The rondo took on a weight and significance to which it was scarcely considered sufficient by the older masters. The rondo which is the last movement of opus 53 is of huge proportions.
Beethoven frequently composed his sonatas in four movements, following in this the model offered by the symphonies of his predecessors. The added movement was descended from the minuet. In some of the sonatas it still bears the name and occupies its traditional place between the slow movement and the last movement, notably in the sonatas opus 2, No. 1, and opus 10, No. 3. In opus 2, No. 2, and opus 2, No. 3, the movement is called a scherzo and has lost not its dance rhythm but its dance character. In opus 31, No. 3, the scherzo has not even the triple rhythm which usually distinguished it. It follows the first movement and is itself followed by a minuet and a final rondo. In 106 it is again the second movement, and in 110 can be recognized in spirit, without a name, likewise as second movement. The scherzos introduce into the later sonatas, as into the symphonies, a note of something between irony and mystery, a strange development from the sunny dances of Haydn; a sort of harsh echo of life in dense valleys from which Beethoven has long since ascended.
And finally the fugue finds place in the scheme, sounding invariably a note of triumph, as of the power of man’s will and the immutable law of order in the universe.
Thus by extending the length of the various movements, by adding distinct and significant themes in transitional and closing sections of the triplex form, by incorporating additional movements in the sonata group, by introducing forms like the scherzo and the fugue, which, though they had been found in the suite, had been almost never employed by the composers of sonatas, Beethoven enormously expanded the sonata as a whole. But even more remarkable was the tendency which showed itself relatively early to give a unity and coherence to the group.
This was an inevitable result of Beethoven’s attitude towards music. He felt himself, as we have said, a poet. His music was consciously the expression of almost definite emotions, definite ideals. These by reason of the nature of the man were of heroic proportions, finding an adequate vehicle of expression only in music of broad and varied design. The sonata offered in pianoforte music the possibilities of such expression. The various movements afforded a chance for the play, the contrast and change of moods great in themselves. The length of the work as a whole predicated the widest possible limits. It needed but ideas strong enough to dominate and fill these limits to give to the group an organic life, to establish a close connection, even a fundamental interdependence between the erstwhile independent and separate movements.
Such ideas Beethoven did not at once bring to the sonata. Only the last sonatas, beginning with opus 101, are truly so firmly knit or welded that the individual movements are incomplete apart from the whole, that the demarcation between them fades or does not exist at all. In the first sonatas he is clearly preoccupied with expanding the power of expression of the instrument, with technical problems, with problems of form in the separate movements. The organic life which is to mark the last sonatas is not a matter of external structure, of thematic relationship. M. Vincent d’Indy points to the resemblance between the first notes of the first theme of the final movement in opus 13 and the second theme in the first movement of the same sonata, as an indication of the tendency thus early evident in Beethoven to give to the sonata group a consolidation more real than a mere conventionally accepted arrangement. Even earlier instances may be found of such resemblances in the thematic material of the various movements. The theme of the rondo of opus 10, No. 3, may well have come from the second theme of the first movement. Indeed, it is not hard to believe that in the very first of the published sonatas, opus 2, No. 1, Beethoven employed a modification of the opening theme of the first movement as basis for a contrasting episode in the last.
But do such devices succeed in giving to a whole sonata an indissoluble unity? Hardly. They may make of one movement a sequel to a previous movement. Analogies may be found in the work of the great novelists. Beatrice Esmond plays a part in ‘The Virginians,’ but that does not necessarily mean that ‘Henry Esmond’ is incomplete as a work of art without the later novel. Brahms, it will be remembered, worked studiously to construct a sequence of movements from somewhat the same thematic material, notably in the F-sharp minor pianoforte sonata and in his first symphony. But more than such reminiscences or such recrudescences is necessary to give to a group of movements the closely interdependent organic life that we find in the later Beethoven sonatas. The movements of the popular Sonata Pathétique have an independent and a complete life of themselves. It is familiarity with the sequence in which Beethoven arranged them that truly holds them together, the still accepted ideal of a purely conventional arrangement.
Somewhat later Beethoven tried experiments which are more significant. There are the two sonatas published as opus 27. Each is a sonata quasi una fantasia,—in the manner of a fantasy. The first is conspicuous by diversity or irregularity of form. It is not easy to decide upon the limits of the various movements. A beautiful, long, slow section is, as it were, engulfed by an impassioned short allegro in C major, from which it emerges again almost unvaried. It comes to a definite close, but the flash of the C major section across the progress of the music has left an impression of incompleteness, has destroyed, as it were, the equilibrium of the whole so far. The piece is obviously still fragmentary, still indeterminate. More must come to give us a satisfying sense of completeness. So we are propelled by restlessness into another allegro, this time a much longer section, more or less developed, in C minor, clearly a scherzo in character. It is wild. We have been plunged into music that, far from fulfilling the need of more that we felt after the opening sections, leaves us more than ever unsatisfied. There follows a brief adagio, promising an ultimate solution of all the mystery and uncertainty, seeming, by the long trills and slowly descending single notes at the end, really to introduce the satisfying order which must follow out of such chaos. The final rondo is orderly and stable from the beginning. At the end comes a repetition of phrases from the adagio, as to remind us of a promise now fulfilled, and a lively little coda sends us away cheerful and refreshed.
The nature of this music is such that up to the final rondo its various sections must, if taken from the whole, affect us as being fragmentary and unsatisfying. The work is more a fantasy than a sonata. The triplex form is not to be found in it. But it is accepted as a sonata, as is the previous one, opus 26, or Mozart’s sonata in A major, beginning with a theme and variations; and the close interdependence of its various sections, æsthetic if not thematic, points unmistakably to the method of the last sonatas.
The movements of the sonata in C-sharp minor, opus 27, No. 2, are from the point of view of form complete in themselves. Moreover, the first and last movements are perfectly in triplex form. But this sonata, too, is to be regarded, according to Beethoven himself, as in the nature of a fantasy. This is because of the quality of improvisation which pervades it all, which cannot be hidden even by the perfect finish of the form. And the entire improvisation seems to be sprung of one mood, the whole music related to one fundamental idea. Whether or not it was inspired by the beautiful lady to whom it is dedicated, for whom Beethoven had an apparently lasting though vain passion, need not concern us. The music as it stands is full of the deepest and most passionate feeling. The slow movement has a great deal the nature of a prelude. Its lyric quality is passive; but it sings of emotions which must assert themselves in active and more violent self-expression. And so, passing under, as it were, the shadowy ephemeral second movement which may veil but not suppress them, they burst out in the last movement with the power of a great storm.