BEETHOVEN SONATA OPUS 101 - "ADAGIO"

The expression "Sehnsuchtsvoll" is challenging to translate because it takes an extension in German that one could render only by paraphrasing. Beethoven's music will provide us with the most genuine significance. 

The Adagio of Op. 101 embodies a combination of bittersweet melancholy, motivation, momentum, anguish, and acceptance, encapsulating the range of emotions conveyed by the German word "Sehnsucht." We plunge into the painful reality of a life in which all aspirations toward love and all emotional impulses are disappointing.

The indication "una corda" (muted) tells us that Beethoven asks this page for an ethereal execution, as A.Schnabel rightly writes. If the painful expression must be veiled, it is nonetheless poignant even by its sound discretion. In this, the Adagio can be likened to dreams, not to meditation.

From the start, the sixth leap immediately conveys the emotional character of the sentence. What follows is very characteristic. It is a series of outbursts (affective, hence sixths): the head of the theme is carried through the four tessituras: bass, mezzo-soprano, tenor, and soprano. (ex.1) Played by Alfred Brendel.

By utilizing the symbolism of the tessitura, we can understand the vast human yearning that challenges the fundamental aspects of existence, including the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.

The ranges, or tessitura, are the seat where these different levels of consciousness move: the high-pitched luminous where the spiritual is expressed: the high medium, intelligence both close to the spiritual and the passionate, according to its orientation and the movement that animates: the heart, the lower median region, where human feelings are expressed, pain, passion: the bass, area of matter at the same time support and origin of mysterious powers. It is evident that these "regions" sounds are not as fixed in extent as their human manifestation of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass: first, both on the piano and in instrument groups, high and low extend beyond the limits of voices, but even their nesting does not include delimited borders. Moreover, these various aspects that inhabit us are, in reality, only short dominants resulting from the continuous movement of thought, imagination, sensations, feelings, and instincts. Beethoven knows and feels it, and his symbolism of ranges has the volatile character of psychological life: there may be fixity in one region or rapid passage in several colourations. Beethoven emphasized this concept by using identical notes in each voice. However, even with this emphasis on illumination, the melody becomes incredibly gentle in the subsequent measures. It finally lands on the dominant one: a cadence, rather a recitative, springs from this rest (a sort of escape towards the dream).

The theme of the Allegretto is evoked in two sections floating between two long silences (return of dream states, plan drawn by Beethoven). This return to the theme does not play any role in architectural or aesthetic order: how could one refuse to see the indication of a dramatic plan of order in it?

The two bars before the Allegro, with their rapid strokes and trills, reflect sudden determination. The two iambic rhythms announce the voluntary affirmation of the final movement's theme.