So, to the music itself. The Lebewohl is in three movements, and the first has a slow introduction: music of tremendous gravity and scope and, given the overall duration of the movement, length. (MUSIC) So, Beethoven demonstrates the seriousness of his intention to make this piece programmatic right away, by writing the word Le-be-wohl over the first three notes. (MUSIC) Le-be-wohl. But even if he hadn’t written the word, one would be able to sense its presence. The three chords are obviously a horn call, and horns were already by this time deeply associated with ceremonial matters. This gesture – or variants of it, other three-note gestures --- permeates the movement, which is to say that the word "Lebewohl" and all it suggests permeates the movement. It starts right away, in the second phrase. The direction reverses, but the units are still always three notes. (MUSIC) "Le-be-wohl, le-be-wohl, le-be-wohl". I won’t point them all out, but there are quite literally dozens of examples of this peppered throughout the movement. The very next passage in the introduction is one I referenced in that prior lecture, for a reason odd enough that it bears repeating. (MUSIC) Within that passage, there are three consecutive notes that Beethoven asks the pianist to play with the same finger—and the weakest finger, at that: 5. (MUSIC) At the risk of stating the obvious, this fingering is bizarre. Beethoven doesn’t often provide fingerings in his piano music, and when he does, it is never for convenience. On the contrary, his fingerings are always a request that the pianist do something inconvenient for a purely musical reason; this is no exception. The effect of this 5-5-5 fingering is that this seemingly legato passage gets hammered out, in the process emphasizing the chromaticism of the B natural-B flat. (MUSIC) Those two notes specifically, and the half step relationship generally, will become the movement’s second idee fixe – the first being the three note, le-be-wohl motive. In the very next phrase – and I apologize for this extreme level of detail, which I will soon abandon in the interest of all of our sanity, but really, what the compactness of this sonata means is there IS an amazing amount happening moment to moment – in the very next phrase, the opening horn call is reiterated in a way which is as clear a demonstration as you’ll ever hear of the power of harmony. The upper voice (MUSIC) remains the same. But this time it begins from a place of instability, seems to steady itself with the second chord, and then goes in a totally new direction with the third. (MUSIC) The piece was deep from the outset, but this is the moment it becomes otherworldly. In the opening, the C in the bass on the third note was already slightly unexpected: the expected version would have been this. (MUSIC) Instead: (MUSIC), the C comes in the bass, and brings with it great gravitas. The C flat (MUSIC) brings it out of this world, completely. We are only EIGHT BARS into the piece, and the amount of harmonic and emotionally territory we’ve explored already is frankly staggering. And there are more layers of mystery still to come in the introduction. This time, the source is silence – sometimes I think silence is Beethoven’s greatest tool. (MUSIC) If you remove the repeated note from each of these gestures (MUSIC), they become upside down versions of the le-be-wohl motive. By making each of them end on an upward note – and by following them with silences – Beethoven turns them from solemn statements into anxious questions. This is Beethoven at his most resourceful, and near his most wondrous.
