♫ This is, now, the main body of the first movement – the “sonata form” part, marked Allegro con brio ed appassionato – with energy, and impassioned. The first theme remains in the unison that it began in: it is stark, ferocious, and borderline ugly. ♫ The most remarkable thing about this theme, by far, is the fermata – the screeching halt that occurs three notes in. ♫ Now, a fermata – a stop, fundamentally – in mid-phrase is unusual, but not radical. But what a mid-phrase stop inevitably does is emphasize what came directly before it, and that is what is so distressing about this particular fermata: it forces us to confront the brutal, even unhealthy interval of the diminished forth – E flat to B Natural – which has just occurred. ♫ This feels, and is, catastrophic. In another context, this diminished fourth would be spelled differently and would in fact be perfectly lovely: a major third, and the basis of a major triad. ♫ But context is everything, and this diminished fourth is the furthest thing from lovely. ♫ I hope that you can hear – in the year 2020, just under 200 years after this piece was written – just how gritty, sinister and defiant this is. The combination of the unharmonized unison, and the extreme emphasis that second interval is given by the fermata that follows it, that makes it unlike anything Beethoven (or anyone else) had written. It is as extreme, in its way, as the diminished 7th that opens the piece. So, it is not just those first three notes, but the entire theme that is in that stark, uncompromising unison. ♫ The end of the theme is less startling than the beginning: it offers an answer ♫ that is far more straightforward than the question the first three notes asked. The only other point I would like to make about this theme is that it has an upward diminished seventh embedded into it – ♫ this is notable first of all because it is a kind of response to the downward diminished sevenths that dominate the introduction, ♫ but also because this most agitated of intervals is emblematic of the character of the movement – not just the introduction, but the Allegro con brio ed appassionato we are now in the midst of. Really, EVERTYTHING about the sonority of this Allegro – a sonority created in part by the intervals, in part by the relentless pace, in part by all the unisons, and in part by the prominence of counterpoint, yet to come – all of this gives the impression of severity, of airlessness. And it is because of that – because that impression is made so powerfully – that the little moments, peppered throughout the movement, when the pace slackens become all the more powerful. They are these little moments of humanity, of voiced vulnerability, in the midst of a movement that fundamentally rejects those qualities. The first of these moments comes at the tail end of the opening theme, and is, in fact, a reiteration of the latter part of the theme. ♫ The slowing down and the loss of volume create the effect of exhaustion – the fury and intensity abate, because they simply cannot continue at that level. It's interesting to note that the request for the pianist to slow down is not a literal one. Instead, Beethoven marks – here, and in many subsequent moments – “poco ritenente”, roughly translated as “with some feeling”. (Beethoven’s Italian was famously not great, so it’s difficult to know exactly what he thought he was saying.) We only know for sure that this implies a slow down because Beethoven subsequently writes “a tempo”. It's reminiscent of the moment in the second movement of op. 109 when Beethoven writes “un poco espressivo” and then “a tempo.” These are fascinating markings – they suggest that expression, and feeling, are not default qualities in Beethoven’s dramatic, driven music. They are reserved for special moments, and require not just a change of character, but a slackening of the pace.
