“This sonata is a great hymn of passion, which is born of the never-fulfilled longing for full and perfect bliss. Not blind fury, not the raging of sensual fevers, but the violent eruption of the afflicted soul, thirsting for happiness, is the master’s conception of passion…one of the most moving documents of a great and fiery soul that humanity possesses.”
Thus wrote the great scholar Donald Francis Tovey of Beethoven’s Appassionata, foregoing his usual stiff Victorian academic prose for a veritable paroxysm of adulation. Lenin revealingly called it “an astonishing and superhuman work of music which I would never tire of listening to, but which also stirs up humane – and therefore dangerous – emotions”.
Other writers have compared it to Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Corneille’s tragedies. Albert Einstein – a great music lover and amateur – called it “Too personal, almost naked”. Tovey himself, perhaps most appropriately, compared it to King Lear: the death count in that shattering masterpiece is ten and we are left in no doubt that no one is still alive at the end the Appassionata!
Nevertheless Beethoven’s great work did not start life with that title, which was first given to it by the publisher of an arrangement for piano duet in 1838, eleven years after Beethoven’s death. It is as difficult to imagine a piano duet transcription of the sonata as it is to think of it as anything other than “the Appassionata”. Moreover the manuscript bears the words “La pasionata” (sic) in Beethoven’s own hand.
Mention of Beethoven’s manuscript leads me to a fascinating true story concerning the work’s completion. Most of the sonata was written in 1804-05, but the finishing touches were made on a visit to his patron Prince Karl Lichnowsky at his country estate near the Bohemian city of Troppau (now Opava, in the Czech Republic). Lichnowsky had been one of Beethoven’s most important patrons, moving him into a spacious apartment in his town house in the composer’s early years in Vienna and receiving the dedication of the opus 1 Piano Trios, the Pathétique Sonata and the 2nd Symphony.
The area around Troppau had been occupied by Napoleon’s army in 1805 – and every music-lover knows the story of Beethoven tearing up the dedication page of the Eroica Symphony in a rage on hearing that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor. Lichnowsky had invited some French generals to dinner, promising them that Beethoven would play for them but without consulting Beethoven first. Beethoven flew into a rage (oh how often do we read that about the tormented genius!) and locked himself in a remote room of the castle: when Lichnowsky attempted to break down the door, Beethoven threatened to break a chair over his head.
Beethoven packed his trunk and stormed out, leaving for Vienna (a distance of some 300 kilometres). On the way rain penetrated into the trunk and soaked the manuscript of the sonata – a fact that can only deepen our sense of the work’s majesty and tragedy. On returning to his Vienna apartment, Beethoven immediately smashed a marble bust of Lichnowsky on the floor and wrote the following letter: “Prince! What you are, you are by circumstance and birth. What I am, I am through myself. Of princes there have been and will be thousands. Of Beethovens there is only one!
Thus Beethoven, and thus the Appassionata.
As one of Beethoven’s greatest works, and the sonata he thought was his greatest at least till the Hammerklavier, it is strange that he did not give it the title of “Grande Sonate” when he had already used this appellation for several sonatas including the not noticeably grand Pastoral (Op. 28). Yet the lack of the “grand” epithet surely points to the Appassionata’s intensely personal and tragic manner, compared for instance with his previous masterpiece the Waldstein, which carries the ‘Grande Sonate’ title and is most decidedly grand.
The Appassionata is in three movements, although the second is joined to the third by a single diminished seventh chord and the finale’s torrent is unleashed without a break. Already the key of F minor is rare, dark and “unstable”: Mozart never uses it as the main key for a work, Haydn rarely, though he does for the Symphony no. 49 – ‘La passione’! Bach’s fugue in that key in the first book of the “48” has one of his most chromatic and tortuous subjects, virtually a twelve-note tone row. Beethoven had already found “his” F minor in the second of the teenage Bonn Sonatas, WoO 47 – with an astonishing use of almost exactly the same diminished 7th chord that shatters the calm of the Appassionata’s slow movement and leads into the finale.
The mood of foreboding is established at the outset with an obscure unison theme in pianissimo, the hands two octaves apart – an iconic moment in the piano repertoire. Iconic also are the crashing fortissimo chords that break out without warning, which may or may not represent the increasingly deaf composer frantically trying to hear himself but are in any case symbolic of tragedy. The second subject, in the relative major key of A flat, is momentarily consoling though it cannot break away from the underlying fatalistic dotted rhythm: its second part is a veritable torrent of turbulent semiquavers. There are two huge climaxes later on, one at the end of the development and an even more violent one leading into the faster coda which finally exhausts itself.
The slow movement, in a warm, rich D flat major, is a set of variations on a theme of nirvana-like stillness. The variations become gradually more animated, rising to heights of beauty before the theme returns, now in alternating registers. The expected final cadence is aborted by the famous mysterious diminished 7th chord that unleashes the torrential finale. The movement is almost entirely in the minor key with only passing references to the major. The structure is a relatively simple sonata form, though uniquely Beethoven asks for the second part to be repeated but not the first. Finally an odd, violent presto coda ends the sonata in total obliteration.
– Julian Jacobson
New video lecture series
In a new video lecture series on the Online Academy, pianist Julian Jacobson gives a detailed walk-through of the work. Whether you’re embarking upon playing it or simply want to discover more about it, these videos give extensive insights on style, interpretation and performance.
Click here to view the video index on the Online Academy or you can watch Julian’s performance here!
Further links & resources
- Click here for links to Julian’s video lessons on other works on the Online Academy or click here to view his previous blog post on embarking upon Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
- Click here to find out more and to purchase access to a recording of Julian’s online presentation on approaching four of the more accessible movements from Beethoven’s Sonatas.
- Click here to view an index of our Beethoven on Board series which features detailed video lectures on Beethoven’s first five sonatas (or click here for a blog preview for the first sonata).
- Click here for more information on Julian’s recommended edition for this work (Bärenreiter). These editions are also available on the digital sheet music app Oktav and readers can also use discount code PRACTISINGTHEPIANO30 to get 30% off an annual subscription to Oktav.