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Piano Sonata in E-flat major, Op. 7

Dedicated to Countess Babette Keglevics

Composed: 1796–97

Movement 2: Largo, con gran espressione

Form: Da Capo Aria-form

Orpheus leading Eurydice out of Hades

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This is a very intense piece of music. When performing it, one has to try to bring to life all its theatrical moments. It is stunning music, as Beethoven’s slow movements often are.

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OPERA SERIA
This movement is based on the musical language of Opera Seria. In the post about the first movement of sonata op. 2 No. 3, we talked about Opera Buffa, which is comic opera. Opera seria is, well, serious opera. It was the form of opera with superhuman heroes, not the kind of imperfect characters like Figaro. Partly therefore, it was the preferred form of opera by the courts and the ruling classes.

At the same time, Europe went towards enlightenment, and in its wake, taking baby-steps towards a more democratic society. Therefore, Opera Seria was doomed to fall out of popularity as an art form. During times when the natural and less pretentious were on people’s minds, the uber-dramatic and heroic was not really going to be taken seriously anymore.

Opera Seria was what Beethoven preferred, he thought Opera Buffa dealt with “immoral” stories (he would certainly not start an opera with Figaro measuring his bed). This is one of the reasons why Beethoven never made it as an opera composer. While Mozart’s intellect, humor and razor-sharp observations on society fell in absolutely perfect synch with the times he lived in, Beethoven was quite backwards; an elitist with strong, moralist convictions.

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THE DA CAPO ARIA
The big star of the Opera Seria was the Castrati, a male singer who was castrated as a boy and therefore kept a high voice, apparently with a very special color and lung capacity as he grew older. The most famous one was Farinelli, and this brings us perfectly to the example of a Da Capo Aria, the template of many slow movements of early Beethoven: a melody…then a middle section which is more stormy…then the first melody again, but this time with embellishments.

Let’s repeat, because this Da Capo Aria-form is the basis for endless slow movements.

– First theme at the start.

– At 1.34, a stormy middle section.

– At 2.05, the first theme comes back, but the singer is embellishing.

Here it is, “Lascia ch’io Pianga”, a painfully beautiful aria:

Let me weep over my cruel fate
And sigh for my lost freedom

May the pain shatter the chains
Of my torments just out of mercy

Let me weep over my cruel fate
And sigh for my lost freedom

A special thing here is the “sighs”…paaampa….papaaampa…..
Each “sigh” has its own value, its own presence.

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BAROQUE “SIGHS” IN MUSIC
Let’s turn to the beginning of the sonata’s second movement. It also starts with “sighs”, the same as in the baroque aria, but Beethoven has it played much, much slower. That makes the silences long, and very special. Especially after the first movements incessant “engine”. It is one of those moments in music when we can “listen to silences”, when the empty, silent room in between sounds speaks just as much as the actual harmonies does.

It’s marked Largo con gran espressione by Beethoven, very slow with great expression. In a concert hall, the long silences makes an incredible impact, when things go right the audiences should feel like they don’t dare to breath.

He falls in to deep melancholy until he sees a girl with an amazing resemblance of Madeleine. They start to meet, and in his (quite unsympathetic) obsession he tries to change the girl’s looks so that she will look exactly like Madeleine. Here is a scene when he buys her the grey suit and other clothes worn by his dead beloved:

And when he also manages to make her dye her hair, and she certainly becomes the visual double of Madeleine, the composer Bernard Hermann is invoking Tristan’s Liebestod. Big time.

He is, in an obsessive way, trying to bring back Madeleine from the dead. And just like in the Orpheus myth, she will die twice…

A little side track perhaps, but I personally like when you can connect art from different times. And this shows what great creators do: both Hitchcock and Beethoven takes a dramatic idea and with their imagination and perfection, they create great works of art for us to enjoy. Plus, Vertigo is such an incredible movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope you will now!

THE EXPRESSION OF SADNESS
Here is a beautiful aria from this opera:

Now, would you say this is very sad? Maybe not. But the name of the aria is Che farò senza Euridice?, what will I do without Eurydice, I have lost my Eurydice…

This is the moment when Euredyce has dies again, after Orpheus looked at her. He is completely heartbroken, of course. So, this is a very sad song. Why would it be perceived as not being sad?

I think we live in a time when all expressions are to be shown in capital letters, without ambiguity. And it can simplify our minds. Listen again to the aria, and never mind that it is in major, never mind that the singing is quite simple and not boiling over with emotions. In its own way, it makes the whole thing even more painful:

The similarity with the part of the Beethoven sonata is quite striking. Note also that the accompaniment has basically the same figuration, this figure:

Now listen to the part from Beethoven’s slow movement again…

Listen now to what comes out of our melody from before in the sonata…Furies is saying NO!

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