The Moonlight Sonata is Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2. He composed it in Vienna in 1801 and published it in 1802, with a dedication to his pupil Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. Beethoven himself titled it Sonata quasi una fantasia. The nickname came later: the critic Ludwig Rellstab compared the first movement to moonlight on Lake Lucerne, and the name stuck for good.
Beethoven was thirty and living in Vienna when he wrote this sonata. These were difficult years: he was beginning to notice the loss of hearing that would mark the rest of his life. The dedication to Giulietta Guicciardi, a young aristocrat who was his piano pupil, fed the romantic legend around the work from early on.
The title the composer himself chose, quasi una fantasia, is a statement of intent. It announces that the sonata will not follow the usual order of its day, and that the music will flow with the freedom of a written-out improvisation.
The first movement, Adagio sostenuto, is the most celebrated. Over a continuous ripple of triplets floats a grave melody, almost a funeral song, to be played softly from beginning to end. The second, Allegretto, is a brief, amiable interlude, a light dance that offers breathing space between two dark movements.
The third movement, Presto agitato, releases all the accumulated tension. Its surging arpeggios and violent accents demand considerable technique and nerve from the pianist. This is the sonata's true destination: what began as contemplation ends in storm.
In 1801, a sonata usually opened with a fast movement in sonata form. Beethoven reversed the scheme: he began with slow music and shifted the dramatic weight towards the finale. That gesture, which now seems natural, changed the way the genre was conceived and looked ahead to the piano writing of the Romantics.
The work also explores the instrument in a new way. Beethoven asks for the first movement to be played with the dampers raised, that is, with constant pedal, in search of a blurred resonance that the pianos of his time produced in a very particular way.
Many listeners know only the first movement. It is worth hearing the sonata whole, about fifteen minutes of music: the contrast between the opening adagio and the closing presto is the heart of the work, and it registers fully only when heard complete.
In concert, the sonata remains a test of maturity for pianists. Each interpreter decides how much mystery to give the opening and how much fury the finale, and that variety of readings keeps alive music written more than two centuries ago.
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