♫ So – sigh of relief – I think we’re ready to leave the exposition. When I played it in its entirety, I played it with its first ending. As if I were going to play the repeat. ♫ When the second ending comes, leading us into the development, we have our first serious confrontation between B flat and B – the first of at least four in this movement, by my count. So, first ending. ♫ B flat. Second ending. ♫ B! Funnily enough, it is the second ending which is actually the logical continuation of the G Major we’ve been in. ♫ But because the piece is in B flat major, and because the expectation of a B flat at this juncture has been created by the first ending, this B feels like a titanic event. ♫ The gauntlet has been thrown down, the war between these neighbor notes established. So, the bulk of this development is taken up by a fugue. This fugue would be considered pretty monumental by normal standards, but in this particular work it acts as a warm-up act, a premonition of the truly monumental fugue to come. The subject is taken largely from the opening motive of the piece, which is expanded to include – surprise, surprise – a series of falling thirds. ♫ This fugue is actually in four voices – one more than the finale – but generally speaking, by the time all four voices have entered, they function in pairs, with two voices playing the same rhythm, in consonant intervals of thirds and sixths. This means that with few exceptions, there are no more than two lines moving at different speeds and in different directions, whereas in the finale, there are often – maybe even usually – three. ♫ So, that is the end of the fugue, but it is not the end of the drama. From here, the development continues to build and build, using that opening rhythm ♫ as a basis, to a fantastic climax, the biggest of the piece so far. ♫ But then, just when the enormous intensity of the music seems to be subsiding, a magic event occurs. ♫ A sudden modulation, into B Major. ♫ Once more, an incursion of this strange neighbor – and in this instance, you don’t need one iota of background in music theory to hear that the music it brings with it is a kind of dream state. ♫ This dream state feels very far – in character, and harmonically – from home, but we are, in fact, nearing the recapitulation, though getting to it is, inevitably, complicated – getting from B major to B flat major SHOULD not be straightforward! Now, I don’t want to become fixated on this juncture of the piece when there are fantastic events in pretty much every one of the Hammerklavier’s 40-odd minutes. But this passage is the subject of a great debate. I’m going to try to explain this as non-technically as possible – I’ll give you the minimum amount of theory necessary to understand what’s happening. So, B major’s key signature has five sharps, whereas B flat major’s has two flats – again, neighbors in name only! So obviously, at one point or another, Beethoven has to change the written key signature from the five sharps we’ve been in, to the two flats we need to get to. Many people believe that Beethoven notated this change in the wrong place, and that what he meant to write was this. ♫ Very sensible. But what he actually wrote – you can debate whether he intended it, but there is no question that he did write it – is this far more radical version. ♫ Now, it is true, that that sort of modulation – with no V-I cadence, ♫ but rather, a tritone stretching out into a perfect fifth. ♫ That is 100% out of the classical tradition, without precedent in Beethoven’s music or in anyone else’s… …but little else in the Hammerklavier has precedent either, and to my ear, this modulation, insane as it is, fits the sonority, the nature of the piece, perfectly. Craggy, borderline ugly, crazily intense, and driving the half-step into the listener’s brain as if with an anvil, ♫ it sounds simultaneously totally wrong and totally right. Whether or not it was Beethoven’s intention, we’ll never know; but even if it was an accident, it was an accident that fits the bloody-minded nature of this work to a tee.
