Beethoven's Farewell To The Piano

In 1824, Beethoven, having completed his ninth symphony, returned to his own instrument, the piano, for the final time. He had signed off on his final piano sonatas the previous year, declaring the piano to be “after all an unsatisfactory instrument”. However, he seems to have been in a happier mood with the Op 126 bagatelles. They were conceived as ‘a Cycle’ of pieces, arranged in a specific order and it seems likely that he intended them to be played together as a complete set. When Beethoven sent them to his publisher, he wrote. “They are probably the best I’ve written.”

This G major bagatelle follows the extraordinary, stormy B minor bagatelle (which we will look at soon in another film). The G major, like its predecessor, makes use of syncopation, but in a wonderfully innocent way, like a lullaby with a slightly surprising sense of swing. The whole piece is written in a 3-part texture, with two low voices (starting in parallel thirds) accompanying the melody in the outer sections, and, in the exquisite central episode, two upper voices (also starting in parallel thirds), with a distinctly Italian character, singing a duet over a rocking barcarolle accompaniment. This passage would appear to have had a marked influence on later Romantic composers, especially Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Gondellied’ pieces of the 1830s.

Beethoven’s handling of form is, as always, ingenious and unexpected. The opening section shifts unexpectedly to E minor with a half-close on a unison B, which then pivots surprisingly into the C major of the barcarolle middle section. This Venetian episode is also surprising in the way it progresses, from artless simplicity and stillness, into a climactic passage with an increase of harmonic turbulence (as if the gondola is encountering more difficult waters) and then dissolving quite unexpectedly into a tiny refrain of the opening, like a memory.

The score in this video comes from the 1825 first edition. There is a missing tie in the upper staff from bar 12 - 13, and another in bar 19.

Beethoven: Bagatelle in G major Op 126, no. 5.

Pianist: Matthew King.

Another film about the B minor Bagatelle Op 126 can be seen here: Beethoven’s B Minor Bagatelle - Which...

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Edited by Ian Coulter ( https://www.iancoultermusic.com )
Produced and directed by Ian Coulter & Matthew King