# Questions about Beethoven



## huBelial (Apr 11, 2008)

So how many symphonies and sonatas does Beethoven have? Or are they the same thing? I'm so confuse


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## David C Coleman (Nov 23, 2007)

huBelial said:


> So how many symphonies and sonatas does Beethoven have? Or are they the same thing? I'm so confuse


As far as I know, he wrote 9 Symphonies for full orchestra, 32 Sonatas for solo piano, 10 Sonatas for Violin and Piano and 5 Sonatas for Cello and Piano.... (Someone may know different though -  )...


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

David C Coleman said:


> As far as I know, he wrote 9 Symphonies for full orchestra, 32 Sonatas for solo piano, 10 Sonatas for Violin and Piano and 5 Sonatas for Cello and Piano.... (Someone may know different though -  )...


In addition, among his main Opus numbered works, he wrote a piano sonata in D for 4 hands (Op 6), and a horn sonata (Op 17).

For completeness, there are a few other sonata pieces (eg fragments) among the WoO and Hess works, but they are seldom referred to.

For the questioner's benefit, a symphony is a work for a full orchestra in which no single instrument is dominant. A concerto is typically a work involving a full orchestra but where a particular instrument (eg piano, or violin, or cello typically) plays a lead part throughout. A sonata is a work for only one or two instruments, and no orchestra is involved at all. A piano sonata normally involves only a single piano. Sometimes a piano sonata can be written for four hands, and Schubert wrote a good deal of this type, as well as for solo piano. Confusingly, a violin sonata or cello sonata can be written either for a solo instrument or with piano accompaniment.

Focusing on solo piano, there are many very famous piano sonatas in the history of music. Those by Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert are perhaps the best known. But there are many others: Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn to name just a few. Among Beethoven's famous 32 piano sonatas, some are much better known than others: Moonlight, Appasionata, Pathetique, Pastoral, Tempust, Waldstein, Fur Therese, Hammerklavia being especially well known. Among Schubert's 21, the last three are the best known, but several others are very good too. Among Mozart's, the best are K 309, K310, K 330, K 331, K 332, K 545, K 570. Another "must have" is Listz's Piano Sonata in B Minor.

Once you've got past this, there's a whole load of other very famous piano solo work that is written in a different format to a sonata, eg Ballades. and Scherzos There are also a variety of piano "miniatures". Schubert wrote some fantastic ones (the Impromptus especially), as too did Chopin, who wrote Nocturnes, Preludes, Mazurkas, Walzes, Etudes etc, many of which are delightful. Schumann wrote a ton of piano music all of which is slightly heavier in weight but excellent, in particular all of his Op 1-28 works, to which he devoted his first 10 years as a composer, are outstanding.

One has to start somewhere: if you don't already have it, try Beethoven's "Moonlight" piano sonata. Everyone likes that. Here, you might try either Alfred Brendel or Daniel Barenboim. Once you get into piano music in a bigger way, you'll find that each pianist has his own style. I especially like Brendel for Beethoven because he is very accurate and fairly laid back, a style I prefer to some of the more rumbustous characters like Horowitz. On the other other, some famous pianists, like Arrau, I find too slow. For Chopin, Rubinstein is among the very best performers. For Schubert, I like several including Uchida, Pires, Lipatti, Ciccolini, Haefliger, Leonskaja, Rubinstein. For Schumann, Richter is generally superb and Horowitz is OK for some pieces. For Liszt, try Hamelin whose style is as near perfection as it gets and is technically extremely competent, as required by Liszt's music. Technically, Hamelin is probably the best pianist since Liszt himself, and since earlier 20th C greats like Rachmaninov, Cortot, Hoffman. If in doubt, Ashkenazy and Barenboim are always fairly safe bets with almost anything in the world of solo piano, and nothing of theirs do I dislike.

And so it goes on and on ....


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## David C Coleman (Nov 23, 2007)

Artemis said:


> In addition, among his main Opus numbered works, he wrote a piano sonata in D for 4 hands (Op 6), and a horn sonata (Op 17).
> 
> ....


Yes sorry I forgot about those (well I did write it at 6,30 this morning)...


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## David C Coleman (Nov 23, 2007)

huBelial said:


> So how many symphonies and sonatas does Beethoven have? Or are they the same thing? I'm so confuse


If you follow this link, it lists all the known works of Beethoven and you can do it for all the main composers too....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ethoven#Sonatas_for_solo_instrument_and_piano


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

huBelial said:


> So how many symphonies and sonatas does Beethoven have? Or are they the same thing? I'm so confuse


To help you overcome this confusion, may I suggest listening to a couple of examples of symphonies and sonatas.

If you want to be more confused, I can tell you this; a sonata is not a symphony but a symphony may well use sonata form.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

There are snippets of a 10th symphony.


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