The Stormy Seas of Beethoven's Appassionata
The Backstory
Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 ("Appassionata")
I'm Beethoven, and this is the backstory of my Appassionata. You'll find out how I worked on this sonata for about two years, crossing out and rewriting so often that the manuscript is full of revisions. On this site my fellow composers and I also teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, so give the Trainer a try and see how you do.
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A Name I Never Gave It
Let me start with a confession: I never called this sonata the Appassionata. The nickname first appeared in 1838, on a four-hand arrangement published by Cranz in Hamburg, and that was years after I died in 1827. You can search the score from the first note to the last, and the word appassionato isn't anywhere in it. Some publisher found a catchy label, and it stuck so well that it now follows the piece everywhere.A Rough Patch in Vienna
By the time I started this sonata I had been living in Vienna for years, ever since I moved there from Bonn in November 1792. My hearing had begun to fail around 1798, and in October 1802, at Heiligenstadt, I wrote a letter to my brothers about my deafness and my despair. I never sent it, which tells you how private that pain was. My middle period, roughly 1802 to 1812, grew out of those years, and my music became bigger and tougher, as if I had decided to answer trouble by getting stronger.Two Years at the Desk
I worked on the sonata from 1804 into the first half of 1806, so it was no quick job. The sketches were finished in 1805, and after that I kept polishing. Today people place it beside the Waldstein and Les Adieux as one of the great sonatas of my middle period. Three heavyweights in one family, and this is the one that never stops frowning.A Cellist Gets a Piano Sonata
I dedicated the sonata to Franz Graf Brunsvik de Korompa, who was a cellist and a friend of mine. It is a little odd to hand a piano piece to a cellist, but friendship doesn't check what instrument you play. The first edition came out in Vienna in 1807, from the Bureau des Arts et d'Industrie. So after all that work, the music finally left my desk and went out into the world with his name on it.The Manuscript That Shows Its Scars
My handwritten manuscript still exists, and it now rests in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It is full of erasures and revisions, so you can watch me changing my mind right there on the page. At one point it belonged to a pianist named Marie Bigot. I was never a tidy worker, and this sonata is the proof.The Storm Story
The story goes that the manuscript got soaked in a storm in Silesia in September 1806, after I left Prince Lichnowsky's castle. Nobody knows whether that is true, because it is an anecdote and nothing more. The manuscript does have water stains, though, and they fit the tale rather nicely. A stormy sonata caught in a real storm is almost too tidy to believe, so I'd take it with a pinch of salt.Three Chapters, One Mood
A sonata is usually divided into movements, which you can think of as chapters in a book, each with its own speed and its own mood. The first chapter is marked Allegro assai, which is fast and restless, and it is written in F minor. The second is an Andante con moto, a walking pace with some movement in it, and it ends with a soft, uneasy chord that leads straight into the third without any pause. That last chapter is marked Allegro ma non troppo, and it ends with a Presto, the fastest section of the whole piece.The Storm That Won't Leave
The first movement is in 12/8 time, which gives it a rolling, swaying pulse, and it follows sonata form. A darker-colored chord called the Neapolitan chord plays a structural role in it, a bit like a load-bearing wall. The movement also has an unusually long coda, the closing section. In that coda the arpeggios sound almost like improvisation, as if the pianist were thinking out loud at the keyboard.Twelve Knocks and No Rest
The finale opens with a diminished seventh chord on B flat, repeated twelve times, and it sounds like someone pounding on your door. After that the music runs in near-perpetual motion in sonata form, and the pianist barely gets a moment to breathe. That is one reason this sonata counts among the most technically demanding of all my sonatas. It also ends in tragedy rather than triumph, with descending arpeggios in F minor that leave no comfort behind.A Title, a Favorite, and a Clock
A performance takes about 23 to 27 minutes, so it is not long, but it is packed with feeling. One writer claims it was my own favorite sonata until a much bigger one came along, but that is only one person's opinion. According to IMSLP, the manuscript carries the title La Passionata, though nobody has settled who wrote it. So the name I never chose may have a small trace in my own papers after all, and I'm happy to leave that mystery unsolved.---
So here we are at the end of the story, and I find myself looking back at it with some fondness. Did you enjoy learning about the backstory of Appassionata? I hope it changed the way you hear the piece, even a little. A sonata that carries a name I never gave it, written in a time when my hearing was slipping away, still has a lot to say. The manuscript in Paris is full of erasures and revisions, and I like knowing that nothing in it came easily. The music ends in tragedy rather than triumph, and I think that honesty is part of why people keep coming back to it. There is still much more to explore in Appassionata. I haven't said everything about how the three movements fit together, and each one rewards a closer listen. If you'd like to go further, please click on the links provided. They will take you deeper into the music, and I'd be glad to have you along. Next time you listen, try to notice how it begins in near-silence and where it finally comes to rest.