Piano Sonata No. 16 (Beethoven)

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1801 engraving by Johann Joseph Neidl after a now-lost portrait by Gandolph Ernst Stainhauser von Treuberg, ca. 1800 Ludwig van Beethoven, aged twenty-six (1796).jpg
1801 engraving by Johann Joseph Neidl after a now-lost portrait by Gandolph Ernst Stainhauser von Treuberg, ca. 1800

Structure

The sonata consists of three movements. A typical performance lasts about 20 minutes.

  1. Allegro vivace 2
    4
    in G major
  2. Adagio grazioso 9
    8
    in C major
  3. Rondo, allegretto – presto 2
    2
    in G major

Allegro vivace

Sonata No. 16 1st Movement.png

The first movement begins in an animated fashion. The humorous main theme is littered with brisk, semiquaver passages, and chords written in a stuttering fashion, suggesting that the hands are unable to play in unison with one another. The second subject in the exposition alternates between B major and B minor; this tendency to alternate between keys became typical later in Beethoven's career.

Adagio grazioso

Sonata No. 16 2st Movement.png

With long, drawn-out trills and reflective pauses, the second movement in C major is more sentimental. Apart from the Hammerklavier Sonata's Adagio sostenuto third movement and the 32nd sonata's second movement, this is the longest slow movement in Beethoven's piano sonatas, lasting around 11 minutes. According to many great pianists (e.g. Edwin Fischer and András Schiff), this movement is a parody of Italian opera and Beethoven's contemporaries, who were much more popular than Beethoven at the beginning of the 19th century. Schiff explained this theory in a master class on this sonata; [2] he said it is totally uncharacteristic of Beethoven because it is not economical, it is incredibly long, everything is too ornamented, it is filled with "show-off cadenzas [...] trying to make a cheap effect" and bel canto-like elements and rhythms. Schiff said, "it's very beautiful, but it's alien to Beethoven's nature".

Rondo

Sonata No. 16 3st Movement.png

The last movement is similar in character to the first: light, enthusiastic, and youthful. Here, a single simple theme is varied, ornamented, syncopated, and modulated throughout the piece. After a brief Adagio section, the piece ends with a Presto coda.

References

  1. "Musicians with a literary bent – Honourable failures" by Anna Goldsworthy, The Monthly , October 2013. Goldsworthy quotes Jeremy Denk and Alfred Brendel's "Must Classical Music be Entirely Serious?" in his Music Sounded Out (1990).
  2. Andras Schiff's lectures on the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas (audio only).