Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven composed this sonata at about the same time he wrote his "Heiligenstadt Testament," an unsent jeremiad addressed to his brothers, detailing his anguished state of mind (his deafness was becoming acute at the moment of his greatest success). The C minor sonata may be grim, but it is hardly suicidal; it is Beethoven in his most famous mood, an initially depressive state that is gradually overcome through a spasm of anti-Fate fist-shaking.

The Allegro con brio is built upon an initial theme that is simultaneously morbid, dramatic, and defiant. Contrast comes through a lighter but still minor march-like subject. All this drifts into a pianissimo development of primarily the first subject (Beethoven's developments were often lopsided). This theme, in its original form, returns to launch a long coda that struggles to climb into C major before lapsing roughly back to C minor.

Things mellow out in the Adagio cantabile, with the singing main melody first taking on elaborate ornamentation, then stripping down to its most essential notes, dissolving into a scalar passage, and returning in essentially its original form on the violin, while the piano generates a restless accompaniment. Such light variations continue at length, never really altering the tranquil character or melodic shape of the basic material.

The short Scherzo, in which C major at last asserts itself, dances to playfully rough rhythms that occasionally devolve into argumentative, stomping rhetoric for both instruments. The trio section is an overbearing, little canon for the violin and the left hand of the piano that is amusing in its determined lack of humor.

The finale, Allegro, takes sonata-rondo form. The recurring main theme isn't melodic at all; it's more the sort of suspenseful harmonic sequence that accompanies a rising curtain. The contrasting episodes are more earnest in their melodies, and have a generally positive nature except for a dramatic moment midway through, and the striving (though not defeated) character of the last interlude. The furious coda casts doubt on the optimistic nature of the inner movements, as if to end the sonata with one final warning shake of the fist.