PATHOS: On Beethoven's Sonatas, Part 2
Week 36 in Year Two of one pianist’s journey to perform the 32 sonatas of Beethoven.
There is a lovely post from Wilfrid Laurier University about my two next Beethoven concerts, here:
https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-music/news/2025/summer/beloved-pianist-and-professor-emerita-heather-taves-returns-to-laurier-to-complete-beethoven-piano-sonata-cycle.html
Today I’ll write about the second of those concerts on Friday, June 13 at 7:00 PM in the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, Waterloo. My one-word title for this concert is PATHOS.
In case you can’t make it in person, here is a playlist of the concert, recorded by the fascinating Beethoven pianist Igor Levit.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqHFh54O-uD_s2TO5LX1I4gs0CtFxfa0C&feature=shared
“Pathos” orginates as a Greek word used to describe a dramatically emotional state. It is in contrast, for example, to “Ethos”, a more thoughtful state of being where ethics may be considered.
More specifically, the word “pathos” may convey one of two different emotional states. The first is angry, powerful, and full of rage. The second is a sorrowful, tender kind of despair.
Either or both of these states could be a response to the idea of Fate, the forces outside of one’s control that affect a person.
Beethoven used some specific keys and pitches to portray Fate and Pathos. In this concert, you can hear three of those keys being used and developed. They are the notes F, A flat, and C, which are the home notes for all the sonatas on this program. Sounded together, they form a sad chord.
Each of those notes has its own colour. And each might have a scale or chord built up from it, either a lighter major or a darker minor scale. F minor is stormy and raging; F major is pastoral. A flat major is consoling and heartfelt; A flat minor is deeply tragic. C minor is Beethoven’s quintessential key for a dark stroke of fate. C major is calm and bright.
Every sonata has secondary sections and movements within it that change into, or theorists say “modulate” into, subsidiary keys. For example, the tragic C minor Sonata has a consoling slow movement in A flat major. In this program, these subsidiary sections also make use, often, of those same three keys of F, A flat, and C.
The first sonata on this program is the first one of Beethoven’s 32 opus-numbered sonatas. He’d written a few sonatas before this one, but this was the first that he deemed professional and worthy of publication. It’s labelled Opus 2 No. 1, and it is the first of a group of three sonatas in Opus 2. At this time Beethoven was in his early twenties, new in Vienna, and studying with Haydn. He was a rebellious student who clashed a bit with Haydn. Beethoven was never a person who was good at being subordinate to anyone. In a young person’s kind of transparently political move, he did dedicate this set to his teacher Haydn. Yet he already sounds quite distinct from Haydn, even though he is using the structures and devices he has been taught.
His choice of the stormy, impassioned key of F minor makes drama right from the beginning. The first movement has strong forward motion, like an early version of his later “Appassionata”, also in F minor, from his middle period.
This is one of the fun things about listening to all the Beethoven sonatas: you can hear this change from smaller classical pianos and styles to the larger heavier pianos and trends of early Romanticism. In this program, F minor will make a last appearance in the second half of this program, where it’s used for a brief and bitter section within his more spiritual late sonata Opus 110.
The second movement of this sonata is in F major, and there is a serene, lyrical melody. The third movement, marked Minuet, alternates between F minor and F major, as though wavering, and the fourth movement returns with a vengeance to F minor for a fast finale.
The next sonata, Opus 13 in C minor, is written just a few years later, and finished when Beethoven was 29. You can still recognize Beethoven’s distinctive character with his abrupt accents, silences, and changes of character, also the brilliant piano writing, the tender melodies, and the colourful story-telling. But here it’s all put to a very different use.
Beethoven called this a “Sonate Pathétique”, in French. This word “pathétique” can be translated as “full of pathos.” Beethoven used the tragic key of C minor in this sonata, like in other music such as his famous fifth symphony (Da-da-da-DUM!).
Beethoven was a huge fan of French Revolutionary opera. In particular he adored the music of a French opera composer named Luigi Cherubini, an Italian who worked in Paris. Beethoven told people that Cherubini was the greatest living composer and he was going to steal from his music. That of course didn’t mean plagiarize, it meant developing Cherubini’s ideas.
Cherubini had just written a wonderful opera on the Greek tragedy of Medea. If you are an opera lover, I highly recommend the Metropolitan opera’s production of Medea put on a few years ago and available online. It’s absolutely stunning. Here’s an iconic image of Callas as Medea:
Medea is a powerful sorceress from the East. The Greek hero Jason travels to her lands in search of a legendary Golden Fleece. She falls in love with him and helps him get it. They marry and have two sons, and she moves to Athens in Greece with him. But she’s a misfit in that society, and while their sons are still children, Jason drops her for a Greek woman. The plot of the opera begins at that point. For the opera’s entire length, the dramatic tension is sustained by the conflict between two sides of Medea’s character. On one hand, she is an angry sorceress who has the power to wreak revenge on Jason. On the other, she feels tenderness for her two sons. Two emotions within a female character, and it’s an incredible role for the singer who plays Medea.
In Beethoven’s time, the first theme of a sonata was called the “masculine” theme, and it was often quite powerful and assertive. The second theme, which was often more emotional, was called the “feminine” theme. But in this sonata, Beethoven disrupts that whole model and makes both themes emotional, using so-called “feminine” devices such as sigh motifs, sudden pauses, wavering, and chromaticism.
This sonata has three movements. The first movement starts with a slow overture, like the orchestral overture to an opera or a musical, and then Medea comes onto the stage, first angry, then tender in the second theme.
The second movement, in the consoling key of A flat major, is a slow movement. It corresponds to the point in the opera plot where Medea decides to go and plead with Jason to restore their family and their love for one another. There is a beautiful melody, answered by Jason, but this turns into a dispute when he again rejects her. The music then turns into the tragic key of A flat minor.
The third movement could be heard as Medea once again alone, and wrestling with her desire for revenge. In the opera, she is swinging around a sword and contemplating murdering their two little sons. In the end, the vengeful side of her wins, and she decapitates the two boys. In the time of the French Revolution, this would play as a cautionary tale, when there were so many people being decapitated and sent to the guillotine. The question being: even though you are understandably angry with rulers who have betrayed you, do you abandon social welfare and compassion for others?
For the last sonata in the program’s first half, the Sonata Opus 26, we turn towards that key of A flat major used in the beautiful melody of the slow movement of the Pathétique sonata.
When Beethoven wrote this sonata in his late twenties, he was experimenting with pushing the boundaries of sonata form. Here, the first movement is not at all a struggle of two opposing themes, but rather, he creates one serene melody in A flat major, then explores it in a set of 5 variations.
The second movement is titled Scherzo, which means “joke” in Italian. Beethoven loved Shakespeare, he read Shakespeare in German translation, and like Shakespeare, he can be very funny with great comic timing. But here, he isn’t “haha” funny. This is more about a kind of agitation that Shakespeare used to call “humorous”, the humours being moods, capricious and changeable ones. You start to feel Beethoven’s been unsatisfied with the serenity of A flat major.
Then in the third movement, he abruptly switches to tragedy, and brings in the key of A flat minor for a funeral march. Not just any funeral march, but one for what he calls “the death of a hero”. Not only has fate overcome the hero, but also, a hero is a notable person and this is a ceremonial march for somebody who is notable. You hear drumrolls and a marching army, like in a large parade. This march was in fact used for Beethoven’s own funeral, which thousands of people attended in Vienna. In the years since then it has been often used for state funerals, for instance the funeral parade for Sir Winston Churchill. Beethoven’s march is the first music heard in this clip.
The fourth movement of the sonata shifts in mood again. This time it’s to a fast, major key, a piece of finger virtuosity, as if to wave off dark visions, and fare forward saying, but enough of that, for now our show must go on.
The final sonata of this PATHOS program, Opus 110, is the second-last one of his piano sonatas. He composed it in a spurt of activity that also included writing his very last piano sonata, the Opus 111. He was 51 years old, and still had other works to write before his passing at age 57, for example the late string quartets. But he was already very ill and profoundly hard of hearing.
He was also sure that he would never again have a love affair in his life. The first London edition of this sonata was dedicated to Antonie Brentano, the last woman with whom he had likely been in love, despite her marriage to his financial sponsor Franz Brentano, but with whom he had parted ways years before.
The Opus 110 sonata is primarily a spiritual piece of music. It has been transformative in the lives of many. My former teacher Menahem Pressler, who recorded it, said that after he had fled the Holocaust, losing many family members, he was unable to find his reason for living until he began to work on this music.
Beethoven writes this sonata after the point in his life when, deprived of his hearing in the human world, he turns inwards towards what he experiences as a dialogue with the Divine.
The first movement is in that beautiful and consoling key of A flat major. For a little while, it wavers towards the passionate F minor key but here, rather than erupting in anger, it seems to take a more contemplative view of some former rage, before returning to A flat major contemplation.
The second movement, though, does erupt into F minor. It’s marked Scherzo, or “joke,” just like the second movement of the Opus 26 sonata. But here it really is a joke, a bitterly raucous joke, with notes that threaten to trip up the pianist, using a taunting little child’s folksong called “My Cat is having Kittens.” Those words are almost self-mocking of his life’s work developing the keys and motives that he is tossing around here.
Then the joke stops and he becomes operatic. Descending into a tragic introduction, he begins to use the type of unmeasured “recitative” style found in opera, to lead one into a slow movement, marked Arioso, that is a place of utter despair. For this music he uses his funeral march key of A flat minor.
While practising the Pathétique Sonata alongside this one, I began to notice striking similarities between this Arioso and the dark despairing section of the Pathétique slow movement. Both melodies have a similar pacing, and are accompanied by incessant repeated triplets. But where the earlier music seems more of an individual drama, in the Opus 110 Arioso you feel a lament for all humanity.
As this lament dies down into nothingness, a quiet theme in A flat major begins to emerge. Beethoven then takes this theme to construct a fugue, building great arches of sound over you until you are in a figurative cathedral.
It’s too figurative: the vision collapses back into a worse despair than before. As the music dies, the fugue returns, but this time from above. Many have called this place a manifestation in music of Divine grace reaching down towards humanity, leading one out of despair, towards a kind of cosmic embrace.
A short intro to the “Beethoven Journey” project:
ABOUT ME:
I confused many people when I started my Beethoven Journey to learn all 32 of his piano sonatas, in August of 2023. That’s because they knew me as a person interested in new music, improvising, composing, diversity, and multiple genres.
But I have a history with Beethoven: back when I was a doctoral student, I did Beethoven research and became fascinated with the early pianos of his time, also his sketches, the process of composition, and the rich history of women playing Beethoven. I learned what a fantastic improviser he was, and he began to feel very contemporary to me.
I was also discovering that besides being a pianist, I really liked writing and talking about playing. And so, as a doctoral student, I gave, famously among my friends, the longest most deadly lecture recital on the Beethoven Sonatas ever given. I think it was about 2 and half hours without a break, like a comical extreme.
I dreamed of learning all 32 sonatas, known as the “Beethoven piano sonata cycle”. However, when I became a piano professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, I put my early interest in Beethoven on hold for decades. Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I moved to Prince Edward Island to be near my elderly mother and took an early retirement. My new home in a wooded area near ocean proved an ideal practice retreat, and I was inspired to return to Beethoven.
I’m fascinated that Beethoven was a wonderful improvisor. How do I search for this attribute of spontaneity when I play his music? One answer I’ve stuck to is not to write any fingering numbers into the score. I let my hands find the notes directly, as he must have done while improvising. This is one example of choices I make to align with his process.
Does it feel different to have learned all the sonatas, while playing any given sonata? A psychologist who studies music cognition heard a recent concert of mine. She wrote to me later that her impression of me playing was that there was a kind of holograph going on, that I was looking at each sonata through the layers of all the others. Maybe she has something there. I know that sometimes I am so reminded of one sonata while playing another that for a minute I even forget which exact sonata I happen to be in, so there are perils as well as possible advantages!
Soon after I started the Beethoven journey, I began to write this blog. One of my hopes for this blog is eventually to interview other pianists who’ve played the whole set. I have complied a list of pianists throughout history who have played all 32 sonatas, including Beethoven himself of course, and I have 137 names. They include 25 women. I also count 3 pianists (2 male, one female) who have died in the attempt. For comparison, about 6800 people have climbed Mount Everest and 340 died in the attempt, which is a morbidity ratio only about twice as high as for playing the Beethoven cycle.
It takes eight concerts to play the whole set. The order of sonata can be arranged in whatever way you choose, so in my case, each one of my concerts contains sonatas from throughout his life, organized around a theme.
ABOUT BEETHOVEN:
Beethoven was born in 1770, and the French Revolution shaped his life. When at age 21, he left his birthplace in Bonn for the musical centre of Vienna, he had to pass through the front lines. It was quite dangerous and he never again returned to his birthplace.
In his 20s in Vienna, Beethoven was in sympathy with Bonaparte. He abandoned powdered wigs in favor of his own dark unruly hair and he was socially popular as a kind of revolutionary bad boy in the salons. He wasn’t yet deaf, he wore nice clothes even though he was poor because he was trying to prove himself. He was mainly a performer and improvisor, and the women thought he was cute. A to-do list of his from this time includes buying silk stockings and signing up for dancing lessons.
In Vienna it was very soon recognized that Beethoven had genius. In those days it wasn’t that you were a genius, but you had a genius, kind of like a household spirit, like a genie, that would enter you to inform you. this very much described Beethoven, who drew inspiration from Nature and felt he was a personal dialogue with the Divine.
By the end of his life, Beethoven had become an almost stone deaf, famous but very eccentric and curmudgeonly individual. Many visitors from out of town dropped by his apartment as a kind of local landmark, and wrote accounts of how incredibly messy it was. Every morning, Beethoven composed, then went out for a walk, shouting at friends in the street. He took supper in a tavern, polished off a lot of wine, read the newspapers, and sometimes ended up ranting to others in the tavern about the sorry state of democracy.
ABOUT PIANOS:
The instrument that we now call the piano morphed hugely during Beethoven’s life. If you think of your very first internet device and your current one, you get the idea, except that pianos grew instead of shrinking. The first Beethoven’s sonata is written for a small, easily lifted piano that had five octaves and knee-lever pedals. The last sonata is for a much heavier piece of furniture: a six-and-a-half octave piano with foot pedals.