Sonata in D minor, Op.31, No.2 (“The Tempest”)

When Beethoven’s biographer Anton Schindler asked him what the Sonata in D minor was “about” it wasn’t such a silly question. While the Sonata makes perfect sense from a purely musical point of view, it is scarcely possible not to hear the work as a dramatic conflict of some sort, with dialogue and interacting characters. But when Beethoven replied, “Read Shakespeare’s Tempest!” was it a serious answer or just a hastily chosen brush-off?

Although several attempts have been made to associate the events of Shakespeare’s comedy with those of the Sonata, none of them is consistently convincing, largely because of the unhappy ending represented by the Allegretto last movement. Beethoven’s answer does, on the other hand, encourage one to think of the Largo opening bars, with the quietly spread chord in the left hand and the four rising notes in the right, as a question or even, to be frankly fanciful about it, a magic spell. And it is no less tempting to take the sudden Allegro surge of quaver figuration as a stormy reaction to the initial proposition. The legitimacy of this kind of interpretation seems to be confirmed by the way the left hand, forcibly echoing the four rising notes, enters into a passionate dialogue in D minor with the right and, towards the end of the movement, by the extension of the Largo material into an unaccompanied recitative of comparatively sustained Prospero-like eloquence.

The Adagio is a haven of tranquillity in B flat major with apparently little in common with the stormy first movement. It is significant, however, that it too opens with a quietly spread chord and that the theme attached to it also has an upward or questioning inflection. In this case there are two answers, each quite different from the other: one is a kind of chorale in B flat over or (as the left hand crosses to the upper end of the keyboard) under a persistent drumming rhythm; the other, approached by a thrill of anticipation in the form of a rising scale, is a graceful dance in dotted rhythm and radiant F major harmonies. The second half of the movement presents the same three protagonists in much the same peaceful relationship but with different harmonies and in a more decorative texture.

The closing Allegretto is all action, without dialogue, and is based almost entirely on a figure like that of the opening theme of the celebrated Bagatelle Für Elise - although in these driven circumstances the atmosphere is quite different. There is no question of a Shakespearean reconciliation. It is a matter of developing the rhythmic potential of the main theme, which is briefly contrasted with a more sharply defined second subject, and sustaining the activity until it reaches its quiet but uncompromisingly D minor ending.

The Sonata in D minor, one of three published as Op.31, was written in 1802 - three years before the “Appassionata” Sonata which, to confuse the issue, Beethoven also compared to Shakespeare’s Tempest.