Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 101 Beethoven’s Last Piano Sonatas An Edition with Elucidation, Volume 4 By Heinrich Schenker Translated, Edited, and Annotated by John Rothgeb 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schenker, Heinrich, 1868–1935, author. [Letzten fünf Sonaten von Beethoven. English] Beethoven’s last piano sonatas : an edition with elucidation / by Heinrich Schenker ; translated, edited, and annotated by John Rothgeb. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. Translation of: Schenker, Heinrich. Die letzen fünf Sonaten von Beethoven: Kritische Ausgabe mit Einführung und Erläuterung. Wien: Universal Edition, 1913–1921. 4 vols. ISBN 978–0–19–991420–3 (volume 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–991422–7 (volume 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–991424–1 (volume 3 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–991426–5 (volume 4 : alk. paper) 1. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827. Sonatas, no. 30, op. 109, piano, E major. 2. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827. Sonatas, no. 31, op. 110, piano, Aflat major. 3. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827. Sonatas, no. 32, op. 111, piano, C minor. 4. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827. Sonatas, no. 28, op. 101, piano, A major. I. Rothgeb, John, editor, translator. II. Title. ML410.B42S27713 2015 786.2′183092—dc23 2015001173 Music engraving by Woytek Rynczak, W. R. Music Service 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Contents Editor’s Preface vii About the Companion Website xiii Foreword 1 Preliminary Remarks 3 Commentary First Movement 21 Second Movement 46 Third Movement 68 Fourth Movement 84 Editions consulted, and Facsimiles 143 Bibliography of Cited Works by Heinrich Schenker 145 Bibliography of Cited Works by Other Authors 147 Index 151 v Editor’s Preface With the four books in this set, the translation into English of Heinrich Schenker’s major works is complete. Publication of the original German of the works translated here occurred in the following order: Op. 109 (1913),1 Op. 110 (1914), Op. 111 (1915), Op. 101 (1921). A second German edition, abridged, edited, and annotated by Oswald Jonas, was published in Vienna by Universal Edition in 1970–1971.2 Jonas provided in his annotations many insights and supplements regarding both source-appraisal and the music itself that are cited or quoted in the present edition as space permits. These commentary editions make available to English readers for the first time some of Schenker’s best musical thinking. Among the features that may have escaped the notice of many Anglophone musicians thus far, for example, is Schenker’s fine sensitivity to the delicacies of Klaviersatz (piano writing or texture) in the first movement of Op. 109, which fuels his withering critique of an earlier editor’s “improvement” of Beethoven’s text. Another is Schenker’s revelation of the spectacular link between the modulation and the second theme in the first move- ment of Op. 111. 1 The Op. 109 edition was reprinted in 1922, with numerous corrections to the score. Schenker had marked a copy of the first impression with hundreds of minor revisions to the text as well, but these were not incorpo- rated into the reprint. 2 In addition to a large number of references to Schenker’s earlier publications, Jonas deleted most of Schenker’s critiques of editions now long out of use as well as the Literature sections and the irrelevant political out- bursts. The present edition is unabridged. vii viii Editor’s Preface The unprecedented compression of sonata form in the first movement of Op. 101 has often been noted, but from Schenker’s commentary we learn with precision about Beethoven’s radically new way of integrating the form’s constituent parts—especially the second theme—into this optimally compact structure. Beethoven’s composing of a far more expansive sonata-form piece in the last movement of Op. 101 shows yet another innovation, again with respect to the second theme. Schenker’s detailed suggestions as to tempo, dynamics, rubato, fingering, and pedaling—in short, much that is requisite for a finely nuanced performance—round out the discussion of each formal section. These features need no further editorial introduction. A few words may, however, be in order regarding the relation of these editions to the rest of Schenker’s output. The books were preceded by Harmonielehre (1906) and Kontrapunkt I (1910), both of them components of the grand plan Neue musi- kalische Theorien und Phantasien3 devoted to an investigation of the tonal system and its language as they could be observed in and inferred from the masterworks. But these treatises had been intermixed with still other publications whose pur- pose was exclusively the elucidation of works of art. These two thrusts—theory and application—were cultivated simultaneously during the first and second decades of the twentieth century.4 Harmonielehre had been concerned most importantly and originally with Schenker’s wholly new vision of the Stufe, or scale degree, which at the time he regarded as “far loftier and far more abstract than the conventional one. . . . The scale-step [= scale degree] is a higher and more abstract unit” that “may even com- prise several harmonies. . . .”5 This insight alone led Schenker to a far more sophis- ticated understanding of some complex music than earlier harmonic theories could have done, as witnessed by his interpretations of passages from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (Harmony p. 149/193f., 151/195f.) and especially Var. XV of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (Harmony p. 160f./206).6 Yet it would still be more than a decade before Schenker would discern the primary instrument of the scale degree’s concrete realization. 3 Harmonielehre, the first volume of the series, already bore this as its superior title. Authorship there was attributed only to a Künstler (artist). 4 Indeed, works devoted to elucidation took the lead. The scrupulously edited and annotated sonatas (and one rondo) from the Kenner und Liebhaber collection by C. P. E. Bach (1902) and Ein Beitrag zur Ornamentik (1904) both belong to this category. 5 Harmony, §78. The formulation “may comprise several harmonies” suggests that Schenker’s vision of the scale degree is not yet completely clear (see below). 6 Page-number citations are given first for English translations and then for German originals, the two sepa- rated by a virgule, ‘/’. Editor’s Preface ix By 1913, the date of 109, Schenker had not progressed very far beyond the new (but still incomplete) perception of the scale degree. His representation of harmony in the sonata still relied on the Roman numeral—which was perfectly correct and appropriate as far as it went—, but for the most part he still read more scale degrees than he needed to. A small and simple example will illustrate this. The Coda in the first movement of Op. 109 begins in bar 65 (upbeat) with the triad of IV; Schenker read this and the next three quarters as “IV—I—V—I.” Later, as he was revising the text for the 1922 reprint (see note 1), he crossed out the second Roman numeral. He did so in appre- ciation of the meaning of the tones G and B of bar 66 as passing tones. ♯ The year 1922 also saw the appearance, hard on the heels of the publication of 101, of the second book of Kontrapunkt, with its richly suggestive “Bridges to Free Composition.”7 As early as Harmonielehre Schenker had formulated this analogy between free composition and strict counterpoint: “That which, in free composi- tion, would correspond to the tones consonant with the cantus firmus is the scale degree; the entities that would correspond to the passing dissonance, however, are the intermediate chords being unfolded in free voice leading.”8 It may well have been as Schenker was working years later on Kontrapunkt II and was contemplat- ing the phenomena of the “Bridges” (the combined species) that the insight came to him: the “free” voice leading of free composition was not, after all, so completely free; it constituted instead an elaboration, by diminution, of formations regulated by the principles set forth in the “Bridges”; moreover, in free composition, the single dissonant passing tone of strict counterpoint was generalized to stepwise progres- sions through the triadic spaces of scale degrees. Any such progression he would henceforth designate by the term Zug (linear progression),9 and this policy would take effect already in another work in progress, namely 101. This concept, which becomes central to musical elucidation in the issues of Der Tonwille and all subsequent works, makes its first appearance in the discussion of the scherzo movement in 101. Schenker’s first observation about the tonal structure of the movement is that “the voice leading in bars 1–4 is based on a fourth-progression [Quartzug] F—C of the bass.” From that point on through the remainder of 101, Schenker’s concentration on these progressions decisively influenced the text. The precision of Schenker’s understanding of the tonal system and the nature of composition had thus made a great leap forward between 1915 and 1921. The analytic 7 Counterpoint II, p. 175ff./169ff. 8 Harmony, p. 159/204, although rendered more freely there. 9 In 101 and his analysis of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (Tonwille I), Schenker occasion- ally used the term Knotenpunkt as interchangeable with Zug. As early as Counterpoint II, p. 58/59, however, he defined the former term in an entirely different (and more useful) way.