Beethoven's 8th piano
sonata (op. 13).
The first
movement of the piece starts off on a VERY chilling C
minor chord, followed by moments of silence. throughout the
intro section of the first, a very small journey is taken with us, through the C
minor triad, through various melodic
overtones. The main theme begins, with counter-melodies for the
bass and
treble lines, as well as wonderful uses of
accents (this was nice since the
piano was brand new at the time, allowing more than the present
harpsichord.) All the melodies repeat a
few times, and race up to a finish.
The second
movement is a very soft and
poignant melody which slowly moves over some soft
chords and stays in a wonderfully nice
major key. After that, there's a little part (seems to ask a question in
tonality) in a nice
triplet fashion. The
question gets answered with a nice climbing
major-style
melodic interlude before arriving at a peaceful ending.
Third movement to me seems like
Tetris music to a point, because of its catchy
rhythms as well as a runaround type
melody. It seems to sum up the rest of the
Sonata quite nicely, and ends on a chilling hard minor
chord.
The name
Pathetique derives from the word
Pathos, which means full of
emotion. Beethoven didn't call his Sonata
pathetic.