Beethoven's Pathétique was not named by Beethoven — the publisher supplied the word. When the sonata went to print in 1799 the publisher, struck by its sound, gave it the title Grande sonate pathétique, and Beethoven was happy with it. The second movement is this one: slow almost to stillness, a single line singing for four and a half minutes. 4:48, with the full piano score on screen, note by note.
Twenty-seven, and his hearing had already begun to go
The sonata was written in 1798–99 and published in 1799, dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, one of his Viennese patrons — Beethoven lodged in his house for a time.
He was twenty-seven when it appeared. Those were the years he was making his name in Vienna as a pianist: improvising, competing in public, being invited into aristocratic houses to play. They were also, roughly, the years in which he began to notice something wrong with his hearing — something he concealed for a long time, and set down only in 1802, in a letter he never sent.
The title, as above, came from the publisher. Beethoven did title some works himself; this was not one of them. Someone else named it, and he did not object.
The melody of this second movement travelled a long way. From 1970 to 2007 an American classical radio programme, Adventures in Good Music, used it as its theme — thirty-seven years of it. A whole generation of American listeners met this tune on the radio first.
In 1983 Billy Joel turned this melody into a song
Billy Joel's This Night (1983) takes its chorus straight from this movement — faster, with a band and a voice over it, but the harmony and the melodic line are unchanged.
He credits Beethoven as a co-writer on the album sleeve: L. v. Beethoven.
The same sentence returns three times, on different ground each time
The opening melody is simple — simple enough to hum after one hearing. It sets out in the middle of the keyboard, neither high nor low, moves slowly, and its phrases are all about the same length, like someone speaking quietly close by.
When it finishes, the ground shifts: the sound sinks a little and takes on a shadow. Then the same sentence comes back, in the same place, but with something denser underneath it and an extra layer in motion.
The middle section is the one genuinely unsettled stretch: continuous triplets start turning underneath and the melody is pushed along by them. After that passes, the sentence returns a third time, now carried on the thickest texture of all — as though the whole sound were holding it up.
The last bars close very quietly, the bass walks down, and it stops. Nothing in the movement is ever loud.
A rondo: the theme three times, with two episodes between
It is a simple rondo rather than sonata form — an unusual choice for a movement this serious. The theme appears three times with two episodes between: theme in bars 1–16, first episode 17–28, theme again 29–36, second episode 37–50, the theme for the last time from bar 51, and a coda after bar 67.
Each time the theme returns, the accompaniment beneath it is denser than before. First a broken chord moving note by note, then an extra layer, then continuous thirty-second notes — the same melody carried on thicker and thicker ground. That is the movement's main device.
The second episode is the one sustained stretch of triplets and the one place the key clearly darkens.
Seventy-three bars, 2/4, A-flat major, one thousand three hundred and sixty-two sounding notes, ranging from a low F up to a high F — exactly four octaves.
The difficulty is letting the right hand sing without the left covering it
The notes are not fast; the difficulty is layering. The right-hand melody has to sing and its phrases must not break, while the left-hand broken chords move evenly underneath and stay quieter than it. Two different dynamic levels in one pair of hands — that is the central task here.
When the theme returns for the third time the left hand is in continuous thirty-second notes, and the densest passage is the easiest one to swamp the tune with. That stretch needs the left hand deliberately smaller.
The triplets in the middle section need to stay even and not accelerate; rush there and the whole movement's breathing goes.
Do not take it fast. This version is at 31 to the quarter, four and a half minutes; quicker than that and it loses its weight.
We rate this 3 out of 5.
The other two movements of the same sonata
The first movement opens with the most famous passage in the sonata: a run of heavy chords that turns into a very fast allegro. The third is a light rondo whose theme is quietly related to this one.
For the same composer, equally slow and quiet: the first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2.
For his shortest: Für Elise, WoO 59.
