Moonlight Sonata

Moonlight Sonata or Almost a Fantasy

Ludwig van Beethoven was great talent and had a special taste for music by creating genius symphonies and sonatas. Each of the works has some deep meaning, and in his works he included the zest that makes all of them special, and one of them is the Piano Sonata No. 14 “quasi una fantasia”, also known as Moonlight Sonata. I chose this sonata because I believe that it is significant in the history, because when he wrote it, he went through hardest time in his life. First of all, he was losing his hearing ability, and tried to hide from the society to keep it in the secret, but he meets gorgeous woman Giulietta Guicciardi, and falls in love from the first moment. This moment in his life makes him to write beautiful melody, the Moonlight Sonata, where he expresses his feelings to her. When in fact, she leaves to another composer who was richer and gets married to him. If Beethoven began to write his sonata in state of true happiness, love, than delight and trembling hope ends in anger and fury. I liked and chose this sonata, especially first Adagio Sostenuto part, because it has its own history and by listening it over and over I can feel and see how Beethoven sends and expresses all his feelings that he went through. Hence, it makes this sonata unique and significant.

As I said above the first movement of sonata begins slowly and feels romantic by expressing happiness and love, so composer started with octave and triplet, and played against ostinato triplet rhythm. Hence, it was played very quietly and transferred moderately loud. William Kinderman mentioned Berlioz’s quote, “it is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify.” (Observations Held in Check, p. 93) Here we can see that by transferring to the mezzo forte it was the change when Beethoven shows his anger and fury, he makes is not a just usual sonata or just one of the usual works by him, he makes it as history, as Russian composer, Eduard...