Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, Piano Sonata 14 in C# minor Quasi Una Fantasia, evokes, for many, moonlit nights and a soothing even romantic evening, but that’s only part of the story. Sonata 14 is one of two sonatas composed as part of Beethoven’s Opus 27 in 1801, dedicated to the Countess Guilietta Guiccicardi. His opus was composed at a time in which Beethoven was suffering from increasing hearing loss. He wrote in a letter to a boyhood friend that “…you can hardly imagine how gloomy, how sad my life has been during the last two years, my poor hearing has appeared to me everywhere as a ghost, and I have fled – from the people…”. Beethoven, however, refused to resign himself to his fate, “I shall grab my destiny by the throat, it will certainly not manage to overcome me completely.” (Beethoven Haus)
Beethoven was a composer known for pushing boundaries and upsetting the status quo with his music. Beethoven’s “sonatas display a marked individuality that pushes at the generic and stylistic boundaries of the classical genre.” (Jones) He “he created a new subgenre, the fantasy sonata…” (Jones) Sonata 14 is composed in three movements, each has a distinct character, leading it’s listeners gently through a story like experience. The first movement of the sonata, Adagio sostenuto, is the most evocative of the three movements. It is the first movement’s haunting music and ability to bring to mind moonlit nights that led to the sonata’s common title of “the Moonlight Sonata” long after Beethoven’s death. The music of the first movement begins slowly and is played softly, like slipping into a fantasy. Chords are set off with a triplet rhythm played simultaneously, four times per measure as the chord is sustained. This crucial background is played on the beat, and sets the mood for the piece.
The melody of the sonata’s first movement begins in the fifth measure, the sound reminiscent of raindrops slowly beginning to fall on the surface of a still lake. After a few measures, the mood begins to change, the rhythm part begins to strengthen and there are moments of dissonance in the chords. The melody takes a different tone evoking images of lightning strikes, while the chords bring to mind rumbles of thunder. This continues for several measures, then the ‘storm’ relents and returns to the soft tones heard at the beginning of the piece, a ‘drizzle’ accented by being in a slightly higher range of notes. At around measure 17 there is a call-and-answer pattern that is played between the rhythm and melody, which echoes the sound of soft distant thunder. At around measure 32 a series of ascending notes begin in the melody part, played in a slightly quicker manner than the rest of the movement, as if raindrops are falling from the leaves of trees with the movement of the wind. The melody descends back to the previous rhythm, and returns to the original melody. From this point, there is a repetition very close to what is heard at the beginning of the piece. The movement closes with what sounds like a rain storm ending a slow drifting off of notes. Whether it was intended to sound like a brief mild evening rainstorm, or not, the first movement with it’s consistent background rhythm and counterbalancing melody do a fine job of evoking such images.
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