There is probably no composition for the piano of any real merit, by any
writer, which is so universally known, at least by name, as this sonata.
Every one has heard of it, read about it, and most persons are more or
less familiar with the music, or at any rate with portions of it,
especially the first movement, which is, technically, easy enough to be
_executed_, in the literal sense, with the greatest facility by every
school-girl.
According to strict requirements of the law of form it is, in reality,
not a sonata at all, but a free fantasia, in three detached movements,
of a very pronounced but widely diverse emotional character. There has
been considerable questioning on the part of the public, and much
discussion among musicians, as to the origin of its name, its relevancy
to the music, and the true artistic significance of the work.
There is little, if any, suggestion of moonlight, or the mood usually
associated with a moonlight scene, in any of the movements; but there
are several more or less credited traditions concerning it afloat,
legitimatizing the title and explaining its origin. Of these, the one
that seems to the present writer most fully authenticated and best
sustained by the content of the compositions as a whole is the
following. It is given, not as a verified fact, but as a suggestive
possibility, a legendary background in keeping with the work.
It is a well-known matter of history that, during his early struggles
for existence in Vienna, while experiencing the inevitable period of
probation, well named the “starvation epoch,” common to the lot of every
creative artist, and the equally inevitable heritage of great genius,
born fifty years in advance of its time,—lack of appreciation and
scathing abuse from the self-constituted, self-satisfied foes of all
progressive art, called critics,—Beethoven had the additional
misfortune to fall deeply, but hopelessly, in love with a beautiful and
brilliantly accomplished, though shallow, young heiress, of noble birth
and lofty social position, Julie Guicciardi by name, who was, for a
short time, one of his pupils. She is said to have returned his
affection, but the union was, of course, under the then prevailing
conditions, utterly impossible; and even if it could have taken place,
would doubtless have proved most incompatible and uncongenial. She was a
countess, accustomed to luxury and splendor; he an obscure musician
fighting for the bare necessities of life, hardly higher in the social
scale than her father’s valet and not so well paid. It was absurd; and
blind Love had blundered once again in his marksmanship. Or was it an
intentional, cruel shaft from the tricky little god? In any case,
Beethoven was deeply smitten; and this unlucky passion darkened and
saddened his life for many years, and is accountable for much of the
somber tone which we find in his compositions of that period.
So much is fact. The story goes that one evening, when wandering in the
outskirts of the city, on one of those long, solitary walks, which were
his only relaxation, he chanced to pass an elegant suburban villa in
which a gay social gathering was in progress. Some one was playing one
of his recent compositions as he went by—a rare occurrence in those
days. His attention was attracted and, half unconsciously, he stopped to
listen—stopped, as luck would have it, in a full flood of moonlight,
was recognized from within, and a laughing company of the guests, Julie
among them, sallied out, surrounded and captured him, and fairly
compelled him to come in and play for them. They insisted that he should
improvise and should take for his theme the moonlight which had been the
cause of his capture and their unexpected pleasure. The usually
reticent, intractable, not to say morose, Beethoven at last
consented—under who shall say what subtle spell of Julie’s voice and
eyes?—and seated himself at the piano.
But those who are at all familiar with his music know that Beethoven
was, except in a few rare instances, an emotional, not a realistic
writer; a subjective, not an objective artist; reproducing not the
scenes and circumstances of his environment or fancied situations, but
the emotional impressions which they produced upon his own inner being,
colored by his own personality and the mental conditions of the moment,
often just the reverse of what might naturally have been expected. What
he most keenly felt on this particular occasion was not the soft
splendor of the summer night, or the opulent luxury and careless,
superficial gaiety about him, but the bitter and cutting contrast which
they afforded to his own struggling, sorrow-darkened, care-laden
existence, full of disappointments and humiliations, of petty, sordid,
yet unavoidable anxieties, with those twin vultures ever at his heart—a
hopeless love, an unappreciated genius. The result was moonlight music
in which no gleam of moonlight was reflected; only its somber shadow
lying heavily and depressingly upon the stream of his emotions, which
poured themselves out through the harmonies of this composition with an
unconscious power and truth and a pathetic grandeur which have justly
made it world-famous.
The first movement expresses unmingled sadness, but without any weakness
of vain complaint; a calm, candid, but hopeless recognition of the
inevitable.
The second seems to be an attempt at a lighter, more cheerful strain, a
fleeting recollection of his ostensible theme; but it is only partially
successful and very brief, and is followed by a reaction into a mood far
more intense and darkly fierce than the first.
The last movement is full of indignant protest, of passionate rebellion,
with occasional bursts of fiery defiance. In it we see the strong soul,
surging like the waves of a mighty sea against the rocky borders of
fate, striving desperately to break through or over them, and returning
again and again to the fruitless attempt, with a courage only equaled by
its futility. It is the Titan Beethoven battling with the gods of
destiny.
It is, of course, unlikely, even impossible, that this
improvisation,—the tradition being true,—was precisely the music of
the Moonlight Sonata in its present form. It could but furnish the
themes, outlines, and moods of the various movements, subsequently
developed into the composition so widely known and admired.