Cello Sonata in C, Op. 102 No. 1

In attempting to understand an artist’s creative activities, we often divide his or her life into periods, usually three: early, middle, late. Critics especially look to Beethoven (1770-1827) as an exemplary case. The early period is the time of study and imitation—for Beethoven roughly 1790 to 1802. His middle period, the astounding “heroic” style of the most famous symphonies, concertos, and sonatas, extends from 1803 through 1810—that is, from the “Eroica” Symphony to the “Serioso” String Quartet in F Minor. Finally, the transcendent late period lasts from 1818 until his death. There is a great deal to be said in favor of such a picture, however broadly its brushstrokes may miss subtle details. The scheme’s most egregious flaw is its inability to come to terms with the years 1810-18. Consider conflicting statements made by two prominent Beethoven biographers:

“For nearly a decade following the year 1809 Beethoven was singularly unproductive.”
– J. W. N. Sullivan, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development (1927, p. 112).

“It is completely wrong to look upon the four and a half years from February 1813 … to the end of 1817 as a ‘dead period’ … There were some interruptions, but the years 1814-16 as a whole were not unproductive.”
– Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven (1987, p. xxv).

Such opposed judgments derive partly from changing fashions in academic circles: sweeping generalizations like Sullivan’s are now “out” and rehabilitations of minor periods or minor works are “in.” Yet there can be no denying that Beethoven produced some of his worst music and proportionately few great works during the 1810s.

Recent scholarship has shown that Beethoven was hardly idle during these years. He sketched, revised, imagined, re-imagined, discarded, and began anew on many compositions. The incredible advances contained in the late music had to come from somewhere. We can, if we look and listen deeply, discover as much continuity as rupture between the middle period and the late style. Evidence lies in the works of transition, precisely those few masterpieces and false starts produced from 1810 to 1815.
Beethoven turned 40 in 1810 and was still physically vigorous despite his increasing deafness. He was also financially secure—for the moment—since he regularly received a generous stipend from three Viennese princes. The year 1815 witnessed Napoleon’s return from exile and spectacular defeat at Waterloo; Beethoven likewise suffered a reversal of fortunes that year with the death or bankruptcy of two of his noble patrons. Yet he was never more popular: More than half of all public benefit performances held during his lifetime took place during the 1814-15 season. Work on the two cello sonatas, op. 102, occupied Beethoven during the summer of 1815, though a sketch of the C-major Sonata’s finale appears in a notebook dated to February (alongside early sketches for the Ninth Symphony).

One of the challenges of Beethoven’s late style, and one that ruffled more than a few feathers among contemporary critics, is form. And in this respect, the Cello Sonata in C Major, op. 102 no. 1, will be most relevant. Beethoven himself referred to the piece as a “free” composition; the autograph is labeled “freje Sonate für Klavier und Violonschell,” but that designation was not retained for publication. Would that it had been, for it goes a long way toward explaining Beethoven’s intentions. Nominally, the sonata contains just two movements. Each movement begins with an expansive slow introduction followed by a fast sonata-allegro form. Tempo changes and their arrangement thus create a form closer to the four-movement scheme of the Baroque sonata da chiesa (slow-fast-slow-fast).

The first movement opens with a serene melody played by unaccompanied cello. In the following moments, Beethoven develops a meditative mood through slow tempo and his fixation on a single melodic idea. That lyric melody, shaped expressively like an inverted arch, is passed back and forth conversationally in very close imitation between cello and piano. (Later we will see how such close imitation between the parts, verging at times on overlap, functions as one of the major principles of the entire sonata.) Further adding to the unhurried allure of this opening section is the tonal stasis; despite occasional chromatic inflections, Beethoven never leaves C major until the start of the following Allegro vivace. We know the serene mood must eventually come to an end—both in literature and music, compositions in the lyric genre have always struggled to locate a sense of forward momentum—yet we soak up every moment of its fleeting charm. Beethoven signals the end of the lyric with a scene-changing glissando across the keyboard, but he, too, seems reticent to leave just yet, lingering over C major with a few measures of tonic-chord strumming.

After a slight pause we dive headfirst into the movement’s main section, an Allegro vivace in A minor. The new theme comes on like gangbusters, presented in unison by both instruments. Unison textures are commonly used in Classic music to suggest urgency and even authority. Beethoven draws on rhythm, rhetoric, and key change to heighten the dramatic shift out of the introduction’s tranquility. Most of the Allegro exhibits touches of the 18th-century’s Sturm und Drang style (“storm and stress”), indicated by the minor key, dotted or agitated rhythms, skipwise melodic contours, and chromaticism. Still, Beethoven carves out brief respites for lyric recollection, hardly lasting more than a measure but nicely positioned amongst the turmoil. A compact development section builds upon the rhythmic character of the Allegro’s first (unisono) theme and serves to explore various non-tonic harmonies. The movement’s final wrinkle comes in the coda, which starts with expansive figures: rumbling dominant-7th harmony of D minor against fragments of the main theme in cello and piano’s treble register. Judged by themselves, these features promise a relatively lengthy digression to come. But the end comes upon us surprisingly quickly. In fact, the entire coda is nothing more than one cadential progression, and it is only Beethoven’s brief deflection toward the subdominant key (D minor) and greatly slowed chord rhythm that have misled us into anticipating more than he will actually deliver. Of course, in terms of dramatic interest, less can be more, and Beethoven retains the upper hand by hinting at and then denying an elaborate coda. Much ado about nothing, as it were.

The second movement strikes a rhapsodic tone at the outset. These opening measures are all mood and texture, particularly the undulating melismas. As in the first movement’s slow introduction, Beethoven again uses a very relaxed tempo, close imitation and broad harmonic rhythm to create a serene expansiveness. The first real theme emerges after seven measures, but for all of its compact lyricism—the accented 4-3 dissonance being its most audible and poignant feature—Beethoven trumps this theme’s expressive impact by a more striking gesture: he resurrects the opening inverted-arch theme from the first movement. This recollection of an earlier serenity, on the verge of the impending finale, most closely parallels the outstanding circular form of his Sonata in A Major, op. 101 and Ninth Symphony, op. 125 (where it is taken a step further). On his way to the finale, we also experience Beethoven’s late-period interest in “rhythmic crescendo” (gradually increasing rhythmic activity), which culminates in simultaneous trills spread across the parts. This energy spills over into a tripping snippet of theme, hesitant and searching; in detail, Beethoven writes ascending stepwise motion through a fourth interval with a particular dactylic rhythm. At first it seems nothing more than a marginal comment. But if we know at all how his creative mind works, we will not be surprised that this throw-away gesture becomes the seminal idea for the entire finale.

Marked Allegro Vivace, the finale projects the same clear sonata-allegro form as the fast section of the first movement. But following the G-major cadence that closes the exposition, Beethoven cleverly negates the preceding energy with a gesture of stark open fifths in the cello, thrice repeated. Such fifths are used to evoke a primordial void at the very beginning of his Ninth Symphony: the open fifth, for example D-A, offers a bare skeleton in search of distinguishing musical content to help flesh it out. Rather than following any grandiose evolution here, Beethoven glibly sends in the piano with the skipping dactyl motive. He heightens the comic deflection by giving an additional three-note tag to the cello that must surely, we are led to think, have been played late. The interaction between piano and cello as Beethoven has composed it sounds like a mistake on the cellist’s part, at least on first hearing. Perhaps the performers have failed to coordinate their motions (yikes!). But it’s not a mistake, and the irony is that this level of comedy requires perfect coordination and timing, so that what “sounds wrong” is actually right. Beethoven repeats the gesture at the end of the recapitulation as he leads into the coda.

I don’t want to make this single comic feature out to be more than it is, for there are lovely and exciting portions of the finale that have nothing to do with humor. Nevertheless, in the end, the comic turn carries the day. As the coda draws to a close, Beethoven answers the rising fourth motive with a light-hearted falling fifth melody, almost like a nursery tune in its simplicity. After slowing down to dwell one last time on the childish naïveté, he briskly rounds off the sonata with an emphatic cadence played up to tempo. Whereas earlier portions of this cello sonata were marked by touches of pastoral tranquility and Sturm und Drang, the enigmatic drone fifths help usher in Beethoven’s more playful side of Arcadian musings.

(c) Jason Stell