Cello Sonatas Nos. 4 and 5 (Beethoven)

The Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major op 102.2 is a sonata for cello and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven.

• 4.1 documents
• 4.2 Further Reading

Formation

Beethoven wrote the Cello Sonatas, Op 102 for his many years patroness, the Countess Anna -Maria Erdődy, and Joseph left, the cellist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, was closely associated with the Beethoven primarily by the performance of his string quartets.

About the Music

The Sonata op 102.2 is similar in structure to Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, op 70.1, the so-called "ghost trio": A sentence with a peculiar, consisting of bare octaves main theme is followed by a quiet middle movement, while the Sonata with a pensive finale in D minor is completed.

The sonatas op 102 are among Beethoven's late work.

1st movement: Allegro con brio

The introductory phrase of the sonata is, as their final, dominated polyphonic. Beethoven varies here the sonata form by the traditionally based in the implementation issues processing begins only in the recapitulation.

2nd movement: Adagio con molto sentimento d' affetto, attacca

The painful expression of the middle movement begins in consisting of four lines of verse of the chorale set start and is increasingly lyrical middle section in D major up to the recapitulation and coda continued. The melody of the coda has its roots in the middle and points forward to the joint theme of the finale, and serves as a transition.

3rd movement: Allegro - Allegro fugato

An argument advanced by the cello and picked up by the piano scale marks the beginning of the third set and thus is similar to the beginning of the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major op 21 The Finalfuge the Sonata op 102.2 points in their design to the completed in 1818, the Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op 106 ( " Hammerklavier" Sonata ) operating systems. But already the implementation leaves including through early issues demolition and other applications in the stretto, which Carl Dahlhaus, referred to as " the mere appearance of a stretto ," the usual joint scheme. Other deviations from the joint scheme such as the reversal in pianissimo or the second counterpoint directed against the " inexorability of fugal treatment ."

As an overall assessment of the joint Carl Dahlhaus wrote in 1978:

" The joint is [ ... ] less representation of a clearly defined topic in changing contrapuntal configurations rather than development of a substance which, ever updated in the thematic process to which the joint shape was re-minted the first place. "

Effect

Both Cello Sonatas Op 102, the Countess Anna -Maria Erdődy dedicated. The first edition of the sonatas was published in 1817 by Simrock in Bonn -Verlag.

The contrapuntal nature of the two sonatas caused confusion. So wrote in 1824 Adolf Bernhard Marx in the " general musical newspaper" on the finale of the Sonata op 102.2: " There now follows a 6 pages long artificially crafted fugue, the Rec least originality concedes ."