Piano sonatas (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his 32 piano sonatas between 1795 and 1822. Although originally not intended to be a meaningful whole, as a set they compose one of the most important collections of works in the history of music. Hans von Bülow called them "The New Testament" of the piano literature (Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" being "The Old Testament").
Piano Sonata No. 1 (Beethoven)
The first movement, in time, is in sonata form. The first theme is driven by an ascending arpeggiated figure (Mannheim Rocket), very similar to the opening of the fourth movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40. The second theme, in A major, is accompanied by eighth-note octaves in the bass (usually with dominant harmony). There are two codettas; the first consists of a series of energetic descending scales in A major, and the second is a lyrical passage marked "con espressione". In this second codetta and in the second theme Beethoven makes interesting use of mode mixture as the right hand parts borrows from the parallel minor. The development opens with the initial theme, but is mostly dedicated to the second theme and its eighth-note accompaniment. The retransition to the main theme uses its sixteenth-note triplet. The recapitulation repeats the material from the exposition without much change, except that it stays in F minor throughout. There is a short coda. A tense, agitated feel is ubiquitous throughout the movement. Within the entire movement there seem to be two primary themes, with the remaining melodies simply making up the rest of score. The first theme consists of bars 1–8 which then repeat themselves, with very slight variations, in bars 101–108. It is variated in a bigger scale from bars 49–54. The second theme lasts from 20–35, and like the first theme is then restated in slight variations, in 55–60. It is also restated in bars 119–124.
The second movement opens with a highly ornamented lyrical theme in time in F major. This movement is in ternary form. This is followed by a more agitated transitional passage in D minor accompanied by quiet parallel thirds, followed by a passage full of thirty-second notes in C major. This leads back to a more embellished form of the F major theme, which is followed by an F major variation of the C major section. This Adagio is the earliest composition by Beethoven now in general circulation; it was adapted from the slow movement of his Piano Quartet No. 3 in C major from 1785.