Beethoven Sonata 31, Op. 110, Phil Grant, Piano

(If continuing from YouTube, scroll to the dotted line.)Those who, like myself, don’t know where they’d be, if they’d be, if it weren’t for the greatest works of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert (see my renditions on YouTube), might be interested in my book, Cabeza and the Meaning of Wilderness: An Exploration of Nature, and Mind, available at www.meaningofwilderness.com . (24p color photos, $14.95, free shipping in US. Mounted and unmounted prints also available) While perhaps only 10 to 20% of the book directly concerns music, all of it, in one way or another, delves deeply into that wilderness of Mind from which all great art arises.

Also, I encourage anyone with even the slightest interest to visit my webpage at the above website, “Learning or Relearning the Piano as an Adult; A Spiritual Endeavor.” Since I myself only started at age 19, I feel I might be able to offer especial insight into the difficulties involved, and how they may be overcome. Also on that page I provide information on the stunning virtual piano I use for recording.

As I’ve written in my comments for Beethoven Sonata 30 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVKZjWikJJ8—

Beethoven said he composed sonatas 30, 31, and 32 “in a single breath.” I’m certain that these sonatas, the 9th Symphony, and the quartets 12-16 were all profoundly inspired by what in Zen would be called an enlightenment experience. Except, in my view, Beethoven went far beyond any spiritual master I’ve known or known of. Two months after the experience of great despair I mentioned in the comment, when the eternal significance of these sonatas seeped into my mind, I began meditation (by excruciating trial and error learning my own non-method), which I’ve continued for the last 50 years, averaging probably 4 hours daily (plus four  hours also at the piano). This has led to more spiritual experiences giving me further understanding of Beethoven’s. See, for example, this excerpt from my book: https://www.wildernessofmindzc.org/me-and-the-moon/  which also discusses Sonata 32.

30, 31, and 32 actually describe that same “enlightenment” experience from slightly different points of view, certainly with the intent of giving us a fuller understanding that is virtually identical with what he expressed in the Ninth Symphony (interestingly, the same length as the three sonatas together), considered by many the greatest piece ever composed (and composed in the same key of D minor as the only other work at that spiritually profound level, Bach’s Art of the Fugue, of which Beethoven had two copies; see my rendition at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfj_hpec2BM&list=PLdW0ErXwQ2sfBal2KmuNC8eUO31KrOzrK )

The first movement of Sonata 31 is designated Moderato cantabile molto expressive, with the further instructions: con amabilita (lovingly, with tenderness, and in parentheses, sanft (gently, in German). And thus it is perhaps Beethoven’s most gentle, tender, loving movement of all his works. In my essay The Last Sonata https://www.meaningofwilderness.com/schubert-sonata-in-b-flat/

(which in a certain sense forms the heart of my book) discussing Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat I write: “But more importantly, in terms of spiritual profundity they (the B-flat and the Quintet in C) are on a level attained only in the last works of Bach (The Art of the Fugue, and parts of the Musical Offering, Goldberg Variations, and B Minor Mass) and Beethoven (the late quartets and piano sonatas, and the Ninth Symphony). If the metaphor of a mountain were to be ascribed to “Truth,” then we might say Bach (and to a slightly lesser extent Beethoven) provides us with a clearer view, but Schubert gives us more explicit directions.”

                But I hadn’t yet worked on Sonata 31, which also gives us explicit directions. In fact, there are many parallels between 31 and the B-flat such that I can use precisely the same language for the former as I did for the latter. In fact I think Schubert himself must have taken and learned from this extraordinary piece. For example, Beethoven begins with a very simple theme (to use the words of T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets which I quote in the B-flat: “A condition of complete simplicity, (costing not less than everything)", followed by a trill. Schubert does the same except instead of the trill being in the treble, it’s in the deep bass. But for Schubert the trill is more like distant thunder reminding him, dying of syphilis that, as I write, “Here is revealed as nowhere else the extraordinary beauty of the mind that knows, despite and because of its most dire circumstances, that there is no choice but to find its way free of wanting and fearing.”

                But for Beethoven the trill, as it is used extensively in the last three sonatas, is full of joy, tender loving gentle joy — yet still of utmost profundity —flowering within the mind. Then for both composers the theme restates followed by a rapid, flowing passage………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Then, for both, as I write for the B-flat: “suddenly we are thrown into great anguish. But as I was learning these notes, playing them slowly over and over, it seemed clear what Schubert was saying: “Yes, we humans feel so much sorrow and pain, but see—you don’t have to struggle with it, resist it, or do anything about it. Yes, it seems unendurable, but only to the wanting, fearing, clinging self . . . do you really need that self?” And soon the pain passes and we enter a passage of lightness and joy.” Then for Beethoven, the anguish slowly dissolves into a tender trill followed by the opening theme overlaying the flowing passage. This tender loving joy . . . effortlessly . . . gently . . . reigning supreme . . . to the end.

                But it’s not the end. Next comes the “costing not less than everything” part. The second movement, Allegro molto. I’ve written a little poem that goes with the notes. First four bars, played piano, we have a scale descending in F minor by means of diminished seventh chords. Then, forte, four bars of mostly F minor’s dominant of C major, and the eight bars then repeat.  My poem: “Do I have to go through this?” “Yes you have to go through this!” “Please don’t make me go through this.” “But you have to go through this!!!” This is the A section; the B follows in mostly forte, syncopated with notes of special emphasis. My words for this: “There’s no choice, no choice, no choice, no choice . . . no choice at all. There’s no choice at all, no choice at all, there really is no choice at all, no choice no choice no choice no choice at all. Just give in . . . and let it . . . . . . (now fortissimo) Destroy! . . . Your will!! Repeat. [Cabeza, Chapter 16, The Unfree Will: “Now I imagine you, the reader, are likely thinking, “This is ridiculous!  I’m not going to go through that!” Well, yes, I heartily applaud those sentiments . . . but . . . you are going to die sometime, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Why not get it out of the way ahead of time? Or at least get your reactions to it out of the way? Like a good Boy Scout: Be Prepared. But I understand. Nobody but nobody really believes they’re going to die.] Then the C section: when I started learning this it made no sense at all. Wild, dissonant disconnected notes of utterly unbridled energy all over the place — sheer chaos. . . to the finite being. But played fast there is a sort of logic, making sense to the infinite spirit. Because it   the infinite spirit. But the finite being has not a clue. Then the A and B sections, with their own repeats, repeat, followed by a coda of a gradual fading arpeggio. Which leads into the final movement.

                Which itself has five discreet units. The first four lines begin Adagio ma non troppo, followed by Recitativo, pui Adagio, Andante, Adagio again, etc. Meanwhile the key signature changes from five flats to four sharps, to six flats. For me it’s clear Beethoven is showing us how stunned, trying one thing after another, he is by the “condition of complete simplicity” of the first movement contrasted with the “costing not less than everything” of the second. He may have written to Countess Erdody in 1815: “We finite beings, who are the embodiment of an infinite spirit, are born only for joy and pain, and it could be said that the most distinguished of us know joy through pain.” And, “Man cannot avoid suffering . . . he must endure without complaining and feel his worthlessness, and then achieve his perfection, that perfection which the Almighty will then bestow upon him.”

                But he still has to live through it over, and over, and over again. Just as I do myself daily, hourly, in my sitting meditation and piano especially. So he shows us, giving explicit directions, what we also must — for in the end we have no choice — go through. In the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, after the reprise the first three movements, and the statement of the theme of the fourth, finally the tenor enters, in the final version, singing, “Oh friends, not these tones. Let us sing rather of something more agreeable and full of joy.” But the first version was, “This chaos [referring to the first three movements] reminds us of our despair.” That’s what I see Beethoven in these first four lines expressing. Then the second unit which he heads with the words: “Song of complaint (klagender gesang, in German)” and “Arioso dolente (sorrowful song).” He knows, in his head at least, he “must endure without complaining,” but he has to live through it — again! And again!! And again!!! And so he does, for the next page, indeed feeling to the nth degree his own worthlessness that keeps him in the trap of the finite being. Over and over, hope builds up — the hope of the finite being — only to be dashed again. Finally, in pianissimo, it dies away. And as I write of the B theme from the second movement of the B-flat: “and out of the quiet a new theme arises.”

The theme of the fugue, which the editor of my edition, Hans von Bülow, calls “pure gold.” I’ll first mention that this extraordinary fugue uses all the devices found in Bach’s Art of the Fugue (called by Charles Rosen, “Infinitely moving, with a pathos and grandeur given to no other work): stretto (overlapping of the theme), augmentation and diminution (the note values of the theme made longer or shorter than initially), and inversion. Prior to the final movement of Sonata 29 Beethoven had written very few fugue- or fugue-like movements, and even those were of questionable quality. Which makes me wonder when he might have acquired his copies of Bach’s supreme masterpiece; in my opinion they must have influenced him deeply. But of the theme, as I write in The Last Sonata essay: “Like the sun, rising after endless night, burning off all clouds and mist, banishing the cold dark shadows, climbing ever higher and higher . . . this theme shines on all with the brilliance of its own perfection.” Except that this perfection, after the first page and a half, very subtly shifts into the minor mode and begins squeezing, squeezing, squeezing— and in time fortissimo in the bass! — the life out of that very finite being. But soon it shifts again to major, consoling, as if to say, “Yes, you really have to go through this, but you’ll see in the end it’s all for the best.” And thus it builds, in the major, up to a climax of a great trill fortissimo, followed by a slow arpeggio down and up the keyboard.

But. Then another arpeggio in the minor . . . and we enter the fourth unit, a variation on the second, marked, “Exhausted complaint (Ermattet klagend)” and “complaint losing force (Perdendo le forze, dolente). And so it goes until it does exhaust itself, in pianissimo, “and out of the quiet” ten successive G major chords building, building, building in intensity . . . until finally a rising arpeggio . . . . . . and now the theme of the fugue reenters, only now inverted, incredibly beautiful. But. Again. Soon it starts twisting, twisting, twisting. Twisting the finite being to fully recognize its worthlessness . . . until . . . no longer bound by its weight, the infinite spirit . . . takes off . . . like an untethered balloon . . . soaring high . . .“ever faster and faster” as Beethoven directs . . . to the sky . . . to the sun . . . to the stars. . . . . . . . . all the way. . . to the final glorious arpeggio and chord.