So, after this remarkable second appearance of the largo – an incursion, really – the allegro returns, and remains for the rest of the exposition, which I will now play in its entirety. This opening is so out of the ordinary, I couldn’t play it without immediately addressing it, but let’s now hear it in a larger context. (MUSIC) So, given the way the piece begins, it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that this is music of terrific tension and drama. I mentioned how revolutionary it is that the beginning of the piece doesn’t given the tonality: well, it doesn’t truly arrive for a very long while. We do get it in the first allegro, but only in passing. (MUSIC) We have to go through 22 measures and two largos before we finally land, with a vengeance, on the home key of d minor. (MUSIC) I feel the responsibility of really conveying how revolutionary and destabilizing this is. Beethoven avoided the tonic for nearly the entire movement in the first movement of op. 101, which we’ve studied, (MUSIC) but that is a much later work. For him to have withheld the tonic for 22 measures in the Tempest, written in 1802, is to really ignore the rulebook. And to do so while toggling back and forth between two tempi is to throw that rulebook directly out the window. So, when that d minor does firmly arrive, it brings with it another passage that exemplifies this movement’s penchant for extreme contrasts. The first type of music is firmly articulated, it outlines an arpeggio, which means that the intervals are fairly large and open, and it's very severe in character. (MUSIC) The response is soft, it's legato, it's composed of chromatic intervals, meaning that the notes are as close together as they can be, and the character is pleading. (MUSIC) Short of varying the tempo, the way he did at the opening of the piece, Beethoven has done everything he possibly can to make these two elements distinct from one another – in confrontation with one another. It’s a confrontation that the first type of music eventually prevails in. (MUSIC) This brings us to the second theme, which is every bit as nervy and driven as the first. (MUSIC) This is further evidence that the opening largo is in fact not an introduction, but a part of the opening theme. Because without it, the opening theme is really very similar in rhythm and in character to the second one. No, once we clear that second largo, the remainder of the exposition is VERY propulsive, right up until the very end, and the repeat. (MUSIC) The first ending brings yet another dramatic transition, as that momentum stops – the music disintegrates, really – and we return to the opening largo. I suppose it's completely inevitable that it would be a part of the repeat – in the Pathetique, remember, that was a very open question, whether the introduction should be repeated or not. But this exposition had a second largo within it; why on earth WOULDN’T the first one come back in the repeat? Still, when it does come back, (MUSIC) it becomes even more clear: that this bit of music, whatever it is, this promise of a recitative, without the actual recitative attached, this ghostly apparition, it's an integral part of the piece. Very clear. Clear as mud, really.
