Sonata in C minor, Op.13 (“Pathétique”)

The “Pathétique” title attached to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.13, like that attached to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in B minor, is the composer’s own. But what it meant to the comparatively youthful Beethoven in 1798 is not what it meant to the suicidal Tchaikovsky in 1893. To the early romantic imagination the pathétique quality in music was that which “depicts and excites strong emotion, particularly grief and sadness,” as Jean-Jacques Rousseau put it in his famous Dictionnaire de Musique in 1767. Rousseau contests the superficial attitude that “everything which is slow is pathétique and everything which is pathétique must    be slow…The true pathétique is in passionate expression, which is not determined by rules but which is invented by genius and felt by the heart.”

Beethoven’s Op.13 might almost have been inspired by Rousseau’s challenge to romantic genius and particularly by the observation that the pathétique must transcend mere variations in tempo. There are two main tempi in the first movement – one slow, one fast – but only one mood. The grief of the first Grave section is not dispelled by the Allegro di molto. On the contrary, the quicker tempo, together with the persistent quavers in the left hand and the markedly uneven rhythms in the right, adds an urgent intensity to the emotion already established. The Adagio cantabile is a slow movement which is in no sense pathetic: a simple rondo set in the key of A flat major, it exudes spiritual well-being. The third movement, a more complex rondo structure, is said to have been written with some other work in mind. That may be but, ending with an abrupt assertion of C minor, it offers a comprehensive and dramatic resolution to the conflict postulated by the first two movements.

Exactly what the French word pathétique meant to a German composer living in Vienna at the end of the eighteenth century it is difficult to say in this day and language. Evidently, it did not mean the same as it meant to a Russian composer at the end of the nineteenth century, when Tchaikovsky applied it to his Sixth Symphony. But there is a good clue as to what it might have meant to Beethoven in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dictionnaire de Musique, which was published in 1767. Beethoven would almost certainly have read the Dictionnaire and it is likely too that he would have been moved by its outspoken romantic attitude.

    For Rousseau the pathétique quality in music was important. He defines it as that which “depicts and excites strong emotion, particularly grief and sadness.” He contests the superficial attitude that “everything which is slow is pathétique and everything which is pathétique must    be slow.” It is not a matter of tempo, or of harmony, or of mode: “The true pathétique is in passionate expression, which is not determined by rules but which is invented by genius and felt by the heart. Art can in no way give rules for it.” The musical genius, according to Rousseau, “submits the whole universe to his art. He paints everything in sound; he makes even silence speak; he communicates ideas by feelings, feelings by expression; and the passion which he expresses he excites in the heart of the listener.”

    Beethoven’s Op.13, which he himself called Grand Sonate Pathétique when it was published in 1799, might almost have been inspired by Rousseau’s challenge to romantic genius and particularly by the assertion that the pathétique must transcend mere variations in tempo. There are two main tempi in the first movement - one slow, one fast - but only one mood. The grief of the first Grave section is not dispelled by the Allegro di molto. On the contrary, the quicker tempo, together with the persistent quavers in the left hand and the markedly uneven rhythms in the right, adds an urgent intensity to the emotion already established. The second subject of the Allegro, with right hand crossing eight times over the left and back again, does not reduce the agitation. It is only when the second subject changes from E flat minor to E flat major that there is some small emotional relief but, as the Grave and Allegro elements become ever more closely integrated, it becomes ever clearer how unrealistic it is.

    The Adagio cantabile is a slow movement which is not, in any sense, pathetic. A simple rondo set in the key of A flat major, it exudes spiritual well being. The main theme appears fives times without development, with no significant variation in line or harmony, and always in the same key. There are two short chromatic episodes but not even the second, with its dramatic departure to E major, disturbs the prevailing sense of security.

    The third movement, a more complex rondo structure, is said to have been written with some other work in mind. That may be, but it is the perfect resolution of the dialectic of this sonata. The main theme itself has something of the fugitive quality of the first movement. But this time Beethoven does not for so long deny C minor its natural tendency to move into E flat major, which it does in the first episode. The comparatively slow-moving second episode in A flat major seems to be a deliberate reminiscence of the security of the Adagio in the same key. This episode is not recap­itulated, however, and though Beethoven toys with A flat major he finally rejects it and all it stands for in an abrupt assertion of C minor.