Don’t blame tariff-loving idiot Donald Trump for the fact that hardly anyone is making harpsichords anymore. Demand for those musical instruments was decreasing long before Trump came down the infamous escalator to make recklessly false generalizations about Mexicans.
Do blame tariff-loving idiot Donald Trump for the fact that some piano makers have already gone out of business and piano sellers are having a hard time. One silver lining elucidated by a comment on an earlier open thread is that some pianos that have so far mostly only served as status symbols might be sold to people who actually want to play them on a regular basis.
Harpsichords had their heyday in the Baroque period, before Ludwig van Beethoven came along. On its own, the harpsichord can make a lot of clatter and clang, or even with a chamber orchestra. By the time Anton Bruckner wrote his action-adventure Mass in F minor, using a pipe organ for the figured bass made a lot more sense even when playing this music outside of a church, as the harpsichord would almost certainly not be heard against a full orchestra and chorus.
Already in Beethoven’s time musicians were dissatisfied with the harpsichord’s very limited dynamic range. You could really only count on one dynamic level, with some models having one or two additional, clearly distinct dynamics, with no gradation between them possible.
A composer could indicate to singers and most instrumentalists that a given passage is to be performed pianississimo (almost inaudible), or that it should be pianissimo (very soft), piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, forte, fortissimo (very loud) or fortississimo (extremely loud).
In Vivaldi’s time, composers indicated those dynamics by actually writing those words out, but over time those words were more frequently abbreviated as ppp, pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff, fff, respectively. Beethoven also frequently used fp, meaning that the note should be attacked loudly but sustained softly. That was simply impossible on the harpsichord.
The harpsichord was frequently used for the realization of figured bass. Sometimes cellists would be given parts with a bunch of numbers and slashes and flats and sharps. Cellists could simply ignore those as they were meant for the keyboard player, while the harpsichordist could safely ignore any indications of dynamics. Or in some cases, the harpsichordist could decide that he simply should just not play a passage marked piano or softer.
Musicians were eager for a cembalo that could play piano e forte. These forerunners of the modern piano were therefore called variously fortepiano or pianoforte. Or maybe there is a difference between the fortepiano and the pianoforte, but as most people have never heard either, it doesn’t really matter.
The instrument on which Petra Somlai plays Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, the “Pathétique” in this video is identified as a fortepiano, a copy of an instrument by Anton Walter which Beethoven himself might have played. It is an instrument with a very wiry sound, especially when playing forte.
Last week, we discussed Beethoven’s Opus 10 sonatas. The first of those is in C minor. Any composer should be proud to have written something like that. But it’s not the best Beethoven had to offer in this key, in my opinion.
The Opus 13 sonata is right off the bat far more commanding of the listener’s attention, with its stern beginning requiring both clear contrasts of dynamics and subtle gradations. The tempo is marked as Grave. I got the metronome marking ♪ = 66 from Alfredo Casella’s edition for Ricordi.
Measure 10 (the transition to the sonata exposition) presents challenges to music editors since Beethoven’s time all the way to the present. Depending on your choice of paper, you’re quite likely going to have to split measure 10 across two staff systems, because it uses several instances of small note values: 32nd notes (some in sextuplets), 64th notes (some in septuplets) and 128th notes, which the British apparently call quasihemidemisemiquavers if they call them at all.
There are also 128th notes in measure 4, but not as many as in measure 10, so they’re a bit easier to deal with. Such small notes are rare. It looks like I will only encounter 128th notes one more time in this survey of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
The 128th notes gave me a lot of trouble in Finale 2010 (the Finale music notation software was discontinued in 2024). I’m not going to bore you with all the details of how I worked through the problem. Instead, I’ll show you a screenshot of my work in progress. I deliberately made the mid-measure barlines visible for the screenshot.
Work in progress for typesetting Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C minor, Opus 13, in Finale 2010.
I do think it is important to write down somewhere that the Casella edition has a mistake that surely has confused many before me and maybe will confuse many after me: the second sextuplet in the measure (an eighth note after the first dashed barline in the screenshot) should be a sextuplet of 64th notes, not 32nd notes. I consulted a different edition from IMSLP to make sure.
Except for that sextuplet error, I have tried to replicate most other details from the Casella edition, such as that he includes both “cresc.” and a hairpin leading up to the fermata. Why did he feel the need to do that? Isn’t that redundant?
Apparently in Casella’s time, hairpins didn’t mean crescendo or diminuendo, but rather rubato, a slight increase or decrease in speed. Beethoven took the trouble to make all these notes fit in the measure, but I suppose he didn’t want us to try to play them exactly in time. I haven’t looked at Beethoven’s original manuscript to verify.
The tempo changes to Allegro molto e con brio, 𝅗𝅥 = 152 — 160, according to the Casella edition, in cut time. This is very much what we expect of Beethoven’s music in C minor.
Aside from a couple of returns of the introductory tempo, the rest of this movement is very straightforward rhythmically.
I think Beethoven was satisfied with the dynamic range of the pianos of his day. But I think he often felt chafed by the range of notes available to him, which was less than the eighty-eight notes of the modern piano. The additional notes of the modern piano are notated on many ledger lines above the treble clef and many ledger lines below the bass clef.
Though Beethoven doesn’t use more than three ledger lines below the bass clef in the Adagio cantabile of this sonata, this middle movement is remarkable for starting with both hands in the bass clef.
Beethoven does need more than three ledger lines above the right hand’s bass clef, and doesn’t switch the right hand to the treble clef until the middle of the eighth measure, which is like 24 seconds in at the tempo of ♪ = 76 given in Casella’s edition.
I’d be quite surprised to find a composition by Joseph Haydn in which a C minor sonata allegro movement is followed by a slow movement in A-flat major. Beethoven’s most famous example of this is in his Fifth Symphony, which both Bruckner and Dvořák copied. But the A-flat major mood in this sonata is more one of consolation rather than continuing striving.
The sonata concludes with a rondo that really feels to me like it organically follows what came before it. Something tells me Beethoven’s very first sketch for this movement was not this.
Now let’s hear Anastasia Huppmann playing this sonata on a modern piano.
Jonathan Biss just for the finale.
Bruckner did an orchestration of the first movement as an exercise for Otto Kitzler. I have a recording in my collection of a performance by an actual orchestra. On YouTube I can only find score videos with synthesized or sampled instruments, like the first result after the ad.
And there’s also at least one jazz arrangement. Like this one with Uehara Hiromi on piano, Anthony Jackson on bass and Steve Smith on drums.
I haven’t forgotten that today is the 250th Marine Corps birthday. I had hoped to find a band arrangement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8 played by the Marine Band. Couldn’t find it. But this is also good: two musicians from the Marine Band playing Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Opus 24. Gunnery Sergeant Erika Sato on violin on violin, accompanied by Gunnery Sergeant Russell Wilson on piano.
The open thread question: What is your favorite performance or arrangement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8?
