3rd mvt: Introducing an Element of Ambiguity

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來自 Curtis Institute of Music 的課程

Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Part 2

65 個評分

Curtis Institute of Music

Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Part 2

65 個評分

Welcome to Part 2 of Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas! I'm delighted to launch another set of new lectures of this course as Part 2. As before, this class is meant for people of all levels of experience with Beethoven's music (including no experience at all!). Remember that you are able to watch the lectures as many times as you like, at whatever pace is comfortable for you. As I’ve done with the first set of Beethoven lectures, I look forward to meeting with students—online and in person, in various cities. The dates and locations will be posted in the Announcements and Events section, as part of the course content. So please remember to check back there for details. In these four new lectures, we will explore the following sonatas: • Sonata Op. 2, No. 3 • Sonata Op. 13 (“Pathetique”) • Sonata Op. 53 (“Waldstein”) • Sonata Op. 90 The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation supports Curtis’s lifelong learning initiatives.

從本節課中

Op. 13, "Pathetique"

The course continues with Beethoven's Op. 13 Sonata, nicknamed the "Pathétique." Known for its high drama and pathos, the "Pathétique" is a gem from Beethoven's early period and is one of Beethoven's most popular piano sonatas. In this lecture, Mr. Biss uncovers how Beethoven achieves these intense characters within the context of a classical sonata.

A Groundbreaking, Overexposed Masterwork4:02

1st mvt: The Slow Introduction as a Major Addition to Sonata Form6:46

1st mvt: An Exposition in Constant Upward Motion8:44

1st mvt: The Introduction's Complex, Revolutionary Role9:16

1st mvt: Subverting Expectations until the Bitter End5:56

2nd mvt: Beethoven at his most Sublimely Lyrical9:47

2nd mvt: The Emotional Power of Structural Simplicity7:03

3rd mvt: Introducing an Element of Ambiguity3:23

3rd mvt: Tying the Movement to the Rest of the Work, Devastatingly10:15

與講師見面

Jonathan Biss
Neubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies
Performance Faculty

(MUSIC)

So, the Pathetique’s last movement is akin to the second, in that it makes no attempt

to match the first – not in length, not in structural innovation,

not in its emotional scope.

It is a rondo, which is very much expected, in a sonata finale; it is in ABACABA form,

which is very much expected in a rondo; and unlike the first movement, it moves into major

at the expected junctures, bringing relief from its darkness.

So we are still very much in early-Beethoven, the-action-comes-right

-at-the-beginning-of-the-sonata territory.

This movement breaks new ground – new in the context of this sonata – in only one sense:

it has an emotional ambiguity that is almost entirely lacking in the first two.

The first movement has this permanently clenched jaw, and its desperation lives

right at the surface, throughout.

The slow movement, following it, is all about consolation, and that mood, again, remains

more-or-less unbroken.

The finale, by contrast, works on multiple emotional levels at once: it is evenly poised

between resignation and fight.

It returns to the opening movement’s c minor, but it has an uncertain, vacillating character,

entirely alien to the first movement’s self-assuredness.

(MUSIC)

By the middle period, in works such as the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas,

Beethoven has found a way to write finales that stand up to the first movements – and

by the late period, as we’ve seen, the last movement becomes the work’s focal point,

the event we’ve been building towards all along.

But in the early period, Beethoven hasn’t figured out how to do that yet.

It’s not a shortcoming, really, certainly not in the Pathetique – the modesty of this

last movement plays as a kind of fragility.

It has the same worldview as the first movement, without the iron fist.

And that makes it touching, peculiarly touching.

An interesting note about this theme: it makes oblique but undeniable reference

to the slow movement.

This (MUSIC), reduces to this (MUSIC) – not far at all from this (MUSIC).

I’m not at all sure that one is meant to hear this on a conscious level, but it does

work on the listener, subliminally.

That material has been retooled and completely repurposed in its new context – there’s

something vaguely disturbing about how something that was so peaceful, even comforting, can

be turned absolutely on its head.

Beethoven’s ingenuity can be as unsettling as it is thrilling.

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