♫ So all of that nonsense – and I use the term with great affection! – brings us to the moment of REAL harmonic innovation that I’ve been teasing since the beginning of this lecture; the transition into the second theme, the moment that, were this like any previous classical sonata, would be a move towards the dominant. And it certainly seems primed to happen, what with that cartoon chase up and down the keyboard, and the crash landing we just heard – all on the dominant. ♫ But just when it really should happen, Beethoven, with another sequence of disconnected chords, and with the mock ire that is this movement’s signature, does something entirely different. ♫ Huh? What’s this? Instead of the V of V that would and should prepare the dominant, ♫ he goes to V of three, to prepare the mediant. So this is the mediant, B Major, ♫ and this is its V chord. ♫ And lo and behold, the second theme arrives, not in the dominant, like every previous sonata in the classical era, but in the mediant. ♫ So, this is precisely what happens at the parallel moment in the Waldstein, which is a later piece, but which we’ve already discussed. ♫ The theme in E Major, ♫ to the opening C Major. ♫ Here in the G Major op. 31 no. 1, ♫ the mediant is in B Major. ♫ Listen to how much more ordinary the theme would sound in the dominant of D major. ♫ And now the mediant, as Beethoven wrote it. ♫ The B Major has 3 more sharps in it than the expected D Major. ♫ In this context, it is, I'm sure, meant to sound wrong. And while this “wrongness” may be another joke in a movement that is dominated by jokes, unlike the visionary gesture it becomes in the Waldstein, it is still a big deal; it's the first time Beethoven has eschewed the dominant as the main destination in a sonata movement. And in doing so, he has his “one small step” moment – one small step towards the destruction of the tonal system, that is. So, this second theme doesn’t feature any of the off-kilter hands-can’t-get-it-together stuff, but it still finds Beethoven in poorly behaved child mode. After one go-around of the theme – happier and brighter than it would otherwise have been, on account of its B Major – the left hand takes over with the subtlety of a bulldozer, bringing the theme into minor. And in fact, that major-minor juxtaposition becomes the predominant feature of the remainder of the exposition. ♫ That’s yet another oddity in this movement: Minor key sonata movements very often move towards the relative major, and their expositions end up there. But for a major key movement to finish its exposition in the minor is pretty bizarre; I believe this is the only time Beethoven ever did it. The final phrase of the exposition is a real tug-of-war between major and minor, with minor winning out. ♫ As you can hear, even when the music finally “settles”, it does so with the hands back in their old disagreement. ♫ I don’t find any great darkness in this minor – if there are tears involved, they are crocodile tears – but it is a COMPARATIVELY dark moment in the movement; it tells you a lot that even in such a moment, Beethoven is not giving up on his little joke.
