This is not usually considered a descriptive composition, but Beethoven,
when questioned regarding it, answered: “Read Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest.’”
With this hint from the most authoritative of all sources, the composer
himself, we may easily trace, if not a strongly realistic, at least a
suggestive reference in the music to that most romantic drama by the
greatest of English play-writers. And we may also find a pertinent
rebuke for those who are inclined to sneer at the idea of descriptive
suggestion in music in general and in Beethoven’s works in particular,
in spite of Beethoven’s own words: “I always have some picture in mind
when I write.”
The first movement of this sonata opens with an extremely simple theme,
consisting merely of the notes of the common triad—_do-mi-sol-do_—a
theme so bald, so apparently devoid of beauty and latent resources that
only Beethoven would have ventured to use it; and only his genius could
have given it any degree of interest. It is evidently chosen with
deliberate intention to indicate naïve simplicity and natural primitive
conditions of life in the island, as Prospero found it, with that
half-animal, half-savage man, Caliban, as the most prominent figure in
it. His singular, ludicrously grotesque personality may have suggested
some of the clumsily rollicking passages in this movement. The tempest
is only hinted at, not vividly portrayed—a tempest in miniature, a
storm in fairyland. Still, it is unmistakable, though divested of all
its terrors, just as it must have appeared to Prospero himself, whose
magic power and complete mastery over the elemental forces placed him
above and beyond all fear.
The second movement, full of sweet repose, of grave, tranquil happiness,
is like the hearts of the two lovers in the drama, safe in the loving
and powerful protection of Prospero, living close to the gentle,
passionless breast of Mother Nature, childlike in their simple trust,
their spontaneous affection, their simple joy in the passing hour. It
seems at first rather tame and colorless to our modern ears, accustomed
to the ceaseless stress and din of complex and conflicting elements,
warring together in the life and art of our own day; but if we can
forget for a moment the intensity, the restless questioning and striving
of the present and go back in spirit for a century or two to more normal
conditions, we shall find this music restful and soothing as the green
sweep of woods and meadows on a June morning in the country, after the
glare and fever of a city ball-room.
The closing movement, with its light, tripping rhythm, its playful,
half-facetious mood, is evidently intended to recall the pranks of that
merry, tricksy sprite, Puck, so brimming over with good-natured fun and
laughing mischief, yet so ready and able, at his master’s command, to
“put a girdle round the world in forty minutes.”
The whole is a work of delicate fancy rather than emotional depth or
dramatic force. It shows us a somewhat unusual phase of Beethoven’s
genius, and is but one more proof of his versatility, one more
justification for his title, “The Shakespeare of Music.”