♫ So, until its final two measures, this whole “movement” – I’m continuing to call it a movement because I don’t know what else to call it – has an unbroken eighth note accompaniment. ♫ There’s something about a slow but extremely steady pulse, such as this one: it makes the motion absolutely unhurried, but inexorable – nothing stops or interrupts or challenges it. When the theme comes for a second time – it really can’t be called a “recapitulation”, because it is only a few measures removed from the opening – it is now in a higher register, with a more elaborate middle-voice accompaniment, and as it develops, it gets less and less grounded and more and more fervent, rising, in octaves, as it reaches a climactic point. ♫ This leads, very naturally, into the transition into the last movement, which is surely the most operatic moment in the whole piece. When I say “operatic”, I don’t mean “vocal”: as you’ll hear, this is not a gesture that could conceivably be sung. I mean that it is big, performative, theatrical. It’s just a very simple modulation from A flat Major to E flat Major– friends and neighbors – but it unfolds as an absolute flurry of notes – a terrific contrast to the stately, eighth note motion that was the dominant feature of the whole rest of the movement. ♫ All of that busy-ness is really just stage-setting – the perfect stage-setting – for the last movement proper. Now, neither this movement specifically nor this piece generally share much with the music of Beethoven’s late period. But op. 27 no. 1’s finale does anticipate the late sonatas in one important way: it is the biggest movement of the piece. The first movement might take as long to play, but that’s just because it is so decidedly not in a hurry. This last movement – even if you decide not to include the Adagio that precedes it – is the part of the piece with the most material, the most ambition, and the most twists and turns: it is the piece’s destination, in all senses of the word. That is a real step forward – or, at least, a step away – from the early period sonatas, which invariably start out more substantive, and end more lightly. That said, Op. 27 no. 1’s language and character are absolutely nothing like the late period: this finale’s character is light-hearted, and even if it does feel like the sonata’s apotheosis, it is not challenging music – at least not to listen to! This movement is a rondo, more or less, with a structure that is, for the most part, comfortingly predictable. Here is the A section. ♫ This opening is a harbinger for the rest of the movement, first of all in its open, happy-go-lucky character, but also in being so contrapuntal: almost all of the material in this movement features lots of interaction between the voices, which only makes it seem more enterprising and ambitious – all these things happening at the same time! This “bustling” quality is more-or-less ever present: even at the rare moments when there aren’t multiple voices interacting with one another, there’s lots of jumping around the keyboard, creating a similar impression through different means. A moment ago, I said that this movement was “more-or-less” a rondo: it IS a rondo, as far as the succession of events goes: ABACAB… well, then it gets a bit complicated, but that there is already the bulk of the rondo form. The reason it can’t be considered a pure rondo is that the A, B, and C materials are not really distinct from one another – everything is drawn from the opening theme. ♫ Here, for instance, is the B section. ♫ So, all of that is dominated by a four note idea, ♫ which is, for all practical purposes, the opening motive of the piece. First we get it leaping all over the keyboard. ♫ Then he breaks it down into two note units, with the accent always on the off beat, making it even more playful and propulsive. ♫ Then we have that caught-in-a-loop, dog-chasing-his-own-tail section – ♫ but even though there’s constant motion in that, it really is all about that four note figure. Beethoven just turns it around a little, from ♫ to ♫ Even the ending of this B section, which is essentially just a festival of triumphant B flat major, ♫ can be broken down into those 4 note units. ♫ In a “real” rondo, with each episode, you leave the previous one behind; as we never leave the movement’s opening statement behind, the label of rondo doesn’t quite apply. So, that was the B section. (I’m using rondo terminology – A, B, and C – because the sections are all there, even if they don’t have the independence which make them true rondo components.) The C section is again based on the opening bars of the piece, and it is again very contrapuntal – in fact, I’d say this is the most contrapuntal episode in the movement yet, edging towards being an actual fugue. We launch into it by way of a bit from the A section – it moves first from major into minor, but the minor turns out to be a modulation point, a way station on the road to a rather exotic G flat major. ♫ And we’re off. This C section plays out a bit like a several car pileup – the ideas, and the entrances of the different voices start coming faster and faster, encroaching on one another’s space, until the whole thing comes to a violent stop. ♫ This is the only really dramatic section of a movement that generally finds Beethoven in unusually good spirits – suddenly, his stubbornness and irascibility have come to the fore. The ensuing music functions as a transition back to the opening “A” music, but it is also probably the most striking, inventive moment of the piece: this music is as halting as the previous section was no-holds-barred. Once again, it’s all based in four note figures – they’re never far away in this movement. The four notes take us through a series of modulations, then begin to break down into two note units, at which point Beethoven, first shyly and slyly, and then triumphantly, brings the music back home. ♫ This really is vintage Beethoven: the way he’s able to take a tiny kernel of material with no inherent character of its own, ♫ and work wonders with it.
