Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas: A Handbook for Performers.

Barolsky, Daniel

Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas: A Handbook for Performers. By Stewart Gordon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. [xi, 273 p. ISBN 9780190629175 (hardcover), $105; ISBN 9780190629182 (paperback), $27.95. Also available as an e-book (ISBN and price varies).] Music examples, bibliography, index.

In spite of the author's claim that this handbook should not be a collection of his ideas about playing the sonatas, the bulk of this volume (especially when paired with Gordon's critical edition) catalogs the impressions left by the sonatas on the pianist after years of investigation and practice. A more accurate title for this handbook would be Stewart Gordon on Beethoven: Observations and Reflections.

The author divides his study into two parts. The first half of the book examines five contextual areas that might inform or challenge a pianist seeking to learn a piano sonata by Beethoven: "Sources" (i.e., scores/editions), "Beethoven and the Piano" (keyboard models that Beethoven would have known or used), "Performance Practices" (e.g., ornamentation, pedaling, tempo), "Beethoven's Expressive Legacy" (distinctive qualities found in the sonatas), and "The Windmills of Beethoven's Mind." The first three of these chapters are both useful and informative, especially for those new to playing Beethoven's music. They provide a well-written description of some of the challenges that come with trying to decipher various editions within the context of early instruments and early styles of performance. A productive theme--and reminder--that emerges regularly and necessarily from Gordon's narrative is that modern-day pianos and styles of performance do not readily fit with those of Beethoven's time; moreover, our evidence for past practices is not always clear. Thus performers interested in how historical practice might influence their own interpretations are encouraged to make informed choices and present their own creative and personal solutions. It is a credit to the handbook (and likely the author's pedagogy) that Gordon does not simply present replicable solutions to various quandaries, but instead frames the problems that performers might consider. Indeed, the author does not sweep ambiguity or controversy under the rug even while he makes a case for his preferred interpretations. These three sections are, perhaps, the most beneficial for performers.

The exploration of Beethoven's mind and expressive legacy is more problematic. The author presumes conclusions (and makes assumptions about his audience) that undermine the value of his analysis. He begins chapter four with the following series of questions:

"Why is Beethoven's use of common harmonic practice more expressive than those of other composers? Is not Beethoven's dominant-to-tonic harmonic progression the same as that used by countless of his contemporaries? Why can a Beethoven slow movement transport us to higher realms of consciousness so effectively, while the slow movements of others are merely pleasing? Why do Beethoven's sonorities call up the elation of man's victory over cosmic adversaries, while the sonorities of others merely suggest earthbound excitement?" (p. 51)

If these questions (which are reminiscent of antiquated or Romantic histories from the early 20th-century) are the author's starting assumptions, any subsequent analysis that serves to prove these claims is little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if the reader is to assume from the start that Beethoven is great and that his music is a reflection of the composer's genius and perfection, any observation about connections or details in the score, however profound or insignificant, can only be understood as evidence of Beethoven's genius. By hiding behind the curtain of Beethoven's greatness, Gordon is able to avoid reflecting on the value or historical origins of his analytic or aesthetic criteria. In short, while chapters four and five provide interesting collections of data (e.g., lists of sonata movements having recapitulations that occur in an unexpected key), the connections between sonatas or the composer's "manipulation of tonality" (p. 61) are no proof of Beethoven's genius (especially when there is no discussion of Beethoven's predecessors or contemporaries to whom he is compared).

The body of information collected by the author in these two chapters is impressive. It is not always clear, however, what a performer or listener is to do with some of it. Gordon writes, "For those who perform this music, such study [i.e., the analyses in chapter four] is a means through which to internalize it, achieving power and conviction" (p. 52). On one hand, attention to Beethoven's sonority, intervallic spacing, register extremes, or timbral allusions (some of the categories Gordon explores) could heighten the awareness for performers who might, otherwise, be preoccupied with more traditional studies of form and harmony, or simply getting the right notes. On the other hand, it is less apparent why a pianist trying to learn the Sonata op. 2, no. 1, would benefit from knowing that the sonata shares a key with the Appassionato, Sonata op. 57, or that both sonatas open "with broken tonic arpeggios" (p. 81), especially when said information derives from seance-like speculation about associations between keys: "Beethoven probably responded to one or more of these influences, perhaps consciously, perhaps not" (p. 81). These tonal or textural links are not necessarily meaningless, but they lack the musicological context that a performer might exploit.

The second half of the handbook contains a short digest of each sonata, for which Gordon provides a "Biographical Snapshot," "Factual Information," and "Observations." The distinction between the first two categories is not always clear. Nevertheless, they sometimes contain a more focused distillation of the book's first three chapters combined with random snippets from Beethoven's biography. Some are better than others. Compared to the brief "Snapshot" for the "Waldstein" Sonata op. 53 (which at least mentions the composer's acquisition of a new Erard, a piano that may have explained the increased range of the sonata), the "Snapshot" for op. 54 appears to be entirely irrelevant. We learn of Beethoven's life in early 1804, his change of living quarters and its relationship to his writing of Leonore, and the moment when Beethoven is said to have torn off the tide page to his manuscript of the Eroica Symphony. If one considers that this handbook is intended for performers (as the title of the book suggests), I would question how this information is germane except as contextual filler. Are we to imagine there is a link between op. 54 and Leonore or the Eroica? How might these links shape interpretation, performance, or even the listening experience?

The "Observations" provide a combination of simplified formal analyses and notes about a given passage. Some passages are selectively descriptive and at times mundane (e.g., about opus 57: "The first theme is presented and extended in E major, e minor, c minor, and At major, and with a diminished seventh sonority that leads through transition material to D[sharp] major" [p. 204]). Others draw attention to the composer's pedaling or articulation (especially as it pertains to different editions) or even an unresolved reading of the score (e.g., the paired notes in the final movement of opus 110). And some observations try to capture Gordon's interpretation of a given moment (e.g., about opus 101: "The exposition is very compact, with a virtually seamless progression from section to section and an unusual persistence in avoiding resolutions to the home key or its dominant. Such avoidance in the gentle setting presented in this movement possibly suggests anticipation or yearning" [p. 232]). It is in these observations that we can best imagine listening to the sonatas with Gordon as our aesthetic guide.

Although there are moments, here and there, that synthesize research and approaches to the sonatas (especially chapters 1-3), the rest of the book presents an expanded version of the author's excellent and thoughtful critical edition combined with Romantic commonplaces about the universality of music, debatable claims about Beethoven's intentions, and peripheral background information. In order to appreciate Gordon's observations about Beethoven, performers and readers would be best served by paying careful attention to the extensive commentary and introduction to his critical editions.

Daniel Barolsky

Beloit College