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are not, as they sometimes are in Clementi, without e ect. But Hr. v[an]
B[eethoven] should not burden enthusiasts of his compositions with
41
The Moonlight and other Sonatas
movements that can be played properly only by those with extraordinarily
large hands. The composer who knows how to repay them can rightly
52
demand study, diligence, and e ort; . . .
What the critic seems to have especially admired about the C minor
Sonata, then, was the way in which Beethoven had given free rein to his
fantasy ( sprung from . . . [an] ardent imagination ) while maintaining
the most solid coherence ( hewn from a block of marble ). But while all
the sonatas are praised, there is an obvious imbalance in the treatment of
the two Op. 27 sonatas. In the context of a review that values the high
originality of the music, his comment that the E Sonata closes like a
typical noisy ending of an aria seems damning; while, on the other hand,
the C minor Sonata is beyond reproach .
On their publication in 1803 the rst two Op. 31 sonatas were ignored
by the AMZ, but N�geli s edition was reviewed by J. G. K. Spazier in the
Leipzig-based Zeitung f�r die elegante Welt. Spazier echoed N�geli s
advertisements for the R�pertoire des Clavecinistes, remarking on the
grand style of the music, and the fact that the works deviated from the
usual form of the sonata. But he was not wholly positive about this,
nding a certain casualness in the connections between di erent parts
of the sonatas; the perceived lack of coherence was compounded by the
fact that the sonatas were both a little too long and bizarre in places .53
In contrast to almost all subsequent critics, he found the G major Sonata
the more original of the two. Four years later, the same journal carried a
more favourable review of the E Sonata, which the reviewer considered
to be one of the most original and beautiful works of the brilliant
Beethoven .54 The richness and variety of Beethoven s music was no
longer perceived as detrimental to its e ectiveness. Rather, its a ective
expression is nuanced in so many di erent ways, now tender, gentle, and
intimate, now speaking to the heart with heroic power, that the unity of
the whole, with all its contrasts, enchants and thrills . In the same way
that the AMZ critic had attempted to justify the demands made on
amateur pianists by the Op. 27 sonatas, the reviewer advised that this
sonata, like most of Beethoven s, must be played many times for all its
subtleties and its grand character to be understood and performed prop-
erly; moreover it demands a pro cient eye and dexterous hand from per-
formers .
42
Composition and reception
In contrast to these two early reviews of the Op. 31 sonatas, almost all
subsequent critics have lavished most attention on the D minor Sonata.
Similarly, the greater detail in which the C minor Sonata was treated by
the AMZ critic, and the more e usive response it solicited, set the
pattern for the subsequent critical reception of the Op. 27 sonatas. Why
should this have been so? Does it merely re ect remarkably consistent
aesthetic judgements on these particular sonatas? Or might it be sympto-
matic of deeper cultural values? Robert Hatten has attributed these
sonatas critical ascendancy to the semiotic markedness of the minor
mode: if minor correlates with a narrower range of meaning than major,
then works in minor should tend to provoke more-speci c expressive
interpretations than works in major . . . Indeed, if one considers some of
the early- and middle-period Beethoven piano sonatas, one nds that the
minor mode movements . . . are the focus of much greater critical atten-
tion, and more speci c expressive interpretation, than the major mode
movements. 55
This is certainly true of the poetic responses that the two minor-mode
sonatas drew from critics in the early nineteenth century. Czerny, dis-
cussing the character of each of Beethoven s piano sonatas, was more
e usive in his description of Op. 27 no. 2 and Op. 31 no. 2 than with the
other sonatas in each set.56 For him, the opening of the C minor Sonata
was a nocturnal scene, in which a mournful ghostly voice sounds from
the distance and the D minor Sonata possessed a remarkably sustained
tragic character and was full of Romantic-picturesque elements. In
contrast, his comments on the other sonatas were more prosaic: the E
Sonata from Op. 27 was described as more of a fantasia than its compan-
ion due to the type and distribution of its movements;57 the middle
movement of Op. 31 no. 1 was likened to a graceful Romanze or a Not-
turno , in which, during the nal reprise of the main theme, the bass
should imitate a guitar accompaniment; Op. 31 no. 3 was seen to be more
rhetorical than pictorial in character, its spirited joviality in complete
contrast to the elegiac-romantic character of the preceding sonata.
Similarly, Berlioz reserved some of his most imaginative critical meta-
phors for the C minor Sonata. Responding to a performance by Liszt in
April 1835, he wrote that the rst movement is the sun setting over the
Roman countryside. All is profoundly sad, calm, majestic, and solemn.
The ery globe descends slowly behind the cross of St Peter, which is
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The Moonlight and other Sonatas
detached, glittering, from the horizon: no living being disturbs the peace
of the tombs that cover this desolate earth, one contemplates . . . one
admires . . . one weeps . . . one is silent. 58
Against the background of a critical culture that revelled in such
poetic responses, it seems inevitable that the two minor-mode sonatas
should have acquired sobriquets during the rst half of the nineteenth
century. According to Lenz, Op. 27 no. 2 became known as the Moon-
light Sonata around 1830 when connoisseurs in Germany took up
Ludwig Rellstab s image of the Adagio sostenuto: a boat visiting the
wild places on Lake Lucerne by moonlight .59 It is tempting to believe
that some of Beethoven s contemporaries were familiar with this
imagery. In 1826, Schubert s 1815 setting of H�lty s An den Mond ( To
the Moon ) was published with an inauthentic three-bar piano introduc-
tion which exhibits such strong similarities with the opening of
Beethoven s sonata that it is di cult not to hear it as a parody.60 If Op. 27
no. 2 has an inauthentic sobriquet, then that of Op. 31 no. 2 has some
claims to authenticity. Anton Schindler reported that he once asked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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