Curtis Institute of Music
Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

열정있는 피아니스트 선생님이 가르쳐준다.

선생님이 piano 치는 것을 듣는 것도 좋다.

음악을 하고 싶다는 생각이 막 든다. 직접 연주를 해서 자기 감정을 넣어 보고 싶다는 충동이 든다.

피아노를 칠 때, 선생님 입에서 나는 바람 소리가 마이크를 통해 들리게 되는 것은 약간 단점.

베토벤이 불쌍하게 살았네.

음악에 그 나름대로의 느낌이 있다.

Week One: How Things Were

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The Beethoven Sonatas matter not only because of their astonishingly high quality, but because they represent a pivot point in the history of music: With these 32 works, Beethoven first perfected a form which had only recently been invented, and subsequently wrestled with every aspect of it. The relentlessness of his imagination – his challenge to all of the form’s essential qualities – made the sonata one of music’s signature structures, but also rendered it nearly obsolete by the time he was finished with it.

To examine the relationship Beethoven had with the piano sonata, we begin by looking at its origins. In this class, we will discuss the role of music generally, and of the sonata specifically, in the time of Haydn and Mozart. This class will also provide an introduction to the form of the sonata – to the psychological effect sonata structure has on the listener. This background will be necessary to appreciate the innovations Beethoven introduces.

Week Two: The First 13

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Beethoven’s work has traditionally been divided into three or four periods. This is problematic, for various reasons, but the first 13 of the 32 sonatas do in a sense form a unit. This class will focus on the sonata number 4, opus 7, which is the largest and altogether one of the most impressive of the early works. Topics will include Beethoven’s use of the piano, and the use of the sonata as a “vehicle” for the pianist; the ways in which this and other early sonatas conform to the model established by Haydn and Mozart, and the ways in which they do not; and the foreshadowing of the fixations of the later years, while holding, at least on the surface, to the conventions of the time.

Week Three: New Paths

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Beethoven’s conception of the sonata was perpetually in flux, but the year 1801 is a particularly experimental one. The four sonatas opus 26 through 28  (numbers 14 through 17, chronologically) feature the most concrete innovations among the sonatas written up to that point, and are the focus of this class. There will be discussion of the relationship between the movements in a classical sonata, and the radical shift it begins to undergo at this point. We will also examine the ways in which these sonatas were influential to future generations of composers, which the earlier works, great as they are, were not.

Week Four: Crisis

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From 1793 until 1809, Beethoven composed at a steady pace. But for the next several years, he stalled dramatically, as he dealt with the onset of his deafness, severely trying personal circumstances, and the struggle to find what would become his late style, which to a remarkable degree involved the total reinvention of his musical language. This class examines the intersection of these three issues, and between his life and music more generally. Works discussed come from this comparatively fallow period and will include the Fantasy, Op. 77, which exemplifies the vital role improvisation played in all of Beethoven’s music, and the Sonatas opus 78, and 81a, the “Lebewohl”.  The last of these is one of Beethoven’s only serious experiments with program music, which made it an important reference point for many 19th-century composers. Another topic will be the ways in which the works of this period seem to manipulate time, which was always one of Beethoven’s key fascinations, and becomes ever more critical moving into the late period.

Week Five: Towards Infinity

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For the final lecture, the focus will be on the Sonata Opus 109, the first of the final three, in which Beethoven’s decades-long grappling with the form comes to its astonishing conclusion. We will also look back at the early period – the Sonata Opus 10 number 1 (the seventh he wrote) in particular – for the purposes of “zooming out”, and examining the evolution that took place in the interim: an evolution not just of form, but of style, of musical language, of Beethoven’s conception of the role of music. This lecture will also include a discussion of Beethoven’s legacy – specifically, of the way in which his music came to represent simultaneously the highest possible aspiration and the most insurmountable problem for generations of composers who followed him.

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