Constructive Criticism: 1. It's always time for cats... always. 2. Thank you for taking the time to share such insight. I'm so glad I came upon this video. Cheers! 3. It's never not time for cats.
Clive, this is deeply appreciated. This is one of the few Beethoven piano pieces I can actually play start to finish, and I have struggled with many of the issues you teach here, especially the pedaling. My intuition has always told me to follow the harmony, holding the pedal down on each measure and releasing it when the harmony changes. I've read advice to pedal the whole thing all the way through, never lifting it, and other advice never to release the dampers at all. I think the hardest part of this piece is getting the contrast in loudness between the melody and the underlying triplets. I've worked very hard on this for many years, but your advice here has opened a new door here. Also, that one spot where you have to either stretch and "use all these thumbs" as you put it. It never occurred to me to either cross the left hand over, or to move the hands over like you show at 15:37. I will have to try both approaches. Also the little slight pauses on major-minor switches, another thing that has always seemed intuitively clear to me, but never heard it explained so clearly. "A shriek of pain" ... that is what this piece is. The use of the soft pedal when that "dreamy" part comes never occurred to me, but I have to try that and yes, that slight crescendo near the end of it it perfect, and I've always tried to play it that way. And finally, I also have to say I appreciate your comments at the beginning about the darkness of this piece. So many people I know think this is a sweet, romantic piece, but wow...if you play it, really get into the emotional content of it, it's profoundly sad, not romantic or happy at all -- beautiful, yes, but in a very dark and sad way. Thank you so much!!
I am also surprised how often this is given as an introductory piece in piano teaching. It's technically easy in terms of pressing the keys, but it is monumentally difficult in terms of getting the beauty right.
@@michaelcondron3770 agree 100%. I saw an interview with a Chinese master pianist (Li Cuizhen? not sure...) recently who went back to this piece, specifically this movement and "re-learned" it from square one, saying, "Only now do I think I'm actually understanding what this is really about. It's a very difficult piece to play well."
Incredible class! It makes me understand music as it really is, and how the composition has something so magical and personal that each chord shows a part of the story in a mathematical and poetic way. Thanks!
Your clarity on the way this piece should be played is outstanding and also allows for each individuals interpretation. As fairly new to the piano I have found this video extremely helpful. Thankyou Paul
Thank you so much! I have learned a lot from your free tutorial. Especially the trick with the left hand to compensate little hands, now the higher tones sound more clear.
I always thought it was a sad piece ... mesmerizing and beautiful but sad.... I don’t play the piano but absolutely love this ...and I hope one day I can learn...I really enjoyed your explanation of this movement!
This video helped a lot! I hear a lot of interpretations of this piece, but this analysis really delves deep into the musical, emotional, and dare I say spiritual quality of the piece as a whole! Just subscribed and I hope to see more videos like it!
Thank you so much for your insights and Beethoven's thoughts NOT being on Moonlight at all. I'm teaching this piece to an adult now and am re-learning it more thoroughly myself. I especially appreciate your detailed interpretations of the chords, differing colors, touches, pedal nuances. I'm inspired.
Thanks for this wonderful video, very good advice. I feel the same about the A major chord after all that anguish, it's a very satisfying moment in the piece.
Thank you so much for the explanation. All these months locked up needed to do something meaningful I always loved this piece so I am learning it. No formal training j no music no lessons just paying close attention to youtube teachings and timing. I reseached info and read about the poet's finding written letter to Gulliette that is now in a museum. Didn't made much sense the composition is very dark sad. My goal is to be able to play the 17 minutes. I will practice your recommendations day n night until then Thank you
"C-major, how optimistic is that?" :-) Love this session. I actually got teary eyed at the finish. and I completely agree, that A-major chord is my favorite, I could live there in that moment, like a spot of sunshine in a forest of dead trees. Thanks Mr. Swansbourne. You should have so many subs, keep posting these and word will spread of the quality of your content.
Wonderful! Thanks so much for posting. There's some lovely advice for students of literally *anything*, in this case the soft thumb on G# plus the pinkie on the high G# (ie @ 12:13 "It's quite difficult to do, but once you've got the knack it's there for good."). I'm just really starting out my journey into learning the piano (I'm a guitar player) but I hope that you've recorded more tutorials of some other of my favourites. Any chance of dong something on Für Elise? Thanks again. Oh, and the Feline cameo is purrfect.
Thank you for this video! I'm such a beginner at piano but I'm trying to play this piece. I didn't get I should use the pedal and your tips on which fingers should be used are VERY useful (specially for a small-handed person like me). Thx thx thx thx
This is absolute gold. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I played the piano as a kid and got to grade 4 aged 7 and decided I wanted to stop. Fast forward 30 years and bought a cheap 88 key keyboard and managed to learn half of this piece in a few weeks. It’s crazy hearing you talk about certain elements and the how and why of doing these things. Scary thing is I just play taking those things into consideration anyway but hearing you discuss these parts is great. I always wonder where I would have got to if I didn’t stop. Do you do online lessons? Would be great to talk. Thanks again 🙏💙
Thanks for the invaluable lesson! One thing I may suggest is that most videos in your channel are "Advanced" level pieces. It would be great if you could cover some early intermediate to intermediate pieces. I believe this will attact more views since people who are already on "Advanced" level are less likely to come to youtube for piano suggestions.
A very enlightening and interesting explanation of this popular piece, High points being the Train Wreck description and Cat entering Stage left 😊😂😊 Very nicely played too 👍
Your explanation is very very useful for me. I just started working on this piece as I never dared to learn it as I always was told that it's way above my abilities (4th year piano - not playing every day). Now I have at least some good guidance to the intonation required and tips for the fingering.
@@pianoinsights6092 In the meantime, I have completely studied it, now I am watching the video again for the dynamics :) . By the way, you have good competition: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wfF1iA_3Los.html
Thanks very much for this video, it has helped me a lot learning this piece of music. I am stuck on some bars of the music where there are rest notes above notes… can you explain why this would happen, and how I need to interpret it to play. I understand it is to break up the voices in a sense, or to allow the rhythm to come through better, but do I play the notes simultaneously or separately?
15:49 - precisely what I've been struggling with! This splitting in my case sounded as if it was from outer space (at least dimension)! Thank you for the hint with the left hand - I'll use it as soon as I have a chance ;) Greetings from Poland! :)
Indeed, Beethoven meant what he wrote in the score, no dampers. The Fortepiano had high decay time, meaning the sustain was weaker. The Adagio Sostenuto movement can not be played the same way on modern pianos due to the pronounced sustain-time. Instead, we need to create the ghostly blend of bars by careful pedal control. The ringing of tones from former bars creates an atmosphere not inherent in the triplets themselves. Just think about the latter part of bar 39 where the sustained tones from the former part create a tritone-ish background in relation to the natural d that starts off the latter part. That's how the no-damper effect becomes part of the musical experience, involving additional tones, not part of the chords per se. Beethoven was a true genius on so many levels!
Hi, thanks for making this in-dept tutotial. I am trying to play this piece with a metronome and I notice that I can't easily keep up during playing the G# with my right pinky, see @8:32 in your video. Now I notice that most piano players slow down during playing this third voice. Should I follow the metronome or is that not intended in this piece?
I was your 1,000th sub haha Im learning this in guitar. One thing that i dont understand if the song is in C# minor how come theres notes that are not in that scale. Thanks for the upload!
Welcome! I'm not sure what notes you mean, but if they are eg. D natural or G natural or even C natural, it is because the music has temporarily changed key.
Thanks for the beautiful lessons. I have a question: Bar 27 says "decresc.", and goes to "p" in bar 28. We have a similar passage at bar 48 and 49, but there is "p" noticed at bar 49. I hear the first chord (D sharp) in bar 49 often played loud. And if you compare it to the passage of bars 27 and 28 you would think it is correct. What is right? Is the pianissimo at bar 49 noticed wrong?
Interesting video. I see lots of echoes of Schiff’s masterclass on this piece. I think one thing missing from your analysis, that Schiff explored, is the tempo. Just wondering what your thoughts and justifications of your tempo are? Cheers !
I don't recall Schiff's class on this but I have read his views on how he thinks the tempo should be calibrated to the pedal being held down non-stop throughout the piece, and that this requires a quicker tempo so that the muddiness caused by the pedaling is more acceptable. Much as I admire tremendously his artistry, I disagree with him about both the saturated-pedal approach, and using this as a reason for a choosing a quicker than average tempo. This is what I remember from years back. Since that time he may have altered his views. Let me know if I am off the track here. As to tempo choice in general, I think it has to be made by the individual player. We have all learnt that great music can sound wonderful at a variety of different tempi within certain parameters, and that it is up to each individual to make a choice and, if in public, make a 'case' for it. We don't know what tempi the composers had in mind. Differing theories as to how their metronome markings are to be interpreted leave us bafflingly with a choice between extremely fast and extremely slow tempi (for more on this, visit the website 'Authentic Sound'). And even if their markings were 'settled science', we live in an age where we can hear a genuinely enriching variety of insightful performances at different tempi of the same piece at the touch of a button, a situation unimaginable to composers of the past. They knew that a single performance was often their only chance of 'putting across' their new symphony, for example, so (I suspect that) they had to choose tempi most likely to achieve this, for audiences generally new to the music they heard. That's my nutshell current philosophy about tempo. We mustn't be dogmatic about 'correct' tempi, but embrace the variety available within the bounds of educated taste, and as a player/performer, be constantly experimenting with different tempi before making choices.
@@pianoinsights6092 great, many thanks for the response. I believe Schiff also points out the time signature being alla breve, and that his interpretation of that means a relatively faster tempo. Everyone has their own focuses in interpreting music, and the composer, so just wanted to hear your thoughts. Similarly I find the differing interpretations of Beethoven’s later period interesting given how varied they are - considering age, emotional maturity and ‘technological’ advancement. Thank you
Yes, the alla breve is also a bit of a dilemma. It's interesting that Mozart used alla breve for the Commendatore death scene in Don Giovanni, which was on Beethoven's mind at the time of his composition of the "Moonlight" sonata, but Mozart also marked it Andante, whereas Beethoven indicated Adagio. My feeling is that Adagio trumps alla breve if alla breve is interpreted to mean 'a little quicker'. But I see no conflict if we allow the idea that alla breve can mean that two beats in a bar work at any tempo, however slow. It is possible to feel this movement in two while playing a real adagio tempo, and this is helped by the fact that most of the time the bass marks out only two beats per bar.
The topic of the tempo of this piece I think is fairly controversial because another thing to consider is Beethoven marked it in Cut time which suggests it should be twice as fast as otherwise. About the only recording that I know of that ran at a fairly quick tempo was Gould's, who was chastised for that. Perhaps he was correct? The closest to Gould's tempo is probably V. Lisistka's latest. The other consideration with respect to the pedaling comments would be that Beethoven was still using a fortepiano at the time, so the pedal markings are relative to that kind of piano. Just curious if you have any comments on his use of the cut time marking.
I believe Beethoven put the pedal marking in this piece to indicate a particular pedal he had on the piano he played, which didn't act as the normal pedal - or the pedal didn't quite have the same sustaining capabilities of modern pianos so the pedal being held throughout the piece wouldn't sound bad. I could be wrong! But if you look at the time Moonlight Sonata was written (and pretty much during beethoven's life) pianos were being produced very frequently, and the master indeed played quite a few of them..some pianos had harmonic pedal, the pedal you'd have to use your knee on.. and a bit later the normal foot pedal. So my understanding is that holding the pedal he used would not create the muddy effect that it definitely would produce on today's instruments with their long sustains. The pianos back then had less sustain. Thank you for the informative video!
Thanks Derek, You make very good points, and there does seem to be a strong argument that Beethoven wanted the pedal held down all the way through. Even Barry Cooper in his wonderful edition of the sonatas for ABRSM allows for this, but recommends half-pedaling on modern pianos. You might be interested in my take, which I lay out in the chapter on interpretation in my book-in-progress, given the reasons I don't find it probable. (Btw, I have the greatest admiration for Andras Schiff, but disagree with him here). Pitfalls of literalism - the Moonlight Sonata controversy Beethoven gives at the start of his Moonlight Sonata an indication that the piece should be pedaled throughout (semper senza sordino). This has for a long time caused considerable debate, which continues to this day, one side believing that Beethoven meant the dampers (sordino but more correctly sordini) should literally be raised all the way to the end of the piece and never allowed to damp the strings; in modern terminology, that the player should hold the pedal down and never change it. It has been argued (by Tovey and others) that this music was written for an instrument much different from our own and that such pedaling worked well on those smaller and weaker instruments. Such pedalings had been used before for atmospheric effects, which, it is true, work better on the older pianos than on our modern ones. A passage from the first movement of Haydn’s Sonata in C (“English”) is one of the more famous examples. Beethoven used them also, notably in the last movement of his Waldstein sonata, where the simple and innocent theme sings quietly amid a fairy-tale halo of sonority of mixed tonic and dominant harmonies. But the sustained use of this effect over the whole of the Moonlight’s first movement creates a tangle of conflicting harmonies with no relief, and without creating any atmosphere except maybe that of thick black fog. But opinions differ, in this as in everything under the sun. The pianist Andras Schiff takes the full-immersion approach in his performances and recordings and describes the effect as “magical, the harmonies are washed together, creating sonorities that are truly revolutionary”, especially on the early pianos, but on modern ones also. He claims that ninety-nine percent of all pianists have simply ignored Beethoven’s instructions. Derek Melville, in his very interesting article on Beethoven’s pianos in The Beethoven Companion (Faber, 1971), takes the opposite view; “I myself have played this work on two of Beethoven’s pianos and also on other pianos of this period, and it is possible to state quite categorically that (Beethoven) would never have tolerated the frightful dissonances which result if the sustaining pedal were held down and not moved throughout the piece”. This shows that the argument may never be decided one way or the other on purely subjective grounds. One man’s cup of tea is another man’s poison. So maybe it would be better to look at the problem through the perspective of the composer and his options, and seek an answer based more on logic. To do this, let us put ourselves in Beethoven’s shoes for a moment, and first suppose that he wanted the whole piece to be traditionally pedaled throughout, changing at the harmony changes, without any drier, unpedaled sections along the way. Beethoven rarely gave pedal indications except for special effects. The pianist was essentially left to use pedal as he saw fit. He almost never includes them in his earlier music. This may partly have been because until around 1803 (when Beethoven adopted the simpler ‘Ped’ markings for the new foot pedals), direct indications for the knee lever mechanisms of the earlier pianos were so cumbersome, requiring the words senza sordino and con sordino for each pedal change (see for example the first edition of the opening of the slow movement of the Third concerto). In the first movement of the Moonlight these indications would have had to appear every measure, creating an impossibly cluttered situation. So what were his other options? Leaving no instructions at all was the norm for him, but this piece really was revolutionary and unique in the sonata repertory, in its consistency of mood and texture, without the contrasts one expects in a sonata movement (he also instructs that it should be played pianissimo throughout, though including crescendos along the way). In its exclusive focus on a single emotional state it presages the piano music of Romantics such as Mendelssohn and Schumann of decades later. So this new, revolutionary kind of music needed a special kind of pedaling. Schumann himself was fond of simply writing ‘with pedal’ at the opening of his pieces and leaving it at that. No one has ever suggested leaving the pedal down all the way through. Beethoven’s instruction is not so very different from Schumann’s, except in his use of the word ‘semper’ (always). Unfortunately, that one word is the real cause of the problem. We can’t know whether he considered adding a clause reminding us to change pedal wherever the harmonies change. Even if he did think of it (which presupposes he even anticipated his ‘semper’ being totally misunderstood), he would probably have dismissed it as unnecessary and even insulting to his piano-educated public, who would never have imagined he was suggesting leaving the pedal down all the way through - why would they? Let’s now suppose, on the other hand, that he really did want the dampers raised all the way through with no pedal changes. This was a much more radical idea altogether, so he would surely have taken pains to make it absolutely clear that this was what he wanted, leaving no room for doubt or ambiguity. It would have been a very simple matter for him to include such a precise instruction, just as the composer Kozeluch had done for the London edition of his Three Caprices, op.45. That Beethoven would have mistakenly omitted such a crucially important detail is hard to imagine. (Despite my belief that Beethoven wanted a traditional method of pedaling in this movement, I do however think it is effective to make pedal changes later than usual so that the harmonies overlap and melt into each other, the new chords emerging from their predecessors rather than appearing in immediate focus. It’s a subtle detail but adds poignancy, and it particularly effective in the ‘cry of pain’ moment, where the right hand holds a minor ninth (C on top) over a rising and falling bass line, where blending the B major and E minor harmonies by not changing pedal is very effective as long as the balance is right.) Looking at the controversy from this logical perspective I have found a way of clearing the matter up in my mind. I don’t claim to have won the debate, and do not expect it to disappear. Logic tends to play a minor role in modern discourse. But the Schiff interpretation is nonetheless a rarity, and will, for all his zeal in what he believes to be the truth of the matter, probably remain so. There is after all a reason we still don’t often hear this music played with pedal down (or even half down) all the way. For most of us it just doesn’t sound good.
@@pianoinsights6092 Apologies for the late reply! Thanks so much for taking the time to make your comment. My reply I made just now got deleted by me by mistake... so I'm going to just sum it up if I can. I completely agree with your comment, and side more on the sense that Beethoven would have added more context if he actually meant to not lift the pedal at all. Maybe by saying "always pedal" he meant "don't forget to use the pedal for the whole piece!" in a time where pedal wasn't that common.. so he may be just reminding the performer? Seems the most reasonable thing!
@@pianoinsights6092 He definitely did intend the pedal to be held down the entire movement - if you play on a period instrument (with the pedal knee-operated), it works with the pedal all the way through - it sounds eerie and haunting. Of course it's mud with a modern piano and you can't play it that way. Anyway, it's one of the only explicit instructions - Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino. I don't think that's ambiguous - even less so than the usual 'Sempre pp e senza sordino' where I suppose you could apply the sempre to the pp but not the senza sordino. But otherwise I think you're spot on in all regards. Including about the cat. I think people are afraid of the dissonance you mentioned - I'm with you on that. He wrote it like that for a reason. That's probably the biggest problem with the Moonlight label - this is someone thinking about mortality, not romance.
there are videos on youtube where this piece is actually played on instruments of that era, and in this situation, indeed, holding the dampers lifted looks like a very natural way to play it. p.s. one can even try it at home with a midi keyboard and pianoteq, which has a number of models of old instruments.
Thanks for the tutorial. When you read "and with pedal" it's probably a mistranslation as italian "senza" means without, not with. Anyway this is probably not intended for a fortepiano as the piano used by Beethoven when he wrote this sonata had a very different pedals and sound, so in fact not using the pedal/damper would add some sustain to the notes played.
I have got a question to you by the occasion: I noticed that editors always mark transition between fingers (I don't know how to say it in English... apologies; but I mean all these 5_4 5_4 in the right hand, and 5_4 5_3... in the left one), and that nobody actually does them, relying rather on the pedal to do the legato. Would you put a word of explanation to it?
I am very glad to have found this video. It'll give me a lot of ideas how to improve my playing of this piece. Many thanks! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JF_Mj_oJvvE.htmlfeature=shared
for those of us with very sensitive ears, it would be helpful if you did not smack y our lips at the end of ever sentence. other than that, it's helpful and you're a good guy
It bothered me too but even if this guy is posting videos for public consumption, we don't have the right to comment on it or request he change. Just watch something else or read captions. And saying it's after every sentence is a wild exaggeration.
