Beethoven began what became his Piano Sonata No. 29 around December 1817. It was originally intended for Archduke Rudolph’s nameday on 17 April 1818, but as usual, Beethoven blew the deadline and the work dragged on until at least the autumn.
“I am writing a sonata now which is going to be my greatest,” Beethoven told Carl Czerny of his Piano Sonata No. 29.
“There you have a sonata that will give pianists something to do,” Beethoven later said, “a work that will be played in fifty years’ time.”
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 was published as Opus 106 in separate French and German editions as “Grande Sonate pour le Piano-forte” and “Grosse Sonate für das Hammer-Klavier,” but the German title prevailed, and it became known by the nickname “Hammerklavier.”
The Hammerklavier is a mix of tradition and experimentation. It is structurally conventional — astoundingly, Beethoven’s first four-movement piano sonata since No. 18, “The Hunt,” Opus 31, No. 3 (Day 157). The two central movements are conventionally a Scherzo and an Adagio.
At 40 to 50 minutes in length, the Hammerklavier is Beethoven’s longest piano sonata, and characterized by frequent changes in tempo and key signatures. The Adagio is expansive and expressive, and the final movement is an elaborate fugue.
#Beethoven250 Day 311
Piano Sonata No. 29 “Hammerklavier” in B♭ Major (Opus 106), 1818
The great Yuja Wang (@YujaWang) at Carnegie Hall four years ago.
The pounding chords that begin the first movement of the Hammerklavier Sonata are quickly abandoned for a quieter, more lyrical theme, but the energy of the opening soon returns and is incorporated into a breathtaking panorama of aggression and gentleness.
Early sketches of the Hammerklavier are mixed with a choral work for the Archduke Rudolph, and some similarities suggest that the opening chords are a fanfare associated with the word “Vivat vivat Rudophus,” to whom the sonata is dedicated.
The main theme of the Scherzo movement of the Hammerklavier is built from a 4-note motif that bounces all over the keyboard. The Trio section in the parallel minor is characterized by a stately melody accompanied by flowing triplets alternating the left and right hands. But before the return to the initial theme, Beethoven inserts an unexpected second Trio, a Presto section in 2/4 time that ends with a five-octave run. Another 2/4 Presto, much shorter, comes after the main theme reprise to signal a sudden witty conclusion.
The slow movement Adagio of the Hammerklavier is of unprecedented and audacious length. Although it’s in sonata form, it seems to unfold like a fantasy, an introverted brooding journey through despair, hope, and reconciliation.
The third movement of the Hammerklavier has inspired some rapturous prose. In The Rhythm of Modern Music, published 1909, C. F. Abdy Williams wrote of the
long contemplative Adagio, of a character so noble, so elevated, so dignified, that it could only have been written by a composer who was completely out of touch with the everyday world, whose thoughts were entirely occupied with the highest expression that music is capable of.
That such a movement as the adagio sostenuto of this sonata could ever have been produced, even by the genius of Beethoven, if the composer had not been cut off by his deafness from the trivialities of life, is inconceivable. It is the expression of a lofty soul, communing with itself, wandering in a region of sound that existed in his brain, and made accessible to ordinary mortals by a genius so transcendent, so grand, as occurs only once in many centuries.
In 1860, early Beethoven biographer Wilhelm von Lenz described the Hammerklavier Adagio as:
A mausoleum of the world's collective suffering; the greatest piano adagio in the general literature. Immense lamentation, sitting on the ruins of all happiness.
In an earlier Beethoven work, a slow movement such as the one in the Hammerklavier would have dominated as the sonata’s emotional core. But the strength of the first movement is not forgotten, and then Beethoven follows the Adagio with another powerhouse.
The finale of the Hammerklavier begins with a Largo introduction during which Beethoven seems to try out and quickly reject three fugue themes. This process of presentation and rejection reminds Charles Rosen of the opening of the finale of the 9th Symphony. He writes that the third trial fugue
breaks off brutally, as if to say “Nicht diese Töne!” The style of Bach is rejected: if there is to be counterpoint, it must be made new. (Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, p. 227)
The fugue theme in the Hammerklavier finale begins with a wide leap and a trill, labeled by Beethoven as a “3-voice fugue, with occasional freedoms.” This is the longest and most complex fugue that Beethoven wrote so far, challenging the listener as well as the pianist.
Lewis Lockwood writes of the final movement of the Hammerklavier:
The fugue unfolds in two ways. One is in its contrapuntal transformations of its subject in a time-honored manner. We find passages devoted to the subject in retrograde with a new counter-subject, and the subject in inversion. Far from supposing that Beethoven is “merely displaying erudition” or “submitting” to so-called constructivist principles of fugue writing in using augmentation, retrograde, and inversion to manipulate thematic material, we see that their characteristic foundations as developmental features of fugue are essential to the aesthetic he is embracing in this finale. His aim in this movement is to rival Bach’s capacity to expand and rejoice in displays of rigorous formal logical and contrapuntal skill while infusing them with that “poetic” element (as Beethoven himself called it) that is fully his own. (Beethoven, pp. 382–3)