Talk:Piano Sonata No. 32 (Beethoven)

I've moved the following passage to this page:

 * It has been argued that this movement is one of the best examples in the piano repertoire of the pianistic tradition getting it wrong. Most pianists, and all currently available recordings, have variation 2 faster than the initial theme and variation, and variation 3 as very much faster, whereas Beethoven’s was intention that the underlying pulse should remain consistent throughout the movement, so that the slow harmonic progression remains at the same tempo. This reading is caused by a misunderstanding of Beethoven's tempo markings and notation. A recording of this movement with the correct tempi is one of the most glaring omissions from the recording catalogue. A recording of this movement with these tempi would last over 20 minutes.

Reason: no source. If it can be changed to "The critic [name of a published critic] has argued that" instead of "It has been argued that" then it would be fine. But as is, it reads like the opinion of an individual editor, which is not legit on the Wikipedia. For policy, see Opus33 15:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally i do not think the above is true at all. Arno Waschk 18:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * According to this thread (not sure if you can see it without joining the forum) on this passage (!) it's probably from an article by Robert Winter. Markyour words 10:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * From a musical, rather than wikipedian point of view, I think one has to separate the issues "did Beethoven put in markings intending a single, slow tempo?" and "Does it work better musically, shape the piece in a better/different/more satisfying fashion, if the tempos are changed and made faster in the middle?" Just as with Schubert's unfinished symphony: conjecturally he may have written the piece we know as the 3rd act Entr'acte for Rosamunda as, originally, the Finale of the Symphony, but that's not the same issue as whether that entr'acte acttually works as Finale to the symphony, matches the opening two movements and ends the work in a good way. Changing tempos and disregarding the ones set by the composer is not that uncommon in classical music; conductors and pianists do it all the time. A score is different from a painting or a book where the finished work of art is, at least ideally, hewn into the actual pages or the canvas and meets us directly. so it does not always involve an interpreter, an interface between the work and its audience. I don't know whether Beethoven actually heard the lightning fast rhythms and syncopations that grace so many modern recordings of this sonata - they certainly wouldn't have sounded that way with the pianofortes available in those days! - but I know they have great appeal for 20th-21st century audiences and that they dramatize the underlying movements and tensions of the whole work in a way that might not have happened with a steady, unyieldingly slow tempo.
 * And finally, I would love to see Keith Jarrett do a recording of this one. Strausszek (talk) 16:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

While it's true that many recordings speed up for the first and second variations, I might suggest that the apparent speed-up on the third variation may often be simply due to the way it's written — the rhythm of the second variation is made up of 16th and 32nd note triplets, whereas the rhythm in the third variation is 32nds and 64th note triplets, resulting in the third variation sounding twice as fast as the second variation even if they are played at exactly the same metronome marking. I just listened to the break between these two variations in a few different recordings, and what I am finding is that if you actually pull out the metronome, some of the recordings actually slow down slightly for the third variation, although it still feels faster due to the smaller note values being used. 24.14.33.149 (talk) 03:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * And to add to that, the second variation's meter is 6/16, meaning that a dotted eighth-note would take up half the bar, rather than one-third of the bar as in the previous 9/16 variations. If one interprets "L’istesso tempo" to mean that the length of the dotted eighth should be kept constant rather than the pulse comprising a third of the length of each bar, then the basic pulse would need to be sped up to 3/2 of what it was previously. Granted, this may be a bit of a stretch, but if you try it with a metronome, it makes the second variation sound remarkably like what it sounds like in many recordings. Not the third variation, though, it gets insane if you do it this way. ;-) 24.14.33.149 (talk) 03:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Translation
If someone were willing to transfer the images etc. from the French article, I would be happy to translate. Quendus 07:03, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll move the images over. I started to translate, but found my skills in the language to be lacking.  Please help out.  Thanks a lot! &mdash; W. Flake  ( talk ) 23:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * How long has this translation thing been going on? I was reading through the rough draft and the translated text was still very rough, especially in properly adapting the phrases into normal english syntax. If no one objects, I'd like to make a couple changes to the translated version. --205.250.216.86 07:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Please do if you're still living. I'll join the translation crew meself! --Funper (talk) 15:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Chopin's allusion to the sonata in the Revolutionary Etude
I went through my books and I can't recall where I read it. Anyway this connection is certainly famous and widely accepted. I have given the exact bars for easy comparison. Gidip 15:15, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Piano Sonata No. 1 (Beethoven) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 13:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Note the date of the foregoing notice. The discussion, now long closed, concerned whether to move the sonata articles to new titles incorporating opus numbers. The conclusion was not to do so. Drhoehl (talk) 00:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

What does this mean?
"small notes which constantly divide the bar in 36 resp. 27 parts," What does the abbreviation "resp." mean? Could it be clarified for non-pros? JohnOFL (talk) 01:04, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * would also like to know 72.39.64.30 (talk) 01:29, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was just trying to figure that out too. Looking at the score I see plenty of measures with 27 notes but none, that I can find, with 36. My best guess is it is supposed to mean "bars with 27 32nd notes". Being in 9/16 meter, there are 27 32nd notes per bar. But I don't know. Maybe the confusing sentence should just be taken out. Something could perhaps be said about the the somewhat unusual meter, if a source about it can be found anyway. Pfly (talk) 06:44, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Two movements
Hrm??? Not that unusual at all for a classical piano sonata, actually... (and even less unusual for classical sonatas in general, e.g. violin sonatas.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 12:36, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

It was quite unusual at the time. Very few sonatas (or string quartets, piano trios etc - those formats were essentially seen as guided by the same formal principles) during the period of Viennese classicism and early romanticism are written in just two movements: the standard is three or four. (Schubert's two movement piano sontatas are unfinished pieces, and were intended as three- or four-movement works). 83.251.170.27 (talk) 10:57, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It really isn't that unusual. Among violin sonatas, Mozart's KV 304 and 379 immediately spring to mind. Double sharp (talk) 06:50, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Alberto Cobo?
Is it necessary to provide an external reference to "Recordings of this Sonata by Alberto Cobo"? The least I can say is that there are many better recordings freely available on the web. I actually tried to listen to Mr. Cobo's performance and could not endure it to the end. I don't dispute that someone might find it good but such an endorsement by Wikipedia appears entirely arbitrary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.42.162.4 (talk) 17:10, 6 March 2017 (UTC)