If you follow classical music at all, Beethoven's
piano sonata number 14 is just, well, it's baked
into your DNA. Oh, absolutely. You know the melodies.
You've seen it referenced in movies, pop culture.
And honestly, if you've ever sat at a keyboard,
you've probably tried to plunk out those opening
notes yourself. Most people have at least tried
the first few bars. Right. But looking through
this stack of notes today, along with the Wikipedia
article on the piece, I realized how much of
what we think we know about the sonata is actually
just... centuries -old PR. It really is. So our
mission today for this deep dive is to completely
strip away the rumors, the myths, and the, frankly,
extremely successful marketing. We want to reveal
the truly rebellious, rule -breaking, and technically
demanding masterpiece hiding underneath. I love
that. And to set the proper mood for this, I
am changing our studio backdrop right now. to
a dimly lit 19th century vienna music parlor
yeah so just imagine the heavy velvet drapes
the long shadows cast by candlelight and a wooden
early era piano sitting right in the center of
the room setting this physical scene is crucial
because what we are looking at today is essentially
a massive historical game of telephone a very
long game of telephone exactly is it a fascinating
case study and how a few choice words from a
critic can entirely rewrite the cultural dna
of a piece of music it changes how millions of
people emotionally experience a work of art okay
let's unpack this because we have to start with
the biggest shocker in all of our source material
today the name yes beethoven never ever called
this piece the Moonlight Sonata. Not once. He
didn't write it about the moon. He didn't write
it about a nighttime stroll. The name Moonlight
was actually proposed in 1832. That is a full
five years after Beethoven was already in his
grave. It is a profound historical irony that
his most famous branding had absolutely nothing
to do with him. To understand how this happened,
we really need to look at the actual timeline.
So Beethoven completed this work in 1801 when
he was around 30 years old. Right, in the middle
of his career. Yes. And he seemingly wrote this
out of pure creative drive. There is no record
of a specific commission for it. It was published
the following year, in 1802, in Vienna. And it
was dedicated to his young piano pupil, Countess
Giulietta Ricciardi. Giulietta Ricciardi. Right.
And for a long time, people just assumed this
dedication was proof of some tortured romantic
devotion to her. Which is where the notes get
genuinely funny to me. Our sources, specifically
Alexander Wheelock Thayer's biography, reveal
that Beethoven actually intended to dedicate
a completely different piece of music to her.
A totally different piece. It was the Rondo in
G, Opus 51, No. 2. And just real quick, for those
of us trying to keep the catalog straight, opus
just refers to the chronological numbering of
his published works, right? That is correct.
It's just a publisher's tracking number, essentially.
So he had this nice rondo all lined up for the
young countess. But at the last minute, due to
some social or... or financial obligations, he
actually had to give that rondo to a different
noble one, Countess Lichnowsky. So Beethoven
is caught completely empty -handed. He has to
scramble to find a replacement gift. He panicked.
He literally just grabs this newly written C
-sharp minor sonata sitting on his desk and slaps
Giulietta Gucciardi's name on it. It's the 19th
century equivalent of panicking on the way to
a birthday party and re -gifting something you
found in your closet. It really is. It strips
away a lot of the initial romantic sheen, doesn't
it? Oh, totally. The dedication was a backup
plan. But that brings us to the real culprit
behind the nickname. Because if Beethoven didn't
call it Moonlight, the credit... or the blame,
depending on how you look at it, usually goes
to a German music critic and poet named Ludwig
Relstab. Ludwig Relstab. Yes. In 1832, Relstab
published a story that featured a wildly evocative
review of the sonata's first movement. And the
language Relstab used is just peak 19th century
romanticism. It is so over the top. Oh, it's
incredibly dramatic. I have the quote right here.
He wrote, The lake reposes in twilight moonshimmer.
Muffled waves strike the dark shore. Gloony wooded
mountains rise and close off the holy place from
the world. Ghostly swans glide with whispering
rustles on the tide. And an Aeolian harp sends
down mysterious tones of lovelorn yearning from
the ruins. Ghostly swans? Ghostly swans. Lovelorn
yearning. It reads like a gothic novel, not a
music review. What's fascinating here is the
critical thinking required to track this myth
to its modern form. form. Because if you know
the trivia about the Moonlight Sonata, you have
almost certainly heard that it was inspired by
moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.
Right. That's a famous trivia fact everyone shares.
But look closely at Relstab's original quote.
He never mentions Lake Lucerne. Wait, really?
Really. The lake in his review is entirely anonymous.
So where does the whole Swiss vacation part come
into play? That highly specific geographical
detail was added almost 20 years later, in 1852,
by a musicologist named Wilhelm von Lenz. Ah,
of course. Lenz wrote a piece summarizing Relstab's
old review, and he just casually inserted Lake
Lucerne into the narrative. He claimed the nickname
had been making connoisseurs in Germany cry out
in recognition for 20 years. So a critic writes
a poetic review. Decades later, another writer
embellishes it with a specific location. And
suddenly the entire world accepts as historical
fact that Beethoven wrote a song about a Swiss
lake. Precisely. It's a fabrication built on
a metaphor. And reading through the sources,
music critics are bitterly divided on whether
this nickname is a triumph or a disaster. A lot
of purists call the title completely absurd.
They really hate it. They argue it is a deeply
misleading way to approach a piece of music that
structurally functions much more like a funeral
march than a pleasant boat ride. By calling it
Moonlight, you prime the listener to expect romance
instead of tragedy. We should look at the counter
-argument, though, because Compton Mackenzie,
the founder of Gramophone magazine, made a very
compelling point about this. What did she say?
Mackenzie argued that the title was ultimately
harmless and that austere critics shouldn't get
so hysterically angry at poor Relstab. Right.
Mackenzie believed that if the general public
hadn't responded so deeply to that specific suggestion
of moonlight, Relstab's remark would have been
completely forgotten by history. The imagery
gave everyday listeners a bridge to connect with
complex instrumental music. That is a fair point.
It functioned as an incredibly sticky marketing
hook. But here's where it gets really interesting.
If it's not the Moonlight Sonata, what did Beethoven
actually want us to feel? That is the big question.
Did he leave any clues in his original title?
Because the first edition of the score from 1802
has a specific heading in Italian, right? Sonata
quasi una fantasia. Yes. Which translates to
sonata resembling a fantasy or in the manner
of a fantasy. And that seemingly simple title
is actually a massive flashing sign that Beethoven
was actively breaking the rules of his era. He
was throwing the rulebook out the window entirely.
To appreciate the rebellion here, we have to
look at the structural mechanics of the classical
period. Set the stage for us. Traditional sonatas
followed a very strict expected recipe. The layout
was almost universally a fast movement to grab
attention, followed by a slow lyrical movement
and finishing with a fast, energetic finale.
Fast, slow, fast. Exactly. Fast, slow, fast.
Beethoven decided to completely disregard that
expected dopamine hit. So what does breaking
that structure actually do to the listener's
experience? I mean, why change it? It creates
what musicologists call an end -weighted trajectory.
He decided to hold back all the rapid, fiery,
virtuosic music until the very end of the piece.
Building the tension. Right. The German critic
Paul Becker analyzed this beautifully. He stated
that in traditional sonatas, the opening fast
movement locked the piece into a definite character
right from the start. It told you exactly what
the piece was about immediately. But Beethoven
didn't want that. No, he rebelled against that
determinative quality. He didn't want the first
movement to be a bold proposition. He wanted
it to be a prelude. He forces the audience to
sit in the tension. He delays the gratification.
So he starts with this slow, hypnotic first movement,
the adagio sostenuto. Yes. And this is the movement
everyone knows. It opens with an octave in the
left hand and this rolling, continuous triplet
pattern in the right hand. And it's written in
C sharp minor. Which is key here. Right. For
those of us who aren't reading sheet music right
now, what does C sharp minor actually feel like?
Is that what gives it that dark? brooding quality?
Yes. C sharp minor is often associated with a
sense of deep claustrophobia, despair, or profound
grief. It is not a casual breezy key by any means.
Definitely not. And the entire movement is played
pianissimo, which means very quietly. The loudest
it ever gets is merely piano. Or just quietly.
The composer Hector Berlioz called it a lamentation
that human language doesn't know how to qualify.
And Beethoven's own student, Carl Czerny, described
it as a nocturnal scene with a mournful ghostly
voice sounding from the distance. It is bleak.
It is so bleak. And yet it was instantly massively
popular. Huge hit. Which actually drove Beethoven
crazy. This is one of the most humanizing details
from the sources. The movement became such a
smash hit in his own lifetime that it genuinely
exasperated him. He couldn't stand it. He complained
to his student, Sharni, saying, Surely I've written
better things. You can just picture the frustration
of a boundary -pushing artist realizing his quiet
little prelude is overshadowing the massive structural
innovations he was trying to achieve. It's the
classic curse of the creator. Your most popular
work is rarely the one you consider your most
significant. So true. But as we strip away the
moonlight imagery and focus on that despairing
C -sharp minor key, we find some truly wild alternative
theories about what inspired this gloomy first
movement. The renowned pianist Edwin Fischer
put forward a fascinating theory in his book
on Beethoven's sonatas. Wait, you mean the murder
scene theory? Yes. Because when I read this in
the notes, I had to pause. How do we get from
a quiet, delicate piano piece to a murder scene
that sounds like a massive stretch? It sounds
totally improbable until you look at the musical
evidence Fischer uncovered. Fischer claimed to
have found sketches in the Vienna archives showing
Beethoven handwriting a few lines of music from
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.
Specifically, the scene right after the character
of the commendatory is murdered in a duel. Fischer
noted that Mozart's music for that dark, tragic
scene shares the exact same characteristic triplet
rhythm found in Beethoven's first movement. Furthermore,
Beethoven had transposed Mozart's music into
C sharp minor, the exact key of this sonata.
So Fischer concludes that there is absolutely
no romantic lake or moonlight involved. It is,
in fact, a solemn dirge inspired by the musical
aftermath of a murder. Listening to that rolling
triplet pattern with a murder in mind completely
changes the vibe. You hear the dread instead
of the romance. It shifts the perspective entirely.
But we have to move on, because after this heavy,
potentially murder -inspired prelude, we get
to the second movement, the allegretto, and this
feels like a sudden jolt into a different reality.
It really does. It's written in D -flat major,
shifting the feel to something much lighter,
and it's in triple time, which gives it a sort
of gentle, waltz -like rhythm. It acts as a very
short, cheerful palate cleanser. The contrast
is startling. The composer Franz Liszt provided
what is arguably the most perfect description
of this second movement ever put to paper. He
called it a flower between two abysses, or depending
on the translation, two chasms. A flower between
two abysses. That's beautiful. It really captures
just how delicate and painfully short -lived
this cheerful movement is before you plunge back
into the darkness. Because that third movement
is an absolute beast, the presto agitato. We
talked about Beethoven's end -weighted trajectory
and holding back the fire. This is the fire.
If the first movement is a gloomy prelude, the
finale is a stormy, out -of -control explosion.
It is fiercely demanding for the pianist, full
of fast, broken chords arpeggios that require
extreme finger dexterity, and it has these heavy,
intensely accented notes called sforzandos. The
player just relentlessly pounds the keys. It
demands an incredible amount of sheer athleticism
and stamina. Charles Rosen, the late pianist
and writer, noted that this movement is Beethoven's
most unbridled representation of emotion. Yeah.
He wrote, even today, 200 years later, its ferocity
is astonishing. How does Beethoven achieve that
level of ferocity acoustically? Because looking
at the sheet music, it's not actually all marked
to be played at maximum volume. That is the genius
of his acoustic illusion. Beethoven strategically
places just a few very loud fortissimo passages
amongst these heavily accented but otherwise
quieter notes. Ah, I see. By contrasting sudden
explosive bursts against the rapid churning background,
he creates the illusion of a massive, overwhelming
wall of sound. The listener's ear perceives the
whole movement as violently loud, even though
the performer is carefully modulating their touch.
It completely overwhelms the senses. That is
so clever. And speaking of the performer's touch,
we have to talk about a massive technical mystery
hidden right in the sheet music of the first
movement. I think you should lead this one, because
the instruction Beethoven wrote is wild. He wrote
a specific phrase in Italian senza sordino. Yes.
Senza Sardino translates to without dampers.
Beethoven was explicitly instructing the pianist
to hold down the sustained pedal for the entire
duration of the first movement. The whole time.
Never lift it. This raises an important question
about the instrument itself, especially for anyone
who has ever touched a modern piano. Oh, absolutely.
If you press the right pedal down on a modern
Steinway or Yamaha and just leave it there while
playing changing chords for five minutes, you
will create an absolute muddy, dissonant mess
of sound. The notes will bleed into each other
horribly. It would sound like a nightmare. So
why did a genius composer write an instruction
that seemingly ruins his own piece? Because of
the mechanical realities of the year 1801. Right.
The early 19th century pianos were very different
beasts than what we play today. They had a much
shorter sustained time. The vibration of the
strings simply died away faster. So they naturally
faded out. Exactly. So on Beethoven's instrument.
Holding the pedal down created a beautiful, delicate,
ghostly wash of sound. The notes faded before
they could turn into mud. But the modern piano
has been engineered over centuries to project
sound into massive concert halls, holding notes
seemingly forever. So modern performers are faced
with a real dilemma. Do you follow the composer's
explicit written instructions, or do you adapt
to the massive machine sitting in front of you?
Performers have developed a few clever workarounds.
The simplest option is to just ignore the strict
instruction entirely. You just change the pedal
whenever the harmony changes to keep the sound
clean. Which makes sense. You see this advised
in a lot of modern sheet music editions, like
the Ricordi edition. But some pianists desperately
want to honor that original blurry intent. So
they use a technique called half pedaling. Half
pedaling? Yeah, where you only push the pedal
down partway, trying to manually simulate that
shorter, older sustain. There is also a really
wild mechanical hack suggested by the pianist
Joseph Banowetz using the middle pedal, the sostenuto
pedal. Oh, Banowetz's solution is brilliant.
He suggests that before you even start playing
the piece, you silently press down the lowest
bass keys on the piano. Silently? Yes. You don't
strike them to make a sound. You just gently
press them to lift. their dampers off the strings.
Then you catch those dampers with the middle
sasnudo pedal and lock it down for the whole
movement. So basically they are tricking the
modern piano into acting like a 200 -year -old
instrument. By keeping only the deep bass strings
open, they get that spooky echo to ring out sympathetically
without turning all the higher changing notes
into a muddy mess. Precisely. It allows you to
pedal cleanly with your other foot while maintaining
a subtle continuous hum in the background. It's
a fascinating way to recreate a historical acoustic
environment on a modern machine. Or, of course,
you could just track down an authentic historical
fortepiano from the 1800s and play it exactly
as written. Good luck fitting that in your living
room. Right. It's amazing how much thought, history,
and mechanical engineering goes into just pressing
the first key. But all of this innovation, the
rule -breaking structure, the intense emotion,
the peddling experiments, it left an indelible
mark on the musical world. The DNA of the sonata
infected the composers who came after him. Oh,
without a doubt. You can see that influence deeply
embedded in the works of Frédéric Chopin. There
is a very compelling analytical theory put forward
by the music theorist Ernst Oster regarding Chopin's
famous fantasy impromptu. I love this theory.
Oster argues that Chopin's piece isn't just loosely
inspired by the Moonlight Sonata. It is actually
a secret, deliberate tribute to Beethoven. A
musical homage hither in plain sight. Oster points
out that the fantasy impromptu completely mimics
the key relationships of Beethoven's three movements.
Chopin borrows the chord structures and even
shares some specific melodic passages, weaving
them right into his own work. It's incredible.
Oster wrote something beautiful about this dynamic.
He said that with this piece, we can essentially
see Chopin acting as our teacher. It's as if
Chopin is pointing to Beethoven's score and saying,
look here, this is great. Take heed of this example.
That's a great way to put it. Oster notes it's
a rare instance where one genius tells us exactly
what he values in the work of another genius,
communicating entirely through the language of
composition. I love that idea of composers speaking
to each other across decades through sheet music.
And Chopin wasn't the only one paying tribute.
Karl Bohm took a much more literal approach.
Oh, a backing track guy. Yes. He wrote a piece
called Meditation, where he just layered a brand
new violin melody right over the top of Beethoven's
unaltered first movement. He just used it as
a backing track. That is bold. And then, jumping
way forward into the 20th century, we have Dmitri
Shostakovich. In 1975, Shostakovich wrote his
very last composition, the Viola Sonata. And
in the third movement of that piece, he quotes
fragments of Beethoven's first movement directly.
Wow. He even titled that movement an Adagio in
memory of Beethoven. It demonstrates the sheer
gravitational pull of this sonata. It pulls other
towering artists into its orbit, spanning from
Chopin in the 1830s all the way to Shostakovich
in the 1970s. So what does this all mean? We
started out talking about a gentle, moonlit boat
ride on a Swiss lake, but what we actually found
in our notes today is a rebellious, potentially
murder -inspired musical experiment. A very different
picture. It's a piece that pushed the physical
limits of the piano's mechanics completely throughout
the rulebook for how a sonata should be structured
and managed to thoroughly frustrate its own creator
by being too popular for its own good. If we
connect this to the bigger picture, it reminds
us that knowledge is most valuable. when we're
willing to question our deepest assumptions.
We all thought we knew this piece of music, but
art is a living, breathing thing. A piece of
art inherently belongs to the creator when it
is written, but its legacy, how it is named,
how it is felt, how it is ultimately remembered,
belongs to the audience, even if that audience
is just a poet with a vivid imagination and a
knack for branding. And that leaves us with a
final lingering question to mull over as we wrap
up today's deep dive. If a single critic's random
poetic review about Moonlight can completely
alter how millions of people emotionally experience
a piece of music for over two centuries, what
other famous works of art, literature, or history
are you experiencing through the lens of a completely
fabricated label? It really makes you wonder.
When you look at a famous painting or read a
classic novel, are you truly feeling the artist's
original intention? have you just fallen for
a 200 year old marketing gimmick. It's something
to think about next time you put on your headphones.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive. Stay curious, keep questioning, and we
will catch you next time as we keep learning
together.