[music] So, onto the third movement! This movement is, in terms of character, the most ambiguous of the four: if the first was all anxiety, and the second was all calm, the third is almost equally poised between the two. This movement, which is back in the minor mode, is the third of four, and it is a menuet: to review, this is an innovation, because prior to Beethoven, sonatas had, at most, three movements. This means that the menuet is an addition to the structure, if not an outright intrusion. It’s interesting: among the 32 sonatas, there are 6 of them that have two movements, 13 with three, and 13 with four. (This depends slightly on how one numbers the movements of some of the late period works, but that’s nothing to worry too much about.) That means that he didn’t ultimately particularly favor the four movement model to the more traditional three; but each of the first four sonatas has four movements. This shows that Beethoven was eager to establish, right off the bat, that for him “sonata” meant a work of scope equal to that of a symphony. So, the presence of this movement, in Sonata Number 1, is already unconventional. The music itself, much like the first movement, begins in a rather old-fashioned manner, but in short order begins playing with our expectations. Here is the menuet, without the trio and without repeats: [music] So, this is a bit unusual, in that it’s got a whole lot of sturm und drang – storm and stress – for a menuet, which is, after all, a dance. But that’s not wholly unprecedented – Mozart’s G minor Symphony has a menuet that is every bit as agitated. What is both revolutionary, and totally characteristic of Beethoven, is the subtle rhythmic subversion that is taking place throughout. Again, a menuet is a dance, and one of the fundamental features of a dance is that the beats of the bar relate to one another in a way that is regular and predictable – people are meant to dance to it, after all! In a waltz, for example, the second beat of the bar is extended: One-TWO-three. One-TWO-three. In the menuet, the main stress is on one: ONE-two-three. ONE-two-three. Now, a good performance will certainly not hammer this into your head, but it is part of the basic underpinning of the music. In this menuet, though, the primacy of the first beat is constantly being challenged by the third. Beethoven does this by inserting sharp sforzando accents on the third beats, and by changing the articulation in ways that shift our focus. This first happens just a few measures into the piece: [music] When that sforzando appoggiatura [music] comes, you’d have to be a very accomplished dancer not to trip! Then, he starts playing around with articulation. This is worth getting into, because articulation is often a major source of character in music. At the beginning of the movement, these third beats, or “upbeats” – that’s the word for the final beat of the bar, with the first beat of the bar being called the “downbeat” – these upbeats are separated from the next bar. So: [music] At the beginning of the second part of the menuet, Beethoven writes a slur over the bar line, meaning that the notes are meant to be connected: [music] The separation had the effect of clarifying the rhythm for the listener; which, with the slur, the rhythm becomes more ambiguous, which means that the primacy of “one” is again threatened. Then at the climax of the movement, Beethoven writes a whole series of sforzandos that keep moving around: first they are on the upbeat, then they move to the downbeats, then finally back to the upbeat. [music] So, [music] three-one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. [music] It's interesting to note that Beethoven did this often in his early menuets – more often than not, when there is a menuet in an early sonata, Beethoven places emphases on what should be weak beats. It seems there was something about the form which struck him as potentially staid, and which he therefore wanted to upset. And Beethoven’s way of playing around with the meter makes this movement not only daring, but also much more effective in the context of the piece than it otherwise would have been. Again, we’ve had a first movement which was ever restless, followed by a second which is clearly designed to console in its wake. The third movement’s return to minor already inches us closer to the dark world of the opening, and the lack of rhythmic stability in it takes us closer still. In the last movement, as we’re about to see, we go all the way back, and then some.