♫ So, with considerable ambivalence, I referred to this movement as a modified sonata form. With all of the reasons NOT to think of it that way, the strongest point in favor is how clearly one can identify where the recapitulation comes. It’s not just that when it comes, it’s a fairly literal return, just with added f octaves in the bass. ♫ It’s that this return is prepared by a long, strong dominant – 16 bars where a C in the bass ♫ is either literally there, or else strongly implied by the other voices, and thus still felt. ♫ In the context of this movement, with its usually rapid harmonic motion, this stubborn, 16 bar dominant really telegraphs the recap – it takes it sweet time getting there, but we are fully aware, even if not consciously, that it's coming. ♫ The recapitulation may arrive with unambiguous clarity, but once it arrives, it is no more a pure recap than the exposition and developments were pure expositions and developments. First of all, it is more than twice the length of the exposition. And, perhaps exactly for that reason, it is much more exploratory from a harmonic point of view – with its mere 20 bars, the exposition needed to be tonic/dominant meat and potatoes. The recap is far from it, moving this way and that as most of the movement does, and again making frequent use of half-step appoggiaturas, briefly giving the music a darker edge. ♫ A seriously darker edge, I’d say. By the end, the music is hovering between major and minor – tending more towards the minor, on account of all of those half-steps. Still, given that there is once again a long dominant in the bass, ♫ this seem to tending towards a resolution – a proper coda, or at least a firm cadence that will help move the piece towards a conclusion… Instead: ♫ This is a second repeat – a repeat of the so-called development and recapitulation – and it absolutely cracks me up every time I hear it, because there is no attempt at, or pretense of a modulation. You may remember, from the lecture on the Sonata op. 110, this strange modulation – almost a non-modulation or, as I referred to it at the time, a “gear shift modulation” – in the first movement. ♫ It’s abrupt, strange, and jarring, for sure. But it is those things for a very specific reason. Beethoven has modulated from the home key of A flat major, to the distant country of E Major, and this disjointed way of returning to A flat major highlights how improbable it was that we had landed in E Major in the first place. I sense no such agenda, or purpose, in this example. The two possible motivations for this non-modulation – and these are not mutually exclusive – are humor and laziness. The jolt is in itself funny – going not just from F Major to A Major ♫ in a lightning flash, but from the slightly sinister music, ♫ back to the reverie. ♫ But if it is indeed laziness, that’s several degrees more amusing – Beethoven knows that a modulation is called for, that there are several intermediary points between the one flat of F Major and the three sharps of A Major, and that therefore, he should write a transitional first ending. But he can’t be bothered, and so instead, we get ♫ This repeat isn’t even really necessary – there are only a handful of Beethoven sonata form movements with second repeats. But Beethoven decides to do it, and then, rather than connecting what comes before with what comes after, just washes his hands of all responsibility. It’s even funnier because it’s so out of character – no composer was more drawn to thorny compositional problems, and no composer had more ingenious solutions. But not this time – if ever there were a moment that shines a light on Op. 54’s outsider, oddball status, this has got to be the one.
