Op. 29, Movement 3

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky. Symphony No. 3 in D major ("Polish"), Op. Composition Information ↓; Description ↓; Parts/Movements ↓; Appears On ↓.
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Piano Sonata No. 29 (Beethoven)

This descending third is quite ubiquitous throughout the work but most clearly recognizable in the following sections: After the first subject is spun out for a while, the opening set of fortissimo chords are stated again, this time followed by a similar rhythm on the unexpected chord of D major.

This ushers in the more lyrical second subject in the submediant that is, a minor third below the tonic , G major.

A third and final musical subject appears after this, which hints at G minor by chromatic alterations of the third scale degree, as well as the minor subdominant C minor. The exposition ends with a largely stepwise figure in the treble clef in a high register, while the left hand moves in an octave-outlining accompaniment in eighth notes.

Directly after, the exposition's first subject is composed in fugato and features an incredible display of musical development.

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The fugato ends with a section featuring non-fugal imitation between registers, eventually resounding in repeated D-major chords. The music progresses to the alien key of B major , in which the third and first subjects of the exposition are played. The brief second movement includes a great variety of harmonic and thematic material. The scherzo 's theme — which Rosen calls a humorous form [4] of the first movement's first subject — is at once playful, lively, and pleasant. It borrows the opening theme from the composer's Eroica symphony and places it in a minor key.

Following this dark interlude, Beethoven inserts a more intense presto section in 2 4 meter , still in the minor, which eventually segues back to the scherzo. After a varied reprise of the scherzo's first section, a coda with a meter change to cut time follows. Wilhelm Kempff played for approximately 16 minutes and Christoph Eschenbach 25 minutes that finally ends with a Picardy third. Paul Bekker called the movement "the apotheosis of pain, of that deep sorrow for which there is no remedy, and which finds expression not in passionate outpourings, but in the immeasurable stillness of utter woe".

Structurally, it follows traditional Classical-era sonata form, but the recapitulation of the main theme is varied to include extensive figurations in the right hand that anticipate some of the techniques of Romantic piano music.

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The movement begins with a slow introduction that serves to transition from the third movement. Dominated by falling thirds in the bass line, the music three times pauses on a pedal and engages in speculative contrapuntal experimentation, in a manner foreshadowing the quotations from the first three movements of the Ninth Symphony in the opening of the fourth movement of that work. The subject of the fugue can be divided itself into three parts: Marked con alcune licenze "with some licenses" , the fugue, one of Beethoven's greatest contrapuntal achievements, as well as making incredible demands on the performer, moves through a number of contrasting sections and includes a number of "learned" contrapuntal devices, often, and significantly, wielded with a dramatic fury and dissonance inimical to their conservative and academic associations.

The work was perceived as almost unplayable but was nevertheless seen as the summit of piano literature since its very first publication. However, even as progressive a musician as Richard Wagner , who appreciated the work and fully admired the late string quartets , held reservations for what he perceived as a lack of succinctness in its composition. The composer Felix Weingartner produced an orchestration of the sonata. In , Nietzsche had suggested such an orchestration:.

In the lives of great artists, there are unfortunate contingencies which, for example, force the painter to sketch his most significant picture as only a fleeting thought, or which forced Beethoven to leave us only the unsatisfying piano reduction of a symphony in certain great piano sonatas the great B flat major.

In such cases, the artist coming after should try to correct the great men's lives after the fact; for example, a master of all orchestral effects would do so by restoring to life the symphony that had suffered an apparent pianistic death.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In the opening Allegro moderato this spaciousness is reflected in the cantabile main theme, exploiting the sonorous possibilities provided by the extra instrument as the theme is rescored at its first repetition.


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Another possibility is revealed by the second theme unusually in A major rather than the expected dominant key of G with the melody first lightly scored, then imitated by the lower instruments. The Adagio molto espressivo is similarly expansive, its Italianate melodies richly ornamented, and coloured and re-coloured by imaginative scoring the pizzicato chording for the second violin, for example, at the reprise of the main theme.


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  • Symphony No. 3 in D major ("Polish"), Op. 29.
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    • The Scherzo develops a three-note arpeggio motif from the second bar, at first playfully, later with leaping energy over an emphatic drone bass. The Trio is more relaxed, with a billowing rising arpeggio as its theme; in the second half the tonality swerves from F to D flat, with an insistent unison ostinato pinned by further drone harmonies in the second viola. Even more surprising is the interruption of the storm by a minuet in exaggeratedly whimsical style, first in A, later in C, before a final tonal twist sees Beethoven beginning the sprint to the line with a swerve to A flat, the key of the second theme.

    The A minor is the second of the three quartets commissioned by Prince Nicholas Galitzin, and was composed during the first half of The celebrated third movement was written at Baden where Beethoven was recuperating from a serious intestinal inflammation. An early hearing of the work was attended by the British composer and conductor Sir George Smart, who recorded that despite his deafness Beethoven took charge of the rehearsal: The motto is heard in the mysterious introduction, swept away by the impassioned cadenza, which leads into the strangely agitated main theme, underpinned by the motto in long notes passed between the accompanying instruments in the manner of a cantus firmus.

    The central development varies and deepens the relationship between theme and motto, before a double recapitulation, with the theme and contrasting second subject heard in E minor and C major respectively, then balanced by a return to the tonic key. The main theme undergoes a final transformation, with the motto dispersed starkly through the texture — F cello , E viola , G sharp second violin , A cello — initiating a powerfully scored coda that seems to hover between desperation and defiance.

    If the first movement takes its cue from Bach, the second is a distant echo of Mozart A major Quartet, K, a work that Beethoven is known to have admired and studied, and which had already influenced the A major quartet, Op. The music is somewhere between scherzo and minuet, uneasy in its elegance and obsessive interplay of motif.

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    The Trio is a different kind of dance, an evocation of folk fiddling, at first over a glassy open-string drone, then with the melody broken up over spiky chords, with the changes of harmony tugging at our sense of the barline, so that upbeats become downbeats. The vision is abruptly dispelled in a swaggering little march, almost shocking in its self assurance, followed immediately by a melodramatic recitative.

    Both are stepping-stones to addressing, in the finale, the questions left by the anguished end to the first movement.

    Piano Sonata No. 29 (Beethoven) - Wikipedia

    As the first violin approaches the cadence its line dwells on the paired semitones of the motto, G sharp—A and F—E, the latter taken up by the second violin as part of the insistent accompaniment to the theme of the finale. The restless melody has affinities with the moto perpetuo finale of the D minor piano sonata Op. Finally, the motto recurs in another guise in a mysterious passage of counterpoint that leads to a climactic resumption of the theme, in an agitated presto, with the cello in its highest register, before the tonality suddenly melts into the major, and an extended coda, both lyrical and dance-like, that miraculously transforms as it resolves.

    How I first encountered Beethoven and his quartets. Jonathan Biss writes about op. Dan Tong writes about op. Peter Hill writes about Op. Exploring the Beethoven Quartets on disc: Many Paths to Nirvana. Misha Donat writes about Op.