LATE BEETHOVEN LATE BEETHOVEN - Luisa Guembes-Buchanan

The plan of the fugue is also descending thirds relying on
the subdominant and minor keys. It thus retains the traditional
features of a classical finale movement. The majority
of this movement consists of fugal variations on the theme,
treated in rhythmic augmentation, retrograde motion and
inversion. Each of the sections undergoes a modulation of a
falling third. The descent of a minor second is also present
here. Of note is the use of the trill as thematic material.
In the final section, an inversion of the theme, Beethoven
unleashes what Rosen describes as “demonic energy and a
torrent of dissonances that make the harmonic progressions
difficult to hear”. 20
In this movement each new treatment of the material
is a dramatic event, completely distinct like a set of
variations. In his article “Analysis and Hermeneutics” the
Austrian musicologist Erwin Ratz came to the conclusion
that in the Hammerklavier it is the music that drives us
to ask what Beethoven meant and what specific events it
symbolizes. Some have ventured a response. When addressing
the end of the fugue, Nicholas Marston quotes Dylan
Thomas: “rage, rage against the dying light”. 21
Kindermann opines that “the Hammerklavier Sonata
implies a narrative progression of heroic struggle and suffering,
leading to a rebirth of creative possibilities. After the
purgatorial Adagio sostenuto, the return of the vital forces
in the slow introduction to the finale, and the fiery defiance
of expression in the fugue itself, embody one of Beethoven’s
most radical statements, a piece of ‘new music’ among the
most uncompromising ever written”. 22
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