♫ Again, this movement is not a pure sonata form – it’s a hybrid of a number of different things, and with the character of a scherzo – but one of the ways you know it’s closer to a sonata form than to anything else is that the central section really does function like a development – every bit of it is rooted in the “exposition” material, the material we’ve heard already: the opening theme, ♫ as well as material from the second theme area. ♫ While this development begins by smoothing the music’s edges, with the opening theme coming in a friendly F major, with accents removed, ♫ in fact, the development soon evolves to become the most dramatic section of the movement – another way in which it is similar to the first movement. The very next phrase again takes the opening as its starting point, and again dispenses with the accents – but in their place is a continuous crescendo, giving the theme, for the first time, a bit of a threatening, rather than friendly, quality. ♫ This really sets the tone for the development as a whole: dramatic, but unlike the first movement’s development, never truly dark, certainly nothing approaching sinister. It’s so compact, I’ll just play the whole thing. ♫ Again, lots of small dramas: there are moves into minor, ♫ there are abrupt subito pianos following the big crescendi, ♫ those brusque thirty-second notes. ♫ But in each of these moments, however serious they might be on the surface, the twinkle never leaves Beethoven’s eye. This is true right to the development’s end: there’s a bit of melodrama, with that ritardando giving a sense of exhaustion, and the chromaticism at the very end giving a veneer of intensity. ♫ But it doesn’t take a sophisticated listener to recognize this as melodrama, “melo” being the key bit – Beethoven’s tongue is firmly planted in his cheek, and when this gives way to the return – as spirited as ever – at all feels of a piece. ♫ No, while Beethoven is playing AT drama, this movement is consistently good-natured and even silly – it has an emotional narrative that is much more straightforward than that of the first. This is true right to the very end. This scherzo does have a brief coda, but it simply provides one last bit of mischief – one last bit of comic opera, the characters disappearing stealthily off the stage at the end of an ensemble. ♫ Hijinks, from the first note to the last. It’s REALLY delightful, another example of Beethoven’s humor, and one that is distinct from all the other examples. I said in the lecture on the Sonata Op. 2 no. 2 that as a personality, Beethoven is far closer to Haydn than he is to Mozart. And that is indeed true. But this movement demonstrates how deeply Beethoven loved Mozart, and shows that when so inclined, he could borrow aspects of Mozart’s style, and create something fresh, original, and distinctive with them.
