BEETHOVEN

‘Moonlight’ Sonata op 27 no 2, first movement

Teacher and performer Janet Newman shows how to bring delicate layers of subtlety to this appealing and timeless piece

 

 

Ability Rating

Intermediate

 

Info

Key: C# minor

Tempo: Adagio sostenuto

Style: Classical

 

Will improve you

pp tone control

Evenness of touch

Strength of fifth finger

 

Learning Tip

Practise finger substitution, by playing a scale in any key and substituting a different finger on each note: 1, 2-1, 2-1, and so on; then 1, 3-1, 3-1, and so on, moving through all five fingers. Do hands separately – and without sounding bumpy!

 

This movement has an immense and enduring popularity among musicians and non-musicians alike. Almost everyone recognises it– no matter what their age or musical education – and almost everybody with an interest in playing the piano will have tried to learn it. Although written well over 200 years ago, it surprises us still with a sense of improvisatory musical exploration that feels remarkably contemporary, and the heart-breaking simplicity of the main theme (described by Berlioz as a ‘lamentation’) appeals to the listener and player alike with a direct, emotional voice.

 

Let’s start with the pedalling instruction just under the movement heading – ‘Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino’. This essentially means that the whole movement should be played very delicately and without dampers, i.e. with the right sustain pedal (tre corde) depressed. The piano as an instrument has changed a great deal since Beethoven’s time. Our modern piano has a greater ability to sustain sound, so if you kept the pedal on as suggested by the direction, the harmonies would soon blur and clash badly, ruining the ethereal nature of the music. So for those of us without a period instrument at our disposal, the solution is to pedal when the harmonies change, which avoids excessive dissonance but maintains the essential character effectively. So much could be said on pedalling and those with a deeper interest should refer to Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas by Charles Rosen and The Pianist’s Guide to Pedaling by Joseph Banowetz.

 

The loudest dynamic in this piece is, at best, mezzo forte and the quietest, pianissimo. This means that you will need to be able to control your tone with the utmost subtlety and evenness. This piece is well known for being one of the hardest to play from this point of view, as it is extremely difficult to sustain this dynamic quality throughout the movement and play without any interruptions to the melodic line. First of all, I would suggest that you divide the movement into sections in order to help with the note learning: bars 1-9, bars 9-15, bars 15-23, bars 23-28 and bars 28-42, at which point you will have reached the recapitulation of the main theme. Continue with sectional work from bars 42-51 (this passage contains material from the exposition, so you will have already learnt many of the notes). From bar 51, go to bar 60. Treat bar 60 to the end as one practice section.

 

Beethoven composed this piece in three distinct layers: the LH has octaves, the middle line is in triplet arpeggio figures and the top line contains the melodic interest. In order to get the notes under your fingers, practise by combining the three elements in differing ways: LH octaves plus RH triplets, RH triplets plus melody and LH octaves plus melody. In this way, you learn how each of the parts interweave and support the others, and it also helps you gain control over your sound. You can also apply the ‘block practising’ method to help you absorb the notes quickly, which is to say play the triplet figure as a chord so that fingers assume the shape of the arpeggio with greater familiarity.

 

To be able to voice the melody (bar 5 and onwards) against the accompaniment with balance and projection (but never so loudly that you break through the sound barrier of pp) is one of the major technical challenges of the piece. A technique that might help is ‘wrist leverage’. As you play the dotted quaver/semiquaver figure of the melody, relax down into the first note with your wrist and then come up slightly on the semiquaver before pulling down again on the first beat resolution note. This is so much easier to demonstrate rather than explain, but try visualising this movement as a fluid, almost circular shape. Also, ‘brace’ your fifth finger and colour the top line with a distinctive, carrying tone – it should pierce to the core, even though the dynamic is hushed and muted. By ‘brace’, a term that piano teachers use frequently, I’m suggesting that the fifth finger should be strong, slightly curled and ready to strike the key. Perhaps it is the hushed and muted quality that led to the poet and critic Ludwig Rellstab to give this sonata its nickname, ‘Moonlight’, as he felt it was a wonderful depiction of moonlight reflecting on Lake Lucerne. If you think of the light of a full moon, it has an extraordinary clarity and lucidity – but with no warmth or colour whatsoever within it. It is this rather bleak soundscape that I try to achieve when I play or indeed, teach the Sonata.

 

The LH has what appears to be the easiest job of all three parts, after all, what difficulties could slowly moving octaves present? However, if you really want to play this movement as faithfully as the composition demands, then I would encourage you to consider joining each octave as much as possible, which means practising your finger substitution. So, start with 1 and 4 on the first octave (bar 1) and which will move to 1 and 5 on the second bar. Then substitute the fourth onto the fifth so that you move to the next position (octave A) with a 1 and 4 and so on. Cling to each octave, because in reality, this is the only way to truly learn how to grade your tone from one note to the next and to be able to (eventually!) guarantee a completely even and consistent pp. Still, there are doubtless differing opinions on this (for example, if your hands are small, it will be easier for you to play all the octaves with thumb and fifth finger) so of course, choose the fingering that you feel will best suit your hands.

 

Enjoy discovering this timelessly beautiful piece; take your time exploring it as it will doubtless become one of the most popular works you will probably ever play!

 

 

A little bit more on…

‘Block’ practising

Block practising is when you take arpeggios or similar patterns within a piece and playing them in block chords – so that your fingers become familiar the shapes within the hand.

 

The sustaining or damper pedal

The sustaining pedal, the right pedal on the modern piano, is often called ‘the soul of the piano’. This pedal raises all the dampers off the strings so that they can continue to vibrate and sound after a note on the keyboard has been released. It adds much expressivity to piano music, allowing notes to resonate, and certain harmonies and notes to be connected together. It’s called tre corde because when depressed, it releases the dampers from all three strings (tre corde in Italian) so that they can resonate. Una corde (one string) is so called because when used, the action on a grand piano moves slightly to the right and so the hammers only play on one of the three strings, which gives a quieter effect.