one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s most famous compositions of all time (and his best piano sonata), Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor Op. 27, No. 2—aka his Moonlight Sonata—was playing today while I was out getting a massage. an hour spent defatiguing one’s muscles lends itself to an unbroken stream of thought, fatiguing your mind by deep-diving into a small number of topics. (alternatively, you’re supposed to not think at all, but what kind of mindful mindless psychopath can do that?) so much of Beethoven’s life story is woven into this sonata, and so much of it almost completely unintentionally.
in the early 1800s, piano sonatas, as Hausmusik (“house music”), were primarily music for small home salons or aristocratic gatherings. there’s no documented public concert performance of the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven himself, in stark contrast to its widespread popularity today. as romantic as the Moonlight Sonata may sound (it was, in fact, a piece that marked his influential transition from the Classical Era into the Romantic Era), its contextual history is fraught with heartache and disappointment.
he composed it in 1801, aged 30, when he’d already started experiencing hearing loss, a year before writing his Heiligenstadt Testament1 an unsent letter to his brothers, part will, part account of his despair over his hearing loss—and of how his art kept him alive; it was discovered after his death . the composition followed a stay in 1800 at Brunszvik Castle in Martonvásár, Hungary, owned by the Brunszvik family headed by the widowed Countess Anna Seeberg Brunszvik; the family was among his closest friends and financial patrons.
the piece was later dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, one of his piano students and a cousin of Therese and Josephine Brunszvik, Anna’s daughters. all three were his pupils. in a letter to his childhood friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler, dated 16 November 1801, he described his love for a girl generally presumed to be Giulietta:
“My life is once more a little more pleasant, I’m out and about again, among people – you can hardly believe how desolate, how sad my life has been since these last two years; […] this change was caused by a sweet, enchanting girl, who loves me and whom I love. After two years, I am again enjoying some moments of bliss, and it is the first time that – I feel that marriage could make me happy, but unfortunately, she is not of my station – and now – I certainly could not marry now.”
how the Moonlight Sonata came to be dedicated to her was a practical matter. according to Giulietta’s later recollection, Beethoven had given her his Rondo in G major Op. 51, No. 2, but took it back when he needed a dedication for Countess Henriette von Lichnowsky, the sister of his major patron, Prince Karl von Lichnowsky2 a member of the House of Lichnowsky, a Czech aristocratic family of 14th-century Silesian and Moravian origin, Prince Karl von Lichnowsky was one of the most prominent figures of the Viennese aristocracy in whose residence Beethoven lived during his early Viennese years; so grateful for his patronage, Beethoven expressed his thanks to the prince even in the Heiligenstadt Testament , offering to Giulietta the sonata’s dedication instead.
however, one can’t help but wonder how much of a Freudian slip this last-minute dedication might have been. as a member of the aristocratic class, Giulietta was, as was the case in the caste-conscious society of 1800s Austria, considered above Beethoven’s station as a “commoner”, so the fatal love story was not to be. pianist Edwin Fischer later proposed in his book3 Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas: A Guide for Students and Amateurs, 1959, Faber and Faber; originally published in German as Ludwig van Beethovens Klaviersonaten: Ein Begleiter für Studierende und Liebhaber in 1954 a connection with the Commendatore’s death scene in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, citing a passage Beethoven had copied and transposed into C-sharp minor. if Fischer was onto something, did Beethoven transpose in his mind’s eye the face of the commander killed by Don Juan with that of Giulietta’s father? that we’ll never know. a portrait miniature sometimes identified as Giulietta was among his possessions after his death, although the woman’s identity remains uncertain. as for Giulietta, in 1803 she married Count Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg, a minor aristocrat and composer with whom she moved to Naples.
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt called the second movement of the three-movement sonata ‘a flower between two abysses’, and one can’t help but wonder if that “little flower” was the happy times spent with Giulietta, nestled in-between the realities of their class differences and the limits those differences imposed on their would-be relationship.
the composer called the piece, during his lifetime, sonata quasi una fantasia, or “sonata in the manner of a fantasia.” while this was a description of its musical form, any other fantasies occupying his mind remain open to speculation. the familiar nickname we know today, Moonlight Sonata, is usually traced to music critic Ludwig Rellstab, whose 1824 short story Theodor: Eine musikalische Skizze4 translating as Theodor: A Musical Sketch, the novella was written in 1823 and serialised in the summer of 1824 in Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (BAM), a weekly music magazine founded in 1824 imagined the first movement as a moonlit lake scene:
“The lake rests quiet under the light of the moon at twilight; the wave thuds against the dark bank; gloomy wooded mountains rise up and divide this sacred region from the world; swans move through the water with whispering rustle, like spirits, and an Aeolian harp makes its complaints of longing, lonely love mysteriously from the ruin. Silence; good night!”5 translation via G. Henle Publishers/Norbert Gertsch
Beethoven would probably have been mightily surprised at how influential the sonata would become after his lifetime, having reportedly remarked to Carl Czerny at one time, “Surely I’ve written better things.” however, influential it has been. Polish composer Frédéric Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu has striking similarities to the sonata, particularly its third movement. whether he withheld it for fear of being accused of plagiarism remains uncertain.
the underlying chords of the Moonlight Sonata’s first movement also heavily inspired the iconic arpeggios in The Beatles’ song Because, which John Lennon wrote after hearing Yoko Ono play the sonata on the piano. John asked her to play the chords backwards, and the experiment became the starting point for Because:
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”, Lennon later sang in his 1980 song Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), dedicated to his son Sean Ono Lennon6 on Lennon’s 1980 Double Fantasy album, the last one released before his death , echoing the lines in the January 1957 issue of Reader’s Digest attributed to the comic writer Allen Saunders7 following Saunders’ September 1956 Mary Worth comic strip that read “Life is something which happens while we’re waiting for something else!” . Beethoven, in the Moonlight Sonata’s divine comedy of errors, would probably have agreed.
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Footnotes
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an unsent letter to his brothers, part will, part account of his despair over his hearing loss—and of how his art kept him alive; it was discovered after his death ↩
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a member of the House of Lichnowsky, a Czech aristocratic family of 14th-century Silesian and Moravian origin, Prince Karl von Lichnowsky was one of the most prominent figures of the Viennese aristocracy in whose residence Beethoven lived during his early Viennese years; so grateful for his patronage, Beethoven expressed his thanks to the prince even in the Heiligenstadt Testament ↩
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Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas: A Guide for Students and Amateurs, 1959, Faber and Faber; originally published in German as Ludwig van Beethovens Klaviersonaten: Ein Begleiter für Studierende und Liebhaber in 1954 ↩
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translating as Theodor: A Musical Sketch, the novella was written in 1823 and serialised in the summer of 1824 in Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (BAM), a weekly music magazine founded in 1824 ↩
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translation via G. Henle Publishers/Norbert Gertsch ↩
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on Lennon’s 1980 Double Fantasy album, the last one released before his death ↩
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following Saunders’ September 1956 Mary Worth comic strip that read “Life is something which happens while we’re waiting for something else!” ↩