Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Opus 10 no. 3: Piano Sonata (No. 7 in D major)

composed: 1796-8 (age 26-7)
published: 1798
first performance: unknown – surely in Vienna c. 1797-8.
dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne

111. #11.

Here he is, in as young-looking a portrait as I could find. I don’t know the provenance. This may not be a completely authentic image, and the age portrayed may not be exactly 27, but my intent when I put portraits on here is just to offer an aid to the historical imagination, and I think this fits that bill nicely. I can readily imagine this young fellow being escorted into the salon where I’m attending a little party of the very rich, sitting at the pianoforte, and playing something brilliant. The talk of the town!

Admittedly I’m sort of picturing a 19th-century Proustian salon rather than an 18th-century Viennese one, but the principle is similar. I imagine. Maybe it’s not.

This piece: A piano sonata, and an early piano sonata, so a work that I might well have known from my childhood practice of starting at the beginning of the book and playing through until I got bored. But I think I skipped this one most of the time, or it never made much of an impression. I was familiar with what it looked like when glanced at on the page, but much less so with what it sounded like.

Listened to it a whole bunch of times, played it a whole bunch of times, then listened to all of the recordings in a row and called it done.

This is a fine piece. The first movement is neatly put together. The first time I put my hands on it, it seemed a little clonky, but all the transitions of tone have come to seem quite charming and elegant now that they’re in my head. The form of the exposition is a little rounder and more thoughtful than it seemed at first – the descending four-note motive became a lovely icon of goodwill once I was put on to it, and the whole movement now seems to me like a clean little piece of public speaking on the subject of those four notes: soft enough for a general audience, with jokes etc. And short.

The second movement is weepy rather than profound, but a nice rich weepiness, if the pianist is good. Ahead of its time – or a model for things to come – by a decade or more. Each episode adds something. These sort of movements (song-like, with several refrains and several episodes) tend to feel too long to me, but this one doesn’t, at least not now that I have the refrain under my belt. As always, being able to sing along makes all the difference.

Delicate decoration in Beethoven often seems to be etched with a stiff hand. I guess most of Beethoven seems to be etched with a stiff hand. But the underlying sturdiness prevails, once you get past the surface and find your way to the heart of the material. That means many listens. In this case I was able to get there rather more quickly, 1) because it’s a short and straightforward piece, and 2) because it’s a piano piece and I was able to play it myself.

The minuet is so exactly and entirely of the type – the type being Beethoven piano sonata third movements – that it is hard for me to think of it as having its own personality. But maybe that’s a misplaced priority anyway. The type is an excellent type. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Just went and listened again to remind myself. Actually it’s very distinctive, in several different ways over the course of the movement. The problem is not that the material lacks character in itself – it has plenty of it, very satisfyingly so – the problem, and it’s no problem at all, is that the overall effect is the same as any other minuet movement. The amount of charm + grace + humor + lightness = 1. The components can vary but the sum must be the same. Perhaps this is the definition of “genre?” Well, not quite. One wants individuals within a genre to be distinguishable. Of course, this is entirely distinguishable – it’s just my memory of it that has a hard time tearing it away from its parent class. Prior to typing this paragraph my inclination was to say that that’s okay, and I still agree – that’s okay.

Fourth movement, dramatic pauses, an L.v.B. specialty. Just listened to it now – I’m feeling fairly in touch with my musical self right now as I write this, so it seemed like a good time for one last visit – and suddenly I feel like I understand the wherefore of Rondo form. Previously I had thought of it just making sense the way stripes make sense – because they keep coming back, alternating with each other. Now in this piece I can hear the obvious lapse into looseness in the episodes – the jazz between the refrains – and a dynamic of charisma and showmanship becomes apparent. Of cool, almost. Especially in the extremely satisfying forward impetus of the second section of this refrain – like a bird in flight – bursting out of the dramatic pause section, which is like a little playacting. A different kind of cool, but still recognizably a form of being cool; the performer/composer is offering up a lively personality, rather than just a lively piece.

Beethoven gets credit for bringing the individual into music, for setting down the foundation stones for a century of Romanticism – but what if we try not to think about the 19th century vibe and just construe his emphasis on the individual as an emphasis on himself, on his charisma? To me this seems fruitful – it’s second nature from our living pop music culture. (Which you could say is also Romantic but that’s stretching the notion of Romanticism – to me, “Romantic” suggests Doré and does not suggest Madonna.) Madonna’s songs are all about how Madonna is singing them. It certainly gets pointed out that technical virtuosity was built into composer-performers’ works as a way of showing off, but I’m not sure I’ve read very much about the actual personality of the work being part of the public personality of the performer.

To hear the fifth symphony as emanating from within the scowling bust of Beethoven is a different thing, a necessarily historical thing. I’m talking about Beethoven writing piano pieces so that when he sat in front of an audience and played them, they would be impressed by their encounter with this man and this performance, rather than with this music per se. Just like at a Justin Timberlake concert – the material has been composed to serve a very particular purpose. This is obviously the case with Liszt and his imitators, but a lot of that music never gets played anymore, whereas Beethoven gets played all the time but fairly divorced from a charisma-informed tradition. Or, when it is within a charisma-informed tradition, it’s the charisma of the performer, who might well not have a congruent charisma to Beethoven’s. Thus the “meaning” of the piece is lost or abused, a square peg shoved into the round hole of the museum-respectful silence and the jacket with tails and all that.

A certain (no names, please! it’s the internet!) renowned professor of mine in college was particularly known for his Mozart interpretations, and I had to agree that he had a particular knack for getting at the soul of Mozart at the piano, when I saw him do it in person – and the reason was that his charisma was, one felt, very much congruent with Mozart’s. One felt that this man with this personality would indeed have wanted credit for the personality on evidence in the music – not credit for the ability to sniff out and deliver that personality, like an actor, and like so many “great performers” – nor credit for being “good lord, the great Mozart incarnate,” though I don’t doubt he had a bit of a taste for that – but credit for the same degree of sensitivity, the same intelligence and elegance, the same turns of phrase, the same dumb jokes, as Mozart the man would have. It’s easy to say, “well, wouldn’t we all,” but no, I daresay we most of us wouldn’t. My own personal ideal for how people will perceive me is nothing at all like the music of Mozart, nor of Beethoven for that matter. Sometimes in fact I have let myself muse on the question of whether I would want a given piece of music to “represent me.” No clear winners yet but I’ll let you know. Certainly myspace users agree that identifying yourself with a piece of music is a good way of projecting a kick-ass image. Myspace users and everyone else I know.

Why is our culture so obnoxious and superficial about identity formation? In “High Fidelity,” Nick Hornby, or John Cusack, says “What really matters is what you like, not what you’re like.” I think part of the point of the book/movie is that this is less true than the character believes, but I’m not totally sure. “High Fidelity” is certainly popular with people who are cozy with that idea as expressed. So let me just put on record that, no, it’s not true. What really matters is what you’re like. People who are proud of what they like want to believe – and want others to believe – that they are like what they like. But one glance at the D&D convention should have put that idea to rest long ago. Yet still we go on smugly listing our favorite bands, like it will save us from anonymity and mediocrity. It won’t! To possess something is not to resemble it. I said once that I would write about this someday. Maybe that’ll still happen.

The point here is that if you’re a composer/performer, you can lay claim to the idea that you are the music with more clout than if you just have it playing on your myspace page. This is why rock stars get, as they say, all the girls – the illusion that they are what they sing is much stronger when they write it. And when they actually sing it. Not clear why Beethoven didn’t get all the girls – it might be because of the particular image he chose to project. It might also be because he was a jerk to everyone. Liszt obviously had the girl-gettage routine down pat.

Early edition but not the first. The first said “pour Clavecin ou Piano-Forte” on the title page. I can’t find a better picture of it than this.

The score, in various editions.

David Dubal just gives listening recommendations for “The Complete Piano Sonatas”:

Arrau: Philips 432301-2
Schnabel: EMI Classics CDHH 63765
Kempff: Deutsche Grammophon 429306-2
Ashkenazy: London 425590-2

but I sure didn’t listen to those, because they weren’t currently available at the library the day I went looking for this piece. I listened to Murray Perahia, 1985; Emil Gilels, 1980; Maurizio Pollini, 2002; Artur Schnabel, 1935. They were all perfectly fine as I recall, but Schnabel’s interpretation seemed to me to get inside the music’s head the most convincingly. Oh, so, wait, I did listen to one of the recommended recordings, didn’t I.

The 1001 Classical Recordings list doesn’t include this piece.

More than seven months passed between drafting this and posting it!