Full Description
New readings of the ten Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin, embracing both the performer's interpretation and the analyst's rigour.
This book provides new readings of the ten Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin, many of which have been given surprisingly little attention by scholars to date. This may be because nine of the sonatas are relatively early works, written between 1797-1803, with only the final sonata, Op.96 (1812) standing apart. However, within these ten works, Beethoven demonstrates numerous aspects of his musical personality and compositional style. The analyses in this book engage with postmodern concerns such as hermeneutics, intertextuality, gender, humour, narratology and human interest, revealing characteristics within these sonatas that have been slow to come to light. Here are examples of the Beethovenian narrative that do not always encapsulate heroic struggle and triumph; in many of the sonatas we find a witty, smiling composer, at odds with the growling Beethoven iconography. Works within the violin sonata cycle interrogate the hypermasculine Beethoven trope, before the last sonata is explored via a host of intertextual relationships with a body of early Romantic repertoire that emerged after Beethoven's death.
Embracing both the performer's interpretation and the analyst's rigour (or vice versa), this work offers methodologies for performer's analysis whilst acknowledging that both disciplines are essential to any project that seeks to address the nature of music as it is experienced in time.
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The performer-analyst
Music revealed in time
1. The Op. 12 Sonatas: Humour and Innovation
Sonata in D, Op. 12 No. 1. Allegro
Performing an analysis
'Final' presentation of reading
Op. 12 No. 1, variations
Op. 12 No. 1, finale
Sonata in E♭, Op. 12 No. 3. A piano concerto in the making
Adagio con molta espressione
Allegro molto
2. A Case study in the comic: Sonata in A, Op. 12 No. 2
Meaning and authenticity
A laughing Beethoven?
Is wit comedy? Is comedy funny?
Notions of humour and comedy
The contemporary pianist-comedian
The comic within Op. 12 No. 2
Mapping the 'material' trace
A final reading of the opening Allegro Vivace from Beethoven's Op. 12 No. 2
Opera Buffa and the Andante from Op. 12 No. 2
3. Separated at Birth. Sibling Sonatas: Opp. 23 and 24
Op. 23: The Black Sheep of the Family
Beethoven, 'the most virile of all musicians'
'Gender Trouble' in Op. 23
Op. 23, Allegro Molto. An anti-finale
Opp. 23 and 24: A single opus?
Coda
4. Man and artist. The Op. 30 Sonatas
1802: Anxiety and the Heiligenstadt Testament
Disability in music
'Middle period' Beethoven
Sonata in A Major, Op. 30 No. 1. Late music from a young man
A Narrative of disability lived
The Original finale: Disability overcome
Sonata in C Minor, Op. 30 No. 2. Revolutionary fever and despair
Sonata in G, Op. 30 No. 3. Visionary escapism
5. Sonata in A (Minor?), Op. 47
A hybrid sonata
In the style of a concerto?
Presto. Brilliance and bravado
'The commonplace variations'
6. Sonata in G, Op. 96. Fantasy and arabesque
Divining the messages within the score
Pierre Rode, Archduke Rudolph and the Immortal Beloved
Signs, games and messages
A correspondence through the score
A poet's love
Romanticism, Schlegel and the arabesque
The allure of late style
Afterword
Select Bibliography
