3 - Tragic/Comic Masks: The Sonata in G minor Op. 5 No. 2 (1796)

Summary

WITH A SINGLE, weighty G-minor chord, Beethoven's second sonata for piano and ‘obbligato’ cello is underway. The sonority at the beginning of this deliberately paced slow introduction has nothing of the subtle mystery exuded at the outset of its sibling, nor does the chord pose an unanswerable question. Instead, the composer brusquely asserts a decisive stroke, a fp attack by both players, followed by a slowly sinking, dolorous scale and three more chords, all subdued yet rigidly dissonant. This opening complex forms a single dramatic utterance, unequivocally defining the sonata's key and its brooding, pensive character. The key, curiously enough, would prove to be one that Beethoven almost never selected again, but the pathos that envelops the introduction, finding little relief at the onset of the first movement proper (in sharp contrast to the humorous start of the F-major Allegro of Op. 5 No. 1), anticipates much of what we often associate with the composer's music: melancholy and tragic gestures, dramatic sweep and silence-filled pauses.

Like fraternal twins, the Op. 5 sonatas invite profitable comparisons. Indeed, we can now hardly imagine one without the other, and considering the two side by side reveals as much about their symbiosis as about their separate characters. Outwardly, these works are cut from the same cloth, emerging, as it were, from a unified artistic vision. Both open with slow, elongated introductions that give way to expansive, sonata-form Allegros. In each sonata, Beethoven also dispenses with a formal slow movement, for he likely assumed that his protracted introductions were sufficient, even if they ‘front-loaded’ his sonatas with slow material. And both works conclude with jaunty rondos that, like the Allegros, fill out expansive proportions. Yet each possesses distinct characteristics, as if reflecting the two sides of the creator's own personality. If the F-major sonata impresses as the more extroverted or flamboyant of the two, given the joyful nature of its themes and its first-movement cadenza, the G-minor sibling possesses a more brooding, introspective temper, particularly in its first movement, as summarized in Diagram 3.1. Nevertheless, as we shall see, some salient features of the F-major sonata return in the G-minor sonata in high relief, as if Beethoven decided to raise them to a new, expressive extreme.