awareness of his earthly predicament & limitations. Like Beethoven, he'd reached a point that his genius couldn't go beyond.

I also like what pianist Alfred Brendel had to say about Beethoven's second movement-- that "what is to be expressed here is distilled experience" and "perhaps nowhere else in piano literature does mystical experience feel so immediately close at hand." I agree, there is something unusually "distilled" and "immediate" about what is being expressed in the 2nd movement. One senses that Beethoven knew precisely what he wanted to say--as the expression is unusually concise, ordered, and focused, there's nothing extraneous about it.

I also think it's a good idea to sometimes strip Beethoven's sonatas away from the later, emotionally overwrought "late Romantic" interpretations by virtuoso pianists playing on unwieldly and overly resonant modern grand pianos (in relation to the less resonant and more delicately and precisely pinpointed actions of the keys on pianos that Beethoven knew), in order to come to terms with how Beethoven may have heard these sonatas in his mind. & I would say that it is particularly important to do so where Beethoven makes greater use of complex fugues, such as in the Piano Sonata No. 32 and the fugal movement of the 'Hammerklavier', as it's vitally important that the counterpoint be especially clear in these two late sonatas. Indeed Beethoven's intricate fugal writing can sound like a total mess on an overly resonant modern grand (which was obviously not his intention).

With that in mind, here are You Tube clips of two pianists--Penelope Crawford and Ronald Brautigam--performing Beethoven's No. 32 on period pianos: in their hands, I find the fugal elements in the sonata to be clearer and more Bach-like, and therefore, most likely closer to what Beethoven had in mind:



















However, among performances on a modern grand piano, I find Ivo Pogorelich very interesting too, as Pogorelich gets all the subtle mercurial shifts and nuances in this sonata as well as anyone:






... along with Arturo-Benedetti Michelangeli (in 1990):






and Sviatoslav Richter:






and Rudolf Serkin:






I've also liked Bruno-Leonardo Gelber, Annie Fischer, and Solomon in No. 32. (Alas, there is no No. 32 from Emil Gilels.)

P.S. To further illustrate why I think it's so important to hear Beethoven's fugal writing more clearly on a period piano, here's a clip of Brautigam playing the fugal movement from the 'Hammerklavier' sonata:


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## Mandryka

He did write some significant piano music after op 111, but not sonatas. The ending of op 111 seems adequate to me.


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## Blancrocher

My recommendation is to get the Gilels set.


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## KenOC

Blancrocher said:


> My recommendation is to get the Gilels set.


The Gilels set, of course, is missing the Op. 111.


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## Josquin13

Mandryka said:


> He did write some significant piano music after op 111, but not sonatas. The ending of op 111 seems adequate to me.


Yes, he wrote the 33 Diabelli Variations, which is a strange fish when compared to what he was doing with his piano sonatas, and two sets of 11 & 6 Bagatelles, but never another piano sonata. Which supports my point, that Beethoven was done writing piano sonatas, and had consciously decided to stop at 32. Therefore, I think it's most likely, as mentioned, that he fully intended the 2nd movement of Op. 111 to be the last movement he would ever compose to a piano sonata; that is, unless some day sketches for a 3rd movement to Op. 111 surface. Just as he knew he was coming to an end with the last String Quartets, & spoke about it. In both cases, it suggests that he was acutely aware that his health was in serious decline, and time was running out.

Of course, it's also possible that he simply felt he'd said everything he could say in those two genres, and had gone as far as he could to the furtherest expressive limits of his mind and imagination, heart and soul, and had no more interest in composing in those two forms again. Op. 111 ends kind of like that, with that sense of awareness, in my view. I don't think it's an inadequate ending, it certainly works, but it's not a very typical one, as it does stand out as an anomaly from the rest of his sonatas, yes? At least, to me, there is a sense that he's finished (with the cycle), and doesn't want to write another note.


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## Mandryka

What do you make of the way op 131 finishes? Or the last diabelli variation?


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## KenOC

Josquin13 said:


> ...Therefore, I think it's most likely, as mentioned, that he fully intended the 2nd movement of Op. 111 to be the last movement he would ever compose to a piano sonata; that is, unless some day sketches for a 3rd movement to Op. 111 surface. Just as he knew he was coming to an end with the last String Quartets, & spoke about it. In both cases, it suggests that he was acutely aware that his health was in serious decline, and time was running out.


Most biographers agree that Beethoven had no expectation of dying, either when he finished Op. 111 in 1822 or his quartets in 1825-26. He had plenty more projects planned -- an opera on Faust, a big oratorio for either Boston or London, etc. It was not to be. For a glimpse of his work during the period of his late quartets, see this excerpt from Cooper:

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/beethoven-s-late-quartets-why


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## Mandryka

From Lowe-Porter's translation of Mann's Doctor Faustus



> What did he talk about? Well, the man was capable of spend-
> ing a whole hour on the question: Why did Beethoven not write
> a third movement to the Piano Sonata Opus 111? It is without
> doubt a matter worth discussing. But think of it in the light of
> the posters outside the hall of Activities for the Common Weal,
> or inserted in the Kaisersaschem Railway Journal, and ask your-
> self the amount of public interest it could arouse. People posi-
> tively did not want to know why Op. 1 1 1 has only two move-
> ments. We who were present at the explanation had indeed an
> uncommonly enriching evening, and this althohgh the sonata un-
> der discussion was to that date entirely unknown to us. Still it was
> precisely through these lectures that we got to know it, and as a
> matter of fact very much in detail; for Kretschmar played it to
> us on the inferior cottage piano that was all he could command,
> a grand piano not being granted him. He played it capitally de-
> spite the rumbling noise the instrument made; analysing its intel-
> lectual content with great impressiveness as he went, describing
> the circumstances under which it - and two others - were writ-
> ten and expatiating with caustic wit upon the master's own ex-
> planation of the reason why he had not done a third movement
> corresponding to the first Beethoven, it seems, had calmly an-
> swered this question, put by his famulus, by saying that he had
> not had time and therefore had somewhat extended the second
> movement. No time! And he had said it "calmly," to boot. The
> contempt for the questioner which lay in such an answer had ob-
> viously not been noticed, but it was justified contempt. And now
> the speaker described Beethoven's condition in the year 1820,
> when his hearing, attacked by a resistless ailment, was in progressive decay, and it had already become clear that he could no
> longer conduct his ow n w orks. Kretschmar told us about the ru-
> mours that the famous author was quite written out, his produc-
> tive powers exhausted, himself incapable of larger enterprises, and
> busying himself like the old Haydn with writing down Scottish
> songs. Such reports had continually gained ground, because for
> several years no work of importance bearing his name had come
> on the market. But in the late autumn, returning to Vienna from
> Modling, where he had spent the summer, the master had sat
> down and written these three compositions for the piano with-
> out, so to speak, once looking up from the notes, all in one burst,
> and gave notice of them to his patron, the Count of Brunswick,
> to reassure him as to his mental condition. And then Kretschmar
> talked about the Sonata in C minor, which indeed it was not easy
> to see as a well-rounded and intellectually digested work, and
> which had given his contemporary critics, and his friends as well,
> a hard aesthetic nut to crack. These friends and admirers, Kretsch-
> mar said, simply could not follow the man they revered beyond
> the height to which at the time of his maturity he had brought
> the symphony, the piano sonata, and the classical string quartet.
> In the works of the last period they stood with heavy hearts be-
> fore a process of dissolution or alienation, of a mounting into an
> air no longer familiar or safe to meddle with; even before a -plus
> ultra, wherein they had been able to see nothing else than a de-
> generation of tendencies previously present, an excess of intro-
> spection and speculation, an extravagance of minutiae and scien-
> tific musicality - applied sometimes to such simple material as the
> arietta theme of the monstrous movement of variations which
> forms the second part of this sonata. The theme of this move-
> ment goes through a hundred vicissitudes, a hundred worlds of
> rhythmic contrasts, at length outgrows itself, and is finally lost
> in giddy heights that one might call other-worldly or abstract.
> And in just that very way Beethoven's art had overgrown itself,
> risen out of the habitable regions of tradition, even before the
> startled gaze of human eyes, into spheres of the entirely and ut-
> terly and nothing-but personal - an ego painfully isolated in the
> absolute, isolated too from sense by the loss of his hearing; lonely
> prince of a realm of spirits, from whom now only a chilling
> breath issued to terrify his most willing contemporaries, s tanding
> as they did aghast at these communications of which only at mo-
> ments, only by exception, they could understand anything at all.
> 
> So far, so good, said Kretschmar. And yet again, good or right
> only conditionally and incompletely. For one would usually connect with the conception of the merely personal, ideas of limitless
> subjectivity and of radical harmonic will to expression, in contrast
> to polyphonic objectivity (Kretschmar was concerned to have us
> impress upon our minds this distinction between harmonic sub-
> jectivity and polyphonic objectivity) and this equation, this con-
> trast, here as altogether m the masterly late works, would simply
> not apply. As a matter of fact, Beethoven had been far more "sub-
> jective," not to say far more "personal," in his middle period than
> m his last, had been far more bent on taking all the flourishes,
> formulas, and conventions, of which music is certainly full, and
> consuming them m the personal expression, melting them into
> the subjective dynamic. The relation of the later Beethoven to the
> conventional, say in the last five piano sonatas, is, despite all the
> uniqueness and even uncanniness of the formal language, quite
> different, much more complaisant and easy-going. Untouched,
> untransformed by the subjective, convention often appeared in
> the late works, in a baldness, one might say exhaustiveness, an
> abandonment of self, with an effect more majestic and awful than
> any reckless plunge into the personal. In these forms, said the
> speaker, the subjective and the coventional assumed a new rela-
> tionship, conditioned by death.
> 
> At this word Kretschmar stuttered violently; sticking fast at the
> first sound and executing a sort of machine-gun fire with his
> tongue on the roof of his mouth, with jaw and chin both quiver-
> ing, before they settled on the vowel which told us what he
> meant. But when we had guessed it, it seemed hardly proper to
> take it out of his mouth and shout it to him, as we sometimes did,
> in jovial helpfulness. He had to say it himself and he did. Where
> greatness and death come together, he declared, there arises an ob-
> jectivity tending to the conventional, which in its majesty leaves
> the most domineering subjectivity far behind, because therein the
> merely personal - which had after all been the surmounting of a
> tradition already brought to its peak - once more outgrew itself,
> in that it entered into the mythical, the collectively great and
> supernatural.
> 
> He did not ask if we understood that, nor did we ask ourselves.
> When he gave it as his view that the main point was to hear it,
> we fully agreed. It was in the light of what he had said, he went
> on, that the work he was speaking of in particular. Sonata Op.
> 1 1 1, was to be regarded. And then he sat down at the cottage
> piano and played us the whole composition out of his head, the
> first and the incredible second movement, shouting his comments
> into the midst of his playing and in order to make us conscious of the treatment demonstrating here and there in his enthusiasm by-
> singing as well; altogether it made a spectacle partly entrancing,
> partly funny; and repeatedly greeted with merriment by his little
> audience. For as he had a very powerful attack and exaggerated
> the forte, he had to shriek extra loud to make what he said half-
> way intelligible and to smg with all the strength of his lungs to
> emphasize vocally what he played. With his lips he imitated what
> the hands played. "Tum-tum, turn-turn, tum-tr-r!" he went, as he
> played the grim and startling first notes of the first movement; he
> sang in a high falsetto the passages of melodic loveliness by which
> the ravaged and tempestuous skies of the composition are at in-
> tervals brightened as though by faint glimpses of light. At last
> he laid his hands in his lap, was quiet a moment, and then said:
> "Here it comes!" and began the variations movement, the "adagio
> molto semplice e cantabileP
> 
> The arietta theme, destined to vicissitudes for which in its idyl-
> lic innocence it would seem not to be bom, is presented at once,
> and announced in sixteen bars, reducible to a motif which appears
> at the end of its first half, like a brief soul-cry - only three notes,
> a quaver, a semiquaver, and a dotted crotchet to be scanned as,
> say: "heav-en's blue, lov-ers* pain, fare-thee well, on a-time,
> mead-ow-land" - and that is all. What now happens to this mild
> utterance, rhythmically, harmonically, contxapuntaliy, to this pen-
> sive, subdued formulation, with what its master blesses and to
> what condemns it, into what black nights and dazzling flashes,
> crystal spheres wherein coldness and heat, repose and ecstasy are
> one and the same, he flings it down and lifts it up, all that one may
> well call vast, strange, extravagantly magnificent, without thereby
> giving it a name, because it is quite truly nameless; and with la-
> bouring hands Kretschmar played us all those enormous transfor-
> mations, singing at the same time with the greatest violence:
> "Dim-dada!" and mingling his singing with shouts. "These chains
> of trills!" he yelled. "These flourishes and cadenzas! Do you hear
> the conventions that are left in? Here- the language- is no
> longer - purified of the flourishes - but the flourishes - of the ap-
> pearance - of .their subjective - domination - the appearance - of
> art is thrown off - at last - art always throws off the appearance
> of art. Dim-dada! Do listen, how here - the melody is dragged
> down by the centrifugal weight of chords! It becomes static, mo-
> notonous - twice D, three times D, one after the other - the
> chords do it - dim-dada! Now notice what happens here - "
> 
> It was extraordinarily difficult to listen to his shouts and to the
> highly complicated musid both at once. We all tried. We strained. leaning forward, hands between knees, looking by turn at his
> hands and his mouth. The characteristic of the movement of
> course is the wide gap between bass and treble, between the right
> and the left hand, and a moment comes, an utterly extreme situa-
> tion, when the poor little motif seems to hover alone and forsaken
> above a giddy yawning abyss - a procedure of awe-inspiring un-
> earthliness, to which then succeeds a distressful making-of-itself-
> small, a start of fear as it were, that such a thing could happen.
> Much else happens before the end. But when it ends and while it
> ends, something comes, after so much rage, persistence, obstinacy,
> extravagance: something entirely unexpected and touching in its
> mildness and goodness. With the motif passed through many vi-
> cissitudes, which takes leave and so doing becomes itself entirely
> leave-taking, a parting wave and call, with this D G G occurs
> a slight change, it experiences a small melodic expansion. After
> an introductory C, it puts a C sharp before the D, so that it no
> longer scans "heav-en's blue," "mead-owland," but "O-thou
> heaven's blue," "Green-est meadowland," "Fare-thee well for
> aye," and this added C sharp is the most moving, consolatory, pa-
> thetically reconciling thing in the world. It is like having one's
> hair or cheek stroked, lovingly, understandingly, like a deep and
> silent farewell look. It blesses the object, the frightfully harried
> formulation, with overpowering humanity, lies in parting so
> gently on the hearer's heart in eternal farewell that the eyes run
> over. "Now for-get the pain," it says. "Great was - God in us."
> "'Twas all- but a dream," "Friendly - be to me." Then it
> breaks off. Quick, hard triplets hasten to a conclusion with which
> any other piece might have ended.
> 
> Kretschmar did not return from the piano to his desk. He sat on
> his revolving stool with his face turned towards us, in the same
> position as ours, bent over, hands between his knees, and in a few
> words brought to an end his lecture on why Beethoven had not
> written a third movement to Op. in. We had only needed, he
> said, to hear the piece to answer the question ourselves. A third
> movement? A hew approach? A return after this parting - im-
> possible! It had happened that the sonata had come, in the second,
> enormous movement, to an end, an end without any return. And
> 'when he said "the sonata," he meant not only this one in C minor,
> but the sonata in general, as a species, as traditional art-form; it
> itself was here at an end, brought to its end, it had fulfilled its
> destiny, reached its goal, beyond which there was no going, it
> cancelled and resolved itself, it took leave - the gesture of fare-
> well of the D G G motif, consoled by the C sharp, was a leavetaking in this sense too, great as the whole piece itself, the fare-
> well of the sonata form.
> 
> With this Kretschmar went away, accompanied by thin but
> prolonged applause, and we went too, not a little reflective,
> weighed down by all these novelties. Most of us, as usual, as we
> put on our coats and hats and walked out, hummed bemusedly to
> ourselves the impression of the evening, the theme-generating
> motif of the second movement, in its original and its leave-taking
> form, and for a long time we heard it like an echo from the re-
> moter streets into which the audience dispersed, the quiet mght
> streets of the little town: "Fare - thee well," "fare thee well for
> aye," "Great was God in us."


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## lextune

My only advice is to listen to as many interpretations as you can. My personal favorite, at the moment of this writing, is Arrau.

I also adore the Schiff lecture(s) (on all the Sonatas).


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## premont

Great post from you yesterday, Josquin13, Thanks.


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## Josquin13

Premont--Glad to hear you enjoyed reading it. Thanks.

Mandryka--Thanks for the passage from Mann's Doctor Faustus. It's fiction, of course, but it probably reflects Mann's own view or at least a common view held during Mann's era. Evidently, Mann was aware of Schindler's remark that Beethoven told him he "didn't have time to write a third movement" to Op. 111. I thought the following passage was the most interesting:

"But when it ends and while it ends, something comes, after so much rage, persistence, obstinacy, 
extravagance: something entirely unexpected and touching in its 
mildness and goodness. With the motif passed through many vi- 
cissitudes, which takes leave and so doing becomes itself entirely 
leave-taking, a parting wave and call, with this D G G occurs 
a slight change, it experiences a small melodic expansion. After 
an introductory C, it puts a C sharp before the D, so that it no 
longer scans “heav-en’s blue,” “mead-owland,” but “O-thou 
heaven’s blue,” “Green-est meadowland,” “Fare-thee well for 
aye,” and this added C sharp is the most moving, consolatory, pa- 
thetically reconciling thing in the world. It is like having one’s 
hair or cheek stroked, lovingly, understandingly, like a deep and 
silent farewell look. It blesses the object, the frightfully harried 
formulation, with overpowering humanity, lies in parting so 
gently on the hearer’s heart in eternal farewell that the eyes run 
over. “Now for-get the pain,” it says. “Great was — God in us.” 
“’Twas all— but a dream,” “Friendly — be to me.” Then it 
breaks off. Quick, hard triplets hasten to a conclusion with which 
any other piece might have ended."

So Mann likewise seems to find a sense of farewell and breaking off in the concluding notes.

As for what I think of the endings of Op. 131 and the final variation of the Diabellis--to my ears, Op. 131 has a strong, traditional ending. The piece definitely concludes, in my view. We aren't left hanging, in any sense. (Did you know that Beethoven considered Op. 131 his finest quartet?) 

But I don't feel the same way about the ending of the final variation of the Diabellis. Here he seems to break off again. I was expecting more of a finish, and it seemed to end a bit hastily or suddenly, as if he wanted to move onto something else. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but I don't think it's one of Beethoven's strongest endings either.

KenOC writes, "Most biographers agree that Beethoven had no expectation of dying, either when he finished Op. 111 in 1822 or his quartets in 1825-26."

Not necessarily that his death was imminent, but in the last 7 years of his life Beethoven's health was very poor and he was very deaf. His body was badly failing, and therefore, he simply had to be more acutely aware of his own mortality, and have known or at least contemplated the possibility that he might not have as many years left as he hoped. Are there biographers that would disagree with that? 

I wish I could find the quote where Beethoven talked about how his beloved journey of composing string quartets was coming to an end. In other words, he knew that he was bringing his quartet cycle to a close. I think that speaks volumes about his state of mind and health in the last 7 years of his life. As the quote would also likely apply to the conclusion of his piano sonata cycle as well. But, I can't find it (alas, I'm not as organized as you are). Do you know what I'm talking about? does that ring a bell?

Plus, there is also the time where he became bedridden in early 1825, and remained ill for about a month. Clearly, during that terrible illness he must have considered that he might die. As his recovery gave rise to the slow movement of his 15th String Quartet--"Holy song of thanks ("Heiliger Dankgesang") to the divinity, from one made well."

It was a different time too. People lived with a greater expectation of dying sooner than we do today. As they didn't live as long, on average, and doctors weren't nearly as capable of extending lives. So I expect the prospect of a shortened life span was continually on people's minds during Beethoven's era, more so than it is today. (Especially if they had contracted Syphilis in their youth.)

It should also be pointed out that it takes enormous stamina & fortitude to write out lengthy scores by hand. And for a person in failing health, such as Beethoven, that task must have become more difficult & arduous. For example, we know that he became delayed in finishing his Missa Solemnis in the early 1820s, & was apologetic about it. So he was most likely having more trouble getting all the pages of his compositions written down and completed for publishers & patrons, than had been the case in earlier years.

But of course he continued to plan other projects. The one thing Beethoven wasn't, was a quitter. With a creative mind like that, I'm sure he was always making plans, just as he breathed (like Mozart, Handel, & Bach).


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## KenOC

Josquin13 said:


> KenOC writes, "Most biographers agree that Beethoven had no expectation of dying, either when he finished Op. 111 in 1822 or his quartets in 1825-26."
> 
> Not necessarily that his death was imminent, but in the last 7 years of his life Beethoven's health was very poor and he was very deaf. His body was badly failing, and therefore, he simply had to be more acutely aware of his own mortality, and known or at least contemplated the possibility that he might not have as many years left as he had hoped. Are there biographers that would disagree with that?


I don't know if they'd disagree but it's a topic that I can't remember coming up at all. In the recent biographies (Swafford and Cooper being the best IMO, then Lockwood and Solomon) Beethoven's thoughts on his own mortality are never mentioned, evidently because he never spoke of them in his letters or to his friends. So we can't say he _didn't _think about such things, but there's no evidence I know of that he felt he was near the end of his string.


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## Pat Fairlea

Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful contributions to this discussion, to which I can add nothing useful. Beethoven's last three sonatas seem to me to constitute a set, through which he set down all that he could on the development of sonata form and the potential of the pianoforte. Op111 is a complex beast, maybe less immediately lovable than Op110, but none the less a magificent finale to his piano sonatas.


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## Triplets

There is an interesting discussuion of Op.111 in a novel by Thomas Mann "Dr. Faustus"


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## KenOC

Pat Fairlea said:


> Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful contributions to this discussion, to which I can add nothing useful. Beethoven's last three sonatas seem to me to constitute a set, through which he set down all that he could on the development of sonata form and the potential of the pianoforte. Op111 is a complex beast, maybe less immediately lovable than Op110, but none the less a magificent finale to his piano sonatas.


Most people seem to considerthe last three sonatas a "set." After the Hammerklavier, Beethoven promised his publisher "an opus of three sonatas," suggesting that he had something like the Op. 31 trio in mind. However they weren't published that way, probably because the composition period was somewhat long.


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## Josquin13

KenOC said:


> I don't know if they'd disagree but it's a topic that I can't remember coming up at all. In the recent biographies (Swafford and Cooper being the best IMO, then Lockwood and Solomon) Beethoven's thoughts on his own mortality are never mentioned, evidently because he never spoke of them in his letters or to his friends. So we can't say he _didn't _think about such things, but there's no evidence I know of that he felt he was near the end of his string.


How could Beethoven's badly failing health in his last 7 years not be mentioned or discussed by his biographers? I find that strange. Do they only write about his late music from this period? I've only read Thayer & Solomon myself, and that was decades ago, so I don't readily recall the specifics of his last 7 years, but certainly the illness of early 1825 was a serious one, as Beethoven wasn't sure whether he was going to recover or not, as I remember. The illness was so bad that his 'miraculous' recovery inspired the beautiful slow movement in his Op. 132.

Surely, that is evidence that in early 1825 he had faced the prospect of his own death? How could Beethoven suffer through such a terrible episode and be in such poor health, and not be made more acutely aware of his own mortality by such a lengthy, bedridden illness? or conclude that he likely had more 'decades' left to compose?

Besides, if he felt he had more decades left, why on earth would he talk about bringing his string quartet cycle to a close & do so? By all accounts, he loved composing string quartets, so why would he have felt a need to stop, or bring the cycle to a conclusion? In other words, he must have had good reasons to do so.

There's also the question of Beethoven's severe lead poisoning, from drinking wine tainted by lead, and how it likely contributed to his hearing loss and overall decline.

Do biographers not discuss these matters?


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## amfortas

Couple of years back I attended a lecture by Bill Kinderman, the noted Beethoven scholar and pianist, who combined his own comments on Opus 111 with a reading of Mann's passages about the piece--all interspersed with excerpts he played at the piano. A memorable evening.


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## KenOC

Josquin13 said:


> How could Beethoven's badly failing health in his last 7 years not be mentioned or discussed by his biographers? I find that strange. Do they only write about his late music from this period?


Beethoven was acutely aware of his off-and-on illnesses. He wrote of them in letters and spoke of them with friends. They are covered in his biographies to the extent they are known. What I wrote was, he never to my knowledge showed concern for his mortality or any expectations of death. As his biographies show, he was fully engaged with life and musical society during his last years.

It's an invented backstory, invented because the truth wasn't sufficiently "romantic" for people of those times.​


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## Pat Fairlea

KenOC said:


> Most people seem to considerthe last three sonatas a "set." After the Hammerklavier, Beethoven promised his publisher "an opus of three sonatas," suggesting that he had something like the Op. 31 trio in mind. However they weren't published that way, probably because the composition period was somewhat long.


Thanks for that, Ken. Beethoven produced Opp 109-111 in 1820-2, one sonata per annum. He would have been in his early 50s: even for the early 19th century, that seems rather soon to be contemplating one's end and drawing down the blinds. His rate of composition shows little sign of having declined, and I gather there are drafts for a 10th symphony. So if the last three piano sonatas are a summation of anything, it is his journey taking the piano sonata from its Classical beginnings off into the wide blue yonder, and not an indication that he felt Death's bony hand on his shoulder.


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## Guest

May I recommend the Curtis Institute of Music's Coursera program on "The Beethoven Sonatas" for insights into these astonishing works. Those last 5 sonatas are the only ones I haven't covered yet, but they are worthy of a whole course by themselves. The Stage 3 course offers these. Do give it all a try; wholly recommended:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/beethoven-piano-sonatas


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## Guest

amfortas said:


> Couple of years back I attended a lecture by Bill Kinderman, the noted Beethoven scholar and pianist, who combined his own comments on Opus 111 with a reading of Mann's passages about the piece--all interspersed with excerpts he played at the piano. A memorable evening.


That would have been quite something: I absolutely envy you!!


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> I don't know if they'd disagree but it's a topic that I can't remember coming up at all. In the recent biographies (Swafford and Cooper being the best IMO, then Lockwood and Solomon) Beethoven's thoughts on his own mortality are never mentioned, evidently because he never spoke of them in his letters or to his friends. So we can't say he _didn't _think about such things, but there's no evidence I know of that he felt he was near the end of his string.


Can you explain why you put Solomon last on your list of recommendations for Beethoven biographies? I've read two of his and found them both very scholarly and interesting. And very readable. I have the Swafford languishing on my bookshelf.


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## MarkW

Christabel said:


> Can you explain why you put Solomon last on your list of recommendations for Beethoven biographies? I've read two of his and found them both very scholarly and interesting. And very readable. I have the Swafford languishing on my bookshelf.


To each his own. I recommend Lockwood to people who only want one. Swafford tries to be encyclopedic but has peculiar affectations (like his justifiably long but odd analysis of the Eroica). Solomon's is good in many places but ventures too close to psycho-biography. I do like his pioneering identification of Antonie Brentano as the Immortal Beloved, though.


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## Guest

MarkW said:


> To each his own. I recommend Lockwood to people who only want one. Swafford tries to be encyclopedic but has peculiar affectations (like his justifiably long but odd analysis of the Eroica). Solomon's is good in many places but ventures too close to psycho-biography. I do like his pioneering identification of Antonie Brentano as the Immortal Beloved, though.


Thanks for your comments!! I'll get the Lockwood anyway and I like to read everything I can lay my hands on about Beethoven. I enjoyed the psycho-biographical aspect of Solomon and it humanized Beethoven for me and put him in a real world with people and feelings. I read an excellent biography of *John Ford* (film director) and it was outstanding for its psychological understanding. One of the very best bios I've ever read, in fact, and it made a great deal of sense in relation to his relationships and films. I loved the Swafford Brahms and I'll begin the Beethoven soon - as I have lots of non-musical books (non-fiction) to read as well.


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## Mal

I liked Kempff's (mono) take on this sonata, from his "Penguin rosette" box set. The Penguins reckon he is "inspirationally revealing" in the last six sonatas on his DG Double 453 010-2 later stereo take, and gave a rosette to that as well. Haven't heard the latter, but he certainly revealed things, and inspired me, in these late sonatas, in the box set... others haven't (e.g., I don't "get " Kovacevich in the late sonatas - although I greatly admire him in most of the earlier sonatas - to much glad handiness might be an apt description.)


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## les24preludes

Egon Petri, followed by Julius Katchen.


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## BiscuityBoyle

It's great to see some love for Petri on here, one of pianism's grand old maîtres after all. His Liszt is beyond compare and the Beethoven and Brahms tremendous as well.

As with op. 110, I'd recommend the Soviet master Vedernikov.


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