Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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SONATA &25
build at once upon the topmost stone of their
edifice. His earliest sonatas (op. 2) are on the
scale of their symphonies. He began with the
four-movement plan which they had almost entirely
reserved for the orchestra. In the second
sonata he already produces an example of his own
peculiar kind of slow movement, full, rich, decisive
in form, unaffected in idea, and completely
divested of the elaborate graces which had been
before its most conspicuous feature. In the
same sonata also he produces a scherzo, short
in this instance, and following the lines of
the minuet, but of the genuine characteristic
quality. Soon, in obedience to the spread of his
idea, the capacity of the instrument seems to
expand, and to attain an altogether new richness
of sound, and a fulness it never showed before,
as in many parts of the fourth Sonata (op. 7),
especially the Largo, which shows the unmistakable
qualities which ultimately expanded into
the unsurpassed slow movement of the opus 106.
As early its the second Sonata he puts a new
aspect upon the limits of the first sections ; he
not only makes his second subject in the first
movement modulate, but he develops the
cadence -figure into a very noticeable subject.
It is fortunately unnecessary to follow in detail
the various ways in which he expanded the
structural elements of the sonata, as it has
ah-eady been described in the article Beethoven,
and other details are given in the article Form.
In respect of the subject and its treatment, a,
fortunate opportunity is offered by a coincidence
between a subordinate subject in a sonata of
Haydn's in C, and a similar accessory in Beethoven's
Sonata for violoncello and pianoforte in
A major (op. 69), which serves to illustrate
pregnantly the difference of scope which characterises
their respective treatment. Haydn's is
as follows :
" r ' r '
r
r
' t
'' r"^ ''
etc.
As has been already explained, an expansion of
this kind makes inevitable a similar expansion
in the whole struotm-e of the movement, and a
much wider choice of relative keys than simple
tonic and dominant in the expository sections ;
or else a much freer movement in every part of
the sections, and emphasis upon unexpected
relations of harmony. Even without this, the
new warmth and intensity of the subject precludes
mere reiteration of the accustomed usages,
and necessitates a greater proportionate vitality
in the .subordinate parts of the work. The
relative heat must be maintained, and to fall
back upon familiar formulas would clearly be a
jarring anomaly. In this manner the idea
begins to dictate the form. But in order to
carry out in equal measure the development of
the idea, every resource that the range of music
can supply must be admissible to him that can
wield it with relevance. Hence Beethoven, as
early as op. 31, No. 2, reintroduces instrumental
recitative with extraordinary effect.
Later, he resumes the rhapsodical movement
which Bach and earlier composers had employed
in a different sense, as in the Sonata in £b, op.
81, and ifl the third division of that in A,
op. 101, and in the most romantic of romantic
movements, the first in E major of op. 109.
And lastly, he brings back the fugue as the
closest means of expressing a, certain kind of
idea. In these cases the fugue is not a retrogression,
nor a hybrid, but a new adaptation of
an old and invaluable form under the influence
of perfectly assimilated harmonic principles.
The great fugue in the Sonata in B|>, op. 106,
for instance, is not only extraordinary as a fugue,
but is distributed in a perfectly ideal balance of
long contrasting periods in different states of.
feeling, culminating duly with a supreme rush
of elaborate force, as complex and as inexorable
as some mighty action of nature. In these
sonatas Beethoven touches all moods, and all
in the absolute manner free from formality or
crude artifice, which is the essential characteristic
of genuine modern music. In a few of the
earlier sonatas he reverts to manners and
structural effects which are suggestive of the
principles of his predecessors. But these occasional
incursions of external influence are with
rare exceptions inferior to the works in which
his own original force of will speaks with genuine
and characteristic freedom. The more difficult
the problem suggested by the thought which is
embodied in the subject, the greateris the result.
The fuU richness of his nature is not called out
to the strongest point till there is something