The second part of the Sonate is very slow, and at first it seems to promise peace for the troubled soul. It is in B flat major, which should and does suggest rest. But after such a struggle as the first movement indicated, peace does not come at once; listen to the throbbing, shuddering triplets in the bass; they begin at the seventeenth bar, and every time that they occur they are followed by a lament in the minor. They accompany that lament. Further on, we find a lovely song-like passage in F major (bar 31), and now see how beautifully Beethoven arrives at that song. Laying a gentle hand on his triplets (bar 27) he smoothes them into even notes, changes the sad C minor for C major, and then brings in his song. But that song is only a rift in the clouds; the storm comes on again, always heralded by the triplets, and note the curious accompaniment given later on to the left hand. Right up at the top of the key-board it begins and slowly it creeps down, always down. Hope would ascend—that passage marks despair. Once again comes the song of comfort, this time in B flat major, and the movement closes calmly in the same key.
The last part of the Sonate had a curious origin. Seated in his silent room, which looked out upon the little-frequented high road leading to the village, the composer became conscious of the trab-trab of a horse whose rider was passing by. The rhythmic movements of the animal’s hoofs, heard as they were but faintly by the half deaf musician, resolved themselves into a phrase in his mind which he jotted down mechanically, and this phrase persistently reiterated, formed the conclusion to the Sonate which was then filling heart and brain.
Only Beethoven would have conceived psychology so good as that. How often in the most crucial moments some trifling, quite irrelevant detail forces itself upon our notice, and absorbs attention which we should be unwilling to acknowledge.
BEETHOVEN, 1786-1827.
The portrait of the great composer’s soul, which he painted for us in the D minor Sonate, would have been less perfect had he withheld the trivial circumstance which awoke him from his dreams, and gave him again to the world.
At this country retreat the famous Heiligenstadt will was also written.
It shows us another side of Beethoven’s character, and leads to another phase of his Romanticism.
The will begins thus: “Oh, you men, you who have thought of me as defiant, stubborn, misanthropic, what wrong you have done me! Bethink you that for six years an incurable condition has befallen me, made worse by foolish doctors who from year to year deceived me with hopes of improvement. Though born with a fiery temperament, and even susceptible to the charms of society, I have had to separate myself from everyone, and pass my years in loneliness.