The piano and violoncello sonatas of Ludwig Van Beethoven

Daniel, Ryan James

The piano and violoncello sonatas of Ludwig Van Beethoven

Master Thesis

1998

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

College of Music

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonatas for Piano and Violoncello have been somewhat neglected in terms of published study. Drabkin (1991a, n.p.) considers that the early sonatas "have received far less attention than they deserve", a deficiency which Lockwood attributes, in the case of the cello sonatas in particular, to the portrayal of Beethoven's early compositions as "forerunners of later greatness [rather] than as significant products of their own time and circumstances" (1986, 17). Given the enormity of the composer's entire works, and the stature of his symphonies, concertos, piano sonatas, choral works and string quartets, it is perhaps not surprising that relatively little attention has been paid to the cello sonatas. Yet, according to Stevens, these works "are so well embedded in the repertory that they claim immediate discussion" (1957, 263). Musicologists such as Fortune consider the opus 5 sonatas to be "among the finest of Beethoven's early works" (1973, 210). In addition, the cello sonatas fall into the category of chamber music for piano and strings, a body of works which Marston feels contains "extraordinary stylistic development" (1991b, 228). Chapter one provides a background to the development of the cello, the origin's of Beethoven's piano and cello sonatas, and a general discussion of the composer's stylistic periods. Each of chapters two to six contains a study of one of the five sonatas, looking specifically at two areas: the combination of the piano and the cello, and the form and structure. In chapter seven, thematic unity is discussed. The conclusion contains general observations about the sonatas formed during the writing of this dissertation.

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