There is a special category when it comes to Beethoven; a catalogue that doesn’t include complete symphonies, sonatas, concerti, string quartets, etc., but just single movements. This is the catalogue of great Beethoven slow movements. Beethoven’s slow movements are like a great Tolstoy novel. They span the gamut of human experience and also reach beyond it, into something we cannot understand but all somehow perceive. Simply put, Beethoven often seems to know us better than we know ourselves. This brings me to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Unlike those late quartet slow movements, the slow movement of the Hammerklavier is not about ecstatic contemplation. Instead, it is a movement of pure and profound despair. It has been described as “a mausoleum of the collective suffering of the world,” and “the apotheosis of pain, of that deep sorrow for which there is no remedy, and which finds expression not in passionate outpourings, but in the immeasurable stillness of utter woe.” This is not a movement I would necessarily enter into lightly as you go about your day—it requires you to take a moment and enter a world unlike any other.

Today, in Part 2 of this Patreon-sponsored exploration of this great, in all senses of the word, Sonata, we’ll go through this slow movement in detail. Then we’ll tackle the life-affirming and maddeningly complex last movement, which is not quite the antidote to the slow movement, but perhaps it is the only possible answer to the questions the third movement so profoundly asks. Join us!