Okay, I think the time has come to hear some of Opus 110. This is the exposition of the first movement. So, the most important thing to note about the opening theme, other than the great beauty, which hardly needs to be noted at all, is that at its core, it is a series of rising fourths. I point this out first of all because it's a source of the themes character. Each fourth is itself arising interval, but the sequence of fourths also rises. This constant rise, this reaching, gives the theme of striving quality which prevents it from being merely serene. But that's not the only or even the main reason I bring this up. This chain of rising fourths will become even more explicit and more important later in the work. It is the Sonata's thesis statement. One of the things I love about this opening theme is how quickly it's sense of order and calm gives way to something more interesting to intensity and to wonder. This evolution begins in the third bar with a crescendo that never comes to fruition. Where it should peak, instead Beethoven pulls the rug out from under us with the subito piano, and then stretches time with a formata trio. This break in the action, this little wrinkle in time actually sets the piece on a firmer path than the opening bid. The second phrase is in a sense a normalized version of the first one with a steady accompaniment, and with a melodic rise answered by a fall, rather than the constant upward yearning of opening. But ultimately, even in this more "conventional theme", the direction is always upward, upward, and this time we get a crescendo that does come to fruition even in this, for the moment orderly moderato cantabile music, Beethoven's intensity of feeling is unmissable. I'd like to take just a brief look at the second theme area as well. Every note of this piece is worthy of close examination, but there's more complex music coming later on. So, I will need to pick my spots. This second theme is, like the opening one, leisurely and philosophical, but unlike the first theme, unlike all the other thematic material in the whole movement really, it is not aimed upward. In fact, it's not really a theme at all, the yodeling quality, and then the curlicues decorating the motive, that all really obscures how uneventful the theme itself is. Its step wise fall is deliberately nonchalant a breaking the intensity. It's a moment of easy contentment, of treading water before the fall inevitably reverses into an intense rise, and more rise, and more rise, and yet more. It is a great paradox. This movement might be notably unhurried, moderato cantabile, and [inaudible] but not only is each note packed with meaning, it still has plenty of urgency, and this urgency is expressed above all in the way that the lion's share of the melodic material reaches ever upward. This remain the case through the closing moments of the exposition when a final cadence having been reached, the intensity at last subsides, but the music still floats upward, and upward into the ether. I called this movement conventional, structurally speaking, and that's fair, but that doesn't make it any less other worldly.
