(MUSIC) So, after that long, dramatic fermata (MUSIC), we return to the music of the opening – an embellished version this time, which sets us on a path towards the second theme. (MUSIC) Now, one of the challenges for me, in teaching this course, is that the 200 hundred years of music that has been written since the Waldstein have expanded the harmonic language so enormously – some might say they have destroyed the old language while working towards a new one, or new ones. How does one convey the intensity and drama of, say, a diminished chord (MUSIC), when Stravinsky has done this (MUSIC) and, you know, Schoenberg has done (MUSIC)? That’s one of the big problems for a performer of old music as well – finding a way to make the events of music that comes from a different world seem significant to an audience that lives in this one. Well, here is one of those major events – a seminal one, really – which could easily be overlooked, given how modest it might seem in the context of the 2016 world. So, if this sonata functioned according to the traditional rules of harmony, its second theme would be in the dominant. (MUSIC) And – with apologies for this horrid recomposition, because I have no compositional talent to speak of – it would probably be approached something like this. (MUSIC) That – the second theme on the dominant, prepared by the dominant’s dominant – (MUSIC) – has been the script of virtually every classical work up to this point. And this is the moment that Beethoven elects to go dramatically off-script. (MUSIC) That long, almost frenetic lead-up, and then wind-down into the second theme is preparing not the dominant of G major (MUSIC), but the mediant of E major (MUSIC). This is a move nearly without precedent. Now, I have to say “nearly”, because there is one instance of Beethoven using the mediant for a second theme – the sonata op. 31 no. 1. I discussed this work ever so briefly in the fourth lecture of this course – the lecture entitled “Crisis”. In the first movement, Beethoven goes from G major (MUSIC), to the mediant B major for the second theme (MUSIC). The effect is arresting, no doubt – in this case, it is literally without precedent – but opus 31 no. 1 is above all a comic piece, and this move to the mediant is a comic move: a joke. Beethoven’s audience is fully expecting the dominant of D major, and Beethoven, in refusing to deliver it, is thumbing his nose at that audience. A sidebar: it’s interesting to note that the earlier harmonic surprise in the Waldstein, the immediate move to the subtonic (MUSIC), is also anticipated in opus 31 no. 1, again in a more humorous way. (MUSIC) These two harmonic sleights-of-hand don’t really have anything to do with one another, which makes it interesting that both appear in both sonatas; it’s as if opus 31 no. 1 is a dress rehearsal for the Waldstein. But let’s not get distracted: the big event here is the replacement of the dominant with the mediant for the sonata’s second themes. And while in opus 31 no. 1, it’s played for laughs, in the case of the Waldstein, it’s no joke at all: this time, Beethoven eschews the dominant in favor of the mediant for the simple reason that he LOVES the mediant. He loves the sonority and atmosphere it creates, juxtaposed with the tonic, and he has now discovered that when he uses it for a second theme, it is set apart from the first in an incandescent way that the dominant could never achieve. Using the mediant as a secondary key area within the movement is a serious break with orthodoxy. But using the mediant as the base key of a movement, while far from the norm, is something that Beethoven did from the very beginning. This came up just a couple of lectures ago, because Beethoven used this tactic in opus 2 number 3, using the mediant of E major to take us instantly out of the muscular C major world of the rest of the piece. (MUSIC) This is only one of so many examples of Beethoven using the mediant, or its cousin, the submediant, for an early period slow movement. There’s the opus 1 no. 2 piano trio – opus 1, already! – the G major string trio, the C minor piano concerto. Clearly Beethoven loved the mediant and understood its power from very early on. But again, using this far-off key for an entire movement is one thing; inserting it into a movement is quite another, and in the Waldstein, it has an absolutely magical effect. Even if it came in the fully-expected dominant, this second theme would seem diametrically opposed to the opening: it has a far slower rate of motion – quarter notes and half notes, as opposed to the opening’s nonstop stream of eighths – and its four phrases have a near-absolute rhythmical regularity. (MUSIC) But while the rhythm plays its part, really, the tonality is the secret weapon here, the element that turns this theme other-worldly, and makes it a total respite from the quietly pulsating intensity of the opening. The mediant is four notches up the circle of fifths away from the tonic. (MUSIC) And with each notch, the sound world becomes more and more differentiated. Listen to the theme, set against the opening, in the dominant of G major. (MUSIC) And now, one more step removed, in D major. (MUSIC) And one further, in A major. (MUSIC) And finally, in that foreign land, the mediant. (MUSIC) Again, I’m hammering this point home, because I realize that two hundred years of wild and wooly music has not been exactly helpful in hearing this. But really, Beethoven’s use of keys here is hugely significant, and to an audience of his contemporaries, it would not have seemed subtle. And once Beethoven took this leap, and allowed himself to replace the dominant with the mediant, it opened the floodgates. He continued to do it, and also used the related submediant for the second themes of the Archduke trio and the Hammerklavier sonata – two of his greatest later works. And then there is the string quartet op. 127, which uses the mediant minor, also closely tied to the mediant. The Waldstein sonata is truly the pivot point, the moment when he realizes that he can break this rule, and still make a sonata form work, without reducing its effectiveness.
