♫ So. I promised not to go into the usual exhaustive detail on this sonata, so let me just say a few words about the development, and then we'll move on. There's a lot to move on to! I just want to play the opening of the development, because again, it covers surprisingly wide terrain. ♫ Now, first of all, given that the opening theme was so light and cheerful initially, it’s quite something to hear it transformed into a manifesto. ♫ It was all pleasure at the opening; now it means business! It has also gone through quite a harmonic transformation: A Major ♫ to A flat Major. ♫ Those might sound like they are similar -- A and A flat -- but in fact they are seven steps away from one another in the circle of fifths. ♫ Now, Haydn was certainly one for springing harmonic surprises, in developments and in general. In fact, the development of that same C Major sonata also finds the opening theme in A flat Major-- not quite as remote from this work's C Major as it was from op. 2 no. 2’s A Major, but pretty remote nonetheless. ♫ And he marks that crazy pedal, blurring it and thus making it sound all the stranger. But there is a significant difference between what Haydn and Beethoven are doing here. For Haydn, introducing such an inappropriate key is a game, a joke. We're supposed to think, "What's he up to?" And we do think that. But when Beethoven takes us from A Major to A flat Major, it isn't a game. The theme's character has transformed, and the very distant key helps reinforce that: the fact that we are seven harmonic stations away from home underscores how big and bold this initially harmless theme has become. This difference in priorities is very typical. Again, Haydn has an endless storehouse of ideas -- but that is what they are: ideas. When he goes into bizarro A flat Major, going into A flat Major is the point. It's strange and unexpected, and that makes it compelling. When Beethoven does something strange and unexpected, as he does in this A flat Major section and about 100,000 other times in his works, it is in service of a larger point, in support of a structure. We see this again with Haydn's loopy pedal marking. ♫ The listener is supposed to think, "What is going on with the pedal?" But when Beethoven writes strangely sustained pedal markings, as he often does, it is in service of a character. Take the opening of the last movement of the Waldstein, which is supposed to sound otherworldly, and does, on account of what the foot is doing. ♫ There you have it, the depth of Beethoven’s connection to Haydn, and the limits of it. Haydn taught Beethoven to delight in humor, and even more significantly, to search for every possibility: rhythmic, harmonic, coloristic -- you name it. But Beethoven, who was ultimately much more ambitious, much more of a seeker, took those possibilities and used them to create a whole universe of feeling. Someone once said, "Bad composers borrow; great composers steal." This is a prime example of compositional theft; Beethoven taking one of Haydn's great qualities, and using it in ways Haydn couldn't have. It's a theft we should all be grateful for.
