Spanning the length of his compositional career, Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas provide a window into his personal musical development and show the piano sonata as a genre undergoing an extraordinary evolution. In these 24 lectures, discover how Beethoven broke all the rules to achieve a new and powerful effect with his piano sonatas. You'll explore in detail sonatas including Pathétique (Piano Sonata no. 8 in C Minor, op. 13), which led a contemporary to characterize Beethoven's work as “lots of crazy stuff”; Moonlight (Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, op. 27, no. 2), described by Hector Berlioz as “one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify”; and Farewell (Piano Sonata no. 26 in E-Flat, op. 81a), a programmatic work commemorating the departure from and return to Vienna of Beethoven's close friend Archduke Rudolph. Professor Greenberg analyzes many musical passages, taking you note-by-note and phrase-by-phrase through different movements of the sonatas, showing how Beethoven plans and achieves his surprising effects. Beethoven paid scrupulous attention to all aspects of his compositions, and Professor Greenberg elucidates these features and brings them vividly to life, such as thematic development, tempo, large-scale dramatic progression, and psychological manipulation by the performer. Truly, Beethoven's piano sonatas are, more than any other of his amazing works, his personal testament, expressed in his own voice.
