♫ So, one of the themes of this course has been the way, or ways, in which Beethoven’s style evolved, and as we have seen, that is in large part a question of structure: first and foremost, the shift away from the sonatas being front-loaded, as they are in the early period, and towards them growing in scope as they progress from first movement to last. This is, of course, exemplified by the Hammerklavier, with its titanic two final movements, which are linked to one another and, in a sense, form one massive unit. But there is another way in which Beethoven’s ideas about sonata structure changed, and this, again, is very much in evidence in the Hammerklavier. I am speaking of Beethoven’s ever-increasing interest in creating cohesion between a work’s movements. This interest is already somewhat evident in the early works – as early as op. 2 no. 3, where all four movements contain a variation on a sort of “curlicue” motive. But in the late sonatas, these connections grow much deeper. We saw this, for example, in the cyclical aspect of Op. 101, in which the opening of the piece, ♫ makes a literal return in the introduction to the finale – a radical idea at the time. Op. 110 represents another kind of attempt to bind the movements, with the subject of the work’s final fugue ♫ really a distillation of the first movement’s opening idea. The Hammerklavier is such a massive, in some ways unwieldy work, tying the thing together is more critical and takes more doing. But Beethoven achieves it: there are two ideas – not themes, exactly, which are obsessions throughout all four movements, and they act as unifying forces, no matter what else is happening. The first of these ideas is, simply, thirds: often a chain of thirds, usually falling thirds. Sometimes these thirds are explicit, unadorned; at other times, they are buried beneath extremely thick embellishment or other figuration. But they are present from quite literally the first measure of the piece, and there is very little music in the Hammerklavier’s 40-plus minutes in which they are not prominent. The second of these ever-present ideas is also an interval: the half step, and in particular, the half step that involves the work’s home key of B flat, and its upper neighbor of B natural. This B flat/b natural juxtaposition features prominently, and at critical moments, in the first, second and fourth movements – the movements that are actually in B flat major. The slow movement, in f sharp minor, has a parallel fixation on f sharp and ITS upper neighbor of G. Now, these two ideas may be equally prominent, but they are in many ways opposite, certainly in terms of what they bring to the piece. Thirds are an extremely consonant interval – put two of them on top of one another, and you end up with a triad, really the foundation of tonal music. ♫ So the spotlight placed on these thirds serves to emphasize the stable, really the heroic, magisterial aspect of the piece. The half step idea could not be more different. I realize that B flat and B are neighbors, but you know, sometimes the neighbor really is an axe murderer. It is in fact precisely BECAUSE they are neighbors that these two notes, and the keys they ground, are so far apart: their triads share no notes ♫ and therefore they have very different timbres. So whereas the idée fixe of the thirds emphasizes the stability of the piece, the incursions of the upper neighbor, the emphasis on this half step relationship, are what give the Hammerklavier its nervous edge. The Hammerklavier has, time and time again, been referred to as a piece that is easier to admire than to love, and this is usually attributed to its unmanageable size, and to the extreme knottiness of its counterpoint. But I – who, I must say, LOVE the Hammerklavier – think that the aspect of the piece that really keeps it at arm’s length from people’s emotions is the severe, at times almost frightening clash of these two tonalities. They give the piece a definite sense of danger.
