Moonlight Sonata

“ Duff-Scott thought you would all like to see him before you went away. Let us have the 'Moonlight Sonata,' shall we? Beauty fades and mere goodness is apt to pall, as Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins would say, but one never gets tired of the 'Moonlight Sonata,' when it is played as you play it. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Aarons? ”

“ MOONLIGHT SONATA. An absurd title which for years has been attached both in Germany and England to the Sonata quasi una fantasia in C♯ minor, the second of the two which form together Beethoven's op. 27. It is dedicated to the 'Damigella Contessa Giulietta Guicciardi.' The title is said to have been derived from an expression of Rellstab the critic [1] comparing the first movement to a boat wandering by moonlight on the Lake of Lucerne. In Vienna it is sometimes known as the [2] Laubensonate, from a tradition that the first movement was composed in the leafy-alley (Laubengang) of a garden. ”

“ The first movement opens darkly and sombrely, suggesting the lines of the verse that heads the sonata as a whole, telling of the great rafters in the hall at night, flashing crimson in the flickering light of a dying log fire. The strong voice of a bard rings out, and through this medium the tales of battles, love and heroic valour is told. The movement has passages of tremendous vigour, passion and depth, all painted with the unerring skill of the composer. The final bars are of fierce and elemental power. ”

“ A fairytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; ”

“ But as music has become more and more an intimate phase of life, and as our most intimate instrument, the instrument of the household, is the pianoforte, we understand its capacity for the intimate expression of moods and fancies, the lights and shadows of life, as it never was understood before. The modern lover of music, if I may judge his standpoint from my own, feels that while the sonatas of the masters I have named were written for the pianoforte, they were thought out for orchestra, and that even a Beethoven sonata is an engraving for pianoforte of a symphony for orchestra. ”

“ It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colours haphazard upon his canvas. ”

“ There were sonatas, or rather veiled symphonies; songs whose poetry might be understood without words; piano pieces both of a demonaic nature and of the most graceful form; sonatas for piano and violin; string quartets, each so different from every other that they seemed to flow from many different springs. Whenever he bends his magic wand, there, when the powers of the orchestra and chorus lend him their aid, further glimpses of the magic world will be revealed to us. May the highest genius strengthen him! ”

“ And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. ”

“ The Adagio, calm and sublime, is one of the most beautiful things in music. The scoring is like that of a string quartet. The ending dies away and creeps almost imperceptibly into the Scherzo through an unexpected C sharp. Full of life and bubbling over with fun, it has a [176] jolly trio and a coda of its own. The Finale touches every mood from gay to sad, from lively to severe. The lovely Adagio makes a re-appearance in it, but the gay mood wins, for with a freakish little Presto the Sonata is brought to a triumphant close. ”

“ The moon shines far brighter than at other times, as if a lamp were burning at its full height in the sleeping-room instead of a mere night-light. People strolling along, absorbed in thought and feeling the flagstones under their feet still warm--for they have been drinking in the fierce glow of the sun the livelong summer day--catch themselves in the act of crossing over out of the moonlight to the shady side, just as one does in the hot noontide. ”

“ For, since a purely musical work contains none of those logical sequences, the interruption or confusion of which, in spoken or written language, is a proof of insanity, so insanity diagnosed in a sonata seemed to him as mysterious a thing as the insanity of a dog or a horse, although instances may be observed of these. ”

“ When he had finished, Chopin said, "I beg you, my dear friend, when you play my music, to play it as it is written or not at all." "Play it yourself then," said Liszt, rising from the piano. "With pleasure," answered Chopin. At that moment the wind put out the light. When they were about to relight it, Chopin said, "No, the moonlight is enough." His hands then wandered over the keys, and for more than an hour he played so beautifully that his listeners were in tears. "You are right, my friend," said Liszt; "such music as yours ought never to be changed, for you are a true poet." ”

“ Here and there, where a window stands open and a sonata of Beethoven floats out into the night, they suddenly hush their noise and listen, only to break out in a wild burst of applause the moment the music ceases. On such a night solitary youth lies dreaming, with open eyes, till long past midnight, of the glories of the future; and solitary age thinks sadly how glorious the past was ”

“ No doubt dwelling with such a genius has developed her. They say that Joachim has had such a happy life that he wants to live forever! He certainly does overtop everything. On this occasion he played Beethoven's great Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano, with Clara Schumann, and I thought it the most magnificent performance I ever heard! I perfectly adore Joachim, and consider him the wonder of the age. It is simple ecstasy to listen to him. ”

“ But just as I felt myself struggling for breath, a long ray of moonlight slipped aslant the pavement of the hall, and the atmosphere became less dense. In a few moments the hall was filled with moonlight, and I saw that, just where the light streamed, there was growing a tree—a tree of golden fruit that shone in the moon’s rays. A little way off a fountain began to flash, and its sparkling drops fell musically into the basin beneath the fantastic jets. All at once a nightingale burst into rapturous song among the foliage. ”

“ Joseph Joachim, that mighty Hungarian, was past his prime when I heard him in London. He played out of tune—some of his pupils have imitated his failing—but whether in a Beethoven quartet, concerto, sonata with piano, he always stamped on your consciousness that Joseph Joachim was the greatest violinist that had ever lived. This is, of course, absurd, this unfair comparison of one artist with another. Yet it is human to compare, and if a violinist can evoke such a vision of perfection, then he must be of uncommon powers. ”

“ It is much wiser to seek out a pleasant nook in this lovely heaven. I want to find a little place there for myself, not in a desert with water and locusts and wild honey, but in a merry company of primitive beings, among the tinkling of guitars, the sighs of love, the moonlight, and such-like—in short, in a quite ordinary opéra-comique, without any rescuing spectre of Schopenhauerian philosophy in the background. ”

“ One night they walked while the moon rose and poured a great burden of glory over the garden until it seemed fairyland with Amory and Eleanor, dim phantasmal shapes, expressing eternal beauty in curious elfin love moods. Then they turned out of the moonlight into the trellised darkness of a vine-hung pagoda, where there were scents so plaintive as to be nearly musical. ”

“ In a Liszt rhapsody, a cadenza should flash like a rocket, but in a Chopin nocturne it should glide with easy, undulating grace, should float like a wind-blown ribbon, a fallen rose-leaf. Too often we hear the ornamental passages in a lyric played as if they were wholly irrelevant matter, dropped in there by accident out of some other entirely different compositions,—a bit of vain, noisy display in the midst of a poetic dream, breaking instead of enhancing its charm, utterly incongruous. ”

“ The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields lay yellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar windbreaks threw sharp black shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a deep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything seemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great, golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendor of it seemed to transcend human life and human fate. ”

“ The gathering twilight deepened into night, but still the major went on caressing and winning from the violin selections and improvisations that would have charmed the most cultured ear. Sometimes the strings would cry out like the pleading wail of a lost soul, and float away through the window, charging the night wind with quivering melody. ”

“ "One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way." ”

“ They are dependent upon the accompaniment of others.
The pianist, on the other hand, has the inestimable advantage of being able to play melody and accompaniment on one instrument at the same time—all in one. While singing with some of his fingers the tender melodic phrase of a Chopin nocturne, he completes with the others the exquisite weave of harmony, and reveals the musical fabric to us in all its beauty. ”

“ This strain comes in like some of the repeating melodies in the second part of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, where it seems as if the soul had found a new, sweet thought, and was turning it over and over as loth to pause, and as in sudden hope of some relief through its potency. But the heavy key-note strikes again through it all, in line 154, with a crash that drowns all the sweetness and beauty. We hear the rush of the cruel, insatiate sea, as its waves dash against the shore of the stormy Hebrides, and the conflict of wave and wind takes possession of us. ”

“ I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. ”

“ This night is not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch for his goddess to-night. There are no flocks out on the mountains; and it is well, for to-night she welcomes Æolus. ”

“ It causes a monotony—which, however, is never monotonous—and which, though no imitation, is akin to the constant sounds of nature—the monotony of rustling leaves and swaying trees, and running brooks and blowing wind, the call of birds and the hum of insects.’ And he adds, as a summing up of its beauty: ‘However abstruse or characteristic the mood of Beethoven, the expression of his mind is never dry or repulsive. ”

“ Standing erect abruptly, Tom cast a defiant glance at the chattering throng behind me and hurriedly made his way through a side door from the music-room. As I turned away from the piano I saw that Signorina Molatti's eyes were fixed on his retreating figure with an expression that my worldly wisdom could not interpret. There was more of wonder than of admiration in her gaze, a gleam of questioning and longing that might, it seemed to me, readily flame into hot anger. ”

“ The oriental background of the opera permeates the atmosphere of the overture. A forceful introduction for full orchestra and arpeggio figures in harp lead to a skipping and delicate tune for first violins against plucked cello strings. The flutes and clarinets respond with a subsidiary thought. A crescendo brings on a strong subject for the violins against a loud accompaniment. After a change of tempo, another light, graceful melody is given by solo flute and oboes. ”

“ When he had finished and the applause had subsided, one of the ladies was heard to remark, “What a pity that the piano is incapable of these effects! It is brilliant, dramatic, resourceful, what you will; but only the violin can stir the heart in that way.”
Chopin rose, bowing with one of his equivocal smiles, half-sad, half-playfully mocking, stepped to the piano and improvised this nocturne, a perfect reproduction of all the best violin effects, cantilena and all, including the double-stopping in the second theme, with a certain warmth and poetry added, which were all his own. ”