♫ Today’s lecture is on the D Major Sonata, Op. 28, sometimes known as the “Pastorale” sonata. Now, we took a brief look at this sonata in the first installment of this course – in the “New Paths” lecture. But that lecture covered the four sonatas composed in a cluster – op. 26, the two op. 27s, and op. 28 – which meant there was no time to go into any detail; in fact, I don’t think I said a word about the final three movements. Because on the surface, the “Pastorale” is more conventional than op. 26 or either of the op. 27s, it was easy to gloss over it: that was, and remains, a mistake. The “Pastorale” is glorious, and should not be overlooked. It is true, though, that it is the most conventional of the group. Op. 26 begins with a slow-ish set of variations and contains no sonata movement; op. 27 no. 1, as its subtitle implies, is more fantasy than sonata, with the lines between its four movements very blurry; op. 27 no. 2, the so-called “Moonlight” – well, you don’t really need me to tell you about that one. It has a form and a character like no other sonata, by Beethoven or anyone else. Coming hot on the heels of these grand adventures, the “Pastorale” is well-mannered. It begins with a sonata allegro, continues with a slow movement in the parallel minor key, and finishes with a scherzo and a rondo – on paper, exactly the same as op. 10 no. 3, the last work we looked at, and really highly similar to many other early works. No, the “pastorale” does not attract attention on account of its structure. It makes a gentle but profound impression on account of its character: serene and unhurried, but still with Beethoven’s signature intensity. That might seem like a contradiction in terms, but listen to the piece, and you cannot come to any other conclusion about it. The title “Pastorale” is not Beethoven’s, but it is quite fitting: this sonata unfolds in a leisurely manner, and in that way feels almost cyclical, suggesting the changing seasons. That is the one thing it has in common with Beethoven’s more famous “Pastoral” work: the 6th symphony, where the harmonic motion is often notably slow and measured. But really, that’s the only meaningful quality the two pieces share: the Pastoral Symphony is a programmatic work, with movement titles that paint explicit and specific pictures, and in that way is a much closer relative of the Lebewohl Sonata than it is of this Pastorale. Op. 28 was written in 1801, fully seven years earlier than the Pastorale symphony: Beethoven had already defied convention in many ways, but he was not about to write a programmatic piano sonata at that stage of his life.