In Celebration of Beethoven’s 250th Birthday
We asked two friends of ACO—pianist Petra Somlai and author Patricia Morrisroe —to collaborate on a video performance-and-writing project around Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 in C# minor, better known as The “Moonlight” Sonata.
Here is Ms. Somlai’s nuanced and powerful performance, with text excerpts from The Woman in the Moonlight,Ms. Morrisroe’s new best-selling novel about The “Moonlight” Sonata’s dedicatee, the young Countess Julie Guicciardi. Below the video you’ll find Ms. Morrisroe’s engaging essay about their doomed love affair, the Sonata, and her reaction to hearing it, for the very first time, on fortepiano.
Reflections on The “Moonlight” Sonata by Patricia Morrisroe
When Beethoven wrote the “Moonlight” Sonata in 1801, he was confronting the reality of his hearing loss. The words “I am deaf” terrified him. He was then Vienna’s foremost piano virtuoso and knew that it would end his performing career. He also knew that deafness carried a social stigma. Up until then, he’d been an outgoing personality who enjoyed political discourse. He now began to avoid people so they wouldn’t guess his secret.
Reflections on The “Moonlight” Sonata by Patricia Morrisroe
When Beethoven wrote the “Moonlight” Sonata in 1801, he was confronting the reality of his hearing loss. The words “I am deaf” terrified him. He was then Vienna’s foremost piano virtuoso and knew that it would end his performing career. He also knew that deafness carried a social stigma. Up until then, he’d been an outgoing personality who enjoyed political discourse. He now began to avoid people so they wouldn’t guess his secret.
During this traumatic time, he met 19-year old Countess Julie Guicciardi who became his piano student and later the dedicatee of the “Moonlight” Sonata. Julie is the “dear, enchanting girl” he referenced in a letter to his childhood friend, Franz Wegeler. Beethoven confessed to Wegeler that they were in love and that his thoughts had turned to marriage, but that she wasn’t of his “station.”
The romance, like many of Beethoven’s love affairs, was short-lived and unfulfilled. Yet over the years the sonata has taken on an amorous subtext. Ludwig Rellstab, in his 1823 novel, Theodor, compared the first movement to a lake reposing in the shimmer of the moon, an Aeolian harp “sounds laments of yearning lonely love.”
A Russian writer embellished on the description by placing a boat on the lake. People then began populating the boat with lovers, and by 1862, the sonata had become universally known as the “Moonlight” Sonata.
Rellstab’s use of the word “lament” is closer to Beethoven’s intentions. The composer was grieving his diminished hearing, so it’s not surprising that the first movement follows in the tradition of mourning music. It lulls the listener into a meditative state that obviates time. Like the moonlight’s shadowy palette, it is otherworldly and disquieting. It is also ineffably sad. Liszt described the Allegretto as “the flower between two chasms,” a necessary transition, because in the third movement, Beethoven rips the flower from its roots. It’s a tour de force of near maniacal intensity.
During the four years it took to research and write The Woman in the Moonlight, I listened to the sonata at least 100 times. I had never heard anyone play it on a fortepiano, though, and wasn’t sure I’d like it. Beethoven was always seeking more range and power in his pianos in order to accommodate his dynamic extremes and legato style. I feared it would sound anemic.
After listening to Petra Somlai on a reproduction 1795 Walter fortepiano, I didn’t have to worry. I’d looked for Beethoven in countless biographies; I’d read all his correspondence and contemporary accounts, but suddenly he came to life for me.
The fortepiano produces a warm sound that is intimately, almost eerily human. In the first movement, Petra’s exquisite playing makes Beethoven’s heartache palpable. The third movement has always required virtuosic piano skills, but when Petra unleashes Beethoven’s rage, it becomes a life-and-death battle between the performer and her instrument. We hear Beethoven fighting the furies to rise about his pain. We hear him fighting against the limitations of his hearing, of the fortepiano, of life itself.
Petra takes our breath away because we’re fighting too. Beethoven shows us the way. He begins with a funeral march and ends with a fiery resurrection. Hope – that’s the message in the “Moonlight.”