A PANORAMIC SURVEY OF BEETHOVEN’S

HAMMERKLAVIER SONATA, OP. 106:

COMPOSITION AND PERFORMANCE
By Basilio Fernández Morante

〫
Much has been written on Beethoven’s piano sonatas, considered by
Hans von Bülow as the most significant collection of pieces in the piano
repertory, following J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier as the New Testa-
ment follows the Old.1 The case to be examined here, that of Sonata no.
29 in B-flat Major, op. 106, is a paradox. It is usually described as monu-
mental and majestic, and at the same time enigmatic or labyrinthine,
and it exercises a curious fascination over performers, musicologists, and
listeners. It is regarded with a kind of reverence, which tends to form an
impenetrable barrier, preventing us from seeing beyond certain superfi-
cial aspects of the piece. These can be summed up as its vast dimensions
and its difficulty, which anyone can detect just by looking at the score or
listening to the work. Given that information on this sonata, though
plentiful, is dispersed, comprising a diverse range of facets (biography,
musical analysis, psychology), the aim of this study is to draw together
the majority of the most vital keys to understanding its scope.
First, we need to remember that the first sonata in which Beethoven
included the German noun Hammerklavier (pianoforte) in the title was
no. 28, op. 101, a work which anticipates some elements of its successor.

OPUS 101, THE FIRST HAMMERKLAVIER SONATA

Beethoven had begun to introduce German terms in his Six Lieder,

op. 75, and in Piano Sonata no. 26, op. 81a. The traditional tempo mark-
ings in Italian at the beginning of each movement are replaced in
Sonata no. 27, op. 90, by expressions in German on the character of the
movement, and in opus 101 (1816) this is extended to the actual title of
a piano sonata: “Sonate / Für das piano-forte / oder - - Hämmer-Klawier.”2

Basilio Fernández Morante is a professor of piano at the Conservatorio Superior de Música “Joaquín
Rodrigo,” Valencia, Spain, and holds a doctorate in psychology from the Universitat de València. During
his career as a pianist he has collaborated with numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles, including
the Orquesta de Valencia, the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, the Bayerischen Rundfunks
Orchester, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
1. Alan Walker, Hans von Bülow: A Life and Times (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 341.
2. Letter from Beethoven to Tobias Haslinger, between 9 and 23 January 1817, in Ludwig van Beetho-
ven, Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg, 7 vols. (Munich: G. Henle, 1996–98), letter
no. 1065, 4:11–12.

237
238 Notes, December 2014

This assertion of linguistic identity on Beethoven’s part is due above all

to the patriotic and anti-Napoleonic feeling aroused by the recent
Congress of Vienna and the composer’s increasing expressive needs.
Indeed, he continued using the term Hammerklavier for the next two
sonatas, though opus 109 was not published as such.3
The first Hammerklavier contrasts in many respects with its successor.
Opus 101 is compact, intimate, and poetic, and foreshadows many
stylistic features of Beethoven’s late works: an introduction to the last
movement anticipating the material that follows, use of contrapuntal
techniques (canon in opus 101, fugue in opus 106), and, above all, reca-
pitulation of the opening theme in the last movement (cyclical form)
and explicit relationships between the themes used in different move-
ments (fig. 1), leading to works like the fantasy-sonatas of Schubert,
Liszt, and so on. Indeed, opus 101 was a work much admired by
Romantic composers, from Mendelssohn and Schumann to Wagner.4

GENESIS OF OPUS 106

In the course of time the name Hammerklavier became inseparably at-

tached not to opus 101 but to Sonata no. 29, op. 106. The composer un-
dertook his last keyboard works using a (Broadwood) English-action
piano, which contrasted with the Viennese-action instruments he had
been using up until then. It has been suggested that the use of the term
Hammerklavier may possibly have been related to this new piano; however,
it has more to do with the assertion of nationalist feeling mentioned
above, given that he received the new instrument around mid-1818,
when the work was in its final stage of composition. Indeed, opus 106 ex-
ceeds even the range of the Broadwood.5
Many factors came together in the creation of this work. The years be-
tween 1807 and 1812 were one of Beethoven’s most fruitful periods.
During that time he composed four symphonies (nos. 5–8), piano
sonatas (opp. 78–81a), the “Emperor” Piano Concerto, the Mass in
C Major, and various chamber works. From that point onward his output
was drastically reduced, and he entered a dark period, the start of which
is variously dated by different authors: 1812, with the completion of his
last violin sonata, op. 96 (Maynard Solomon), 1813 (Lewis Lockwood),
or even 1816, when he finished the Sonata op. 101 (Barry Cooper).6 In

3. Letter from Beethoven to Adolph Martin Schlesinger, 6 July 1821, in Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, let-
ter no. 1434, 4:443.
4. William Kinderman, Beethoven, 2d ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 218.
5. William S. Newman, “Beethoven’s Pianos Versus His Piano Ideals,” Journal of the American Musico-
logical Society 23, no. 3 (Fall 1970): 493.
6. Nicholas Marston, “In the ‘Twilight Zone’: Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Trio in F minor,” Journal
of the Royal Musical Association 131, no. 2 (2006): 227.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 239

Fig. 1. Sonata op. 101: relationship between the first five notes of the first movement, and
below this, the basic notes of the canon in the last movement (marked with a +), in retro-
grade. Adapted from Philip Barford, “The Piano Music, II,” in The Beethoven Companion,
ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune (London: Faber, 1971), 155.

any case, as Solomon observes, the question of Beethoven’s productivity

during the period between 1816 and 1820 is a complicated one.7 Let us
look at some of the developments which led to the composition of opus
106.
The first point to highlight is a decisive event already mentioned
above: the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). This marked an improvement
in Beethoven’s almost perennially precarious financial situation. His
popularity reached new heights, with the help of Johann Nepomuk
Mälzel and his publicity skills, and the concerts in late 1813 and early
1814 were the most successful of his career up to that time.8 However,
the compositions of that period (Wellington’s Victory, op. 91; Christ on the
Mount of Olives, op. 85; Polonaise for piano, op. 89, etc.) diverted Beetho-
ven’s attention toward sociopolitical ideals, though these are of some in-
terest in themselves.9 The fact is that his ephemeral activity during the
period of the congress deflected Beethoven from creative projects that
involved tackling substantial musical problems, and this plunged him
into a serious stylistic crisis.10
At the same time his finances began to depend almost exclusively on
Archduke Rudolf, as Prince Lobkowitz went bankrupt and Prince Kinsky
was killed in a riding accident. In 1815 his brother Karl died and the

7. Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (New York: Schirmer Books, 1977), 250.

8. Rudolf Kolisch, “Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s Music,” Musical Quarterly 77, no. 1 (Spring
1993): 91–92.
9. For an analysis of the importance of the works of this period in Beethoven’s life, see Nicholas Louis
Mathew, “Beethoven’s Political Music and the Idea of the Heroic Style” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University,
2006).
10. Nicholas Cook, “The Other Beethoven: Heroism, the Canon, and the Works of 1813–14,” 19th-
Century Music 27, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 3–24.
240 Notes, December 2014

battle over custody of his nephew began, and as if all that were not
enough, his deafness by late 1816 was practically total, as was his isola-
tion. The letters he wrote in mid-1817 to his closest friends in Vienna,
Nikolaus Zmeskall and Nanette Streicher, express great sadness and de-
spair.11 The years 1816–17 are among the best documented in Beetho-
ven’s life, a time when, paradoxically, his life was empty, he was almost
always ill, and his musical output came to a standstill.12 Indeed, between
1812 and 1816 the only works he completed were An die ferne Geliebte,
op. 98, the opus 90 and opus 101 piano sonatas, and the opus 102 cello
sonatas.
As late as 1817, just before he began work on the Sonata op. 106, prac-
tically the only piece Beethoven completed was the lied Resignation, WoO
149, which was perhaps the attitude with which he faced the prospect of
his own premature death. Written in D major and based on thirds, it has
certain parallels with the second subject of the final fugue of opus 106,13
and despite the major tonality, it contains a heartrending text by
Haugwitz: “Go out, my light! What you lack is gone; you will not find it
here!”14 This helps us to understand Beethoven’s own words in a letter to
Ries, in which he tells him that opus 106 was written under “painful cir-
cumstances.”15
For all these reasons, the composer was facing a tremendous artistic
and existential crisis. Opus 106 marks a turning point. The process of its
creation was the longest of any of his piano works, lasting from mid-1817
until August 1818, and it ushered in a period (1818–24) during which he
once again tackled large-scale works such as the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth
Symphony, and the Diabelli Variations. Beethoven was facing the chal-
lenging task of rekindling his motivation and looking for new forms of
expression. Starting from the traditional methods and forms used by the
composers who served as his points of reference (Haydn, and especially
J. S. Bach), he aimed to transcend those limits once and for all. In one of
Beethoven’s surviving sketchbooks, “next to notes on the first movement
of the Ninth Symphony and on the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata Op. 106 in
B  major, containing a great fugue, there are two passages copied from

11. Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, letters nos. 1161 (21 August 1817), 4:101–2; and 1164 (25 August 1817),
4:104.
12. Jean and Brigitte Massin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Essais, 9 (Paris: Club français du livre, 1955), 293.
13. Nicholas Marston, “From A to B: The History of an Idea in the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata,” Beethoven
Forum 6, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 97–127.
14. For a detailed study of the parallels between An die ferne Geliebte, Resignation, and the Hammerklavier
Sonata, see Sylvia Bowden, “ ‘Mademoiselle Maxemiliana Brentano’ and the English Edition of Beetho-
ven’s Op. 106,” Musical Times 153, no. 1920 (Autumn 2012): 27–52.
15. “Die Sonate ist in drangvollen Umständen geschrieben”; letter from Beethoven to Ferdinand Ries,
19 March 1819, Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, letter no. 1295, 4:262.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 241

the fugue in B  minor from Book I of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier,

two passages copied out of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue (Fugue IV, which
shows the elaboration of the theme in reverse), as well as a passage
copied from a treatise on the fugue by F. W. Marpurg.”16
In tackling the new work, Beethoven decided to start from his own fa-
vorite among his piano sonatas (along with opus 57): opus 22 (1800),
which has remarkable parallels with opus 106. There are further paral-
lels between the Sonatas op. 106 and op. 10 no. 3 (Marston, “From A
to B”), and even with the Quartet op. 130, which initially included the
Grosse Fuge, later published separately as opus 133. There is a striking re-
lationship between the Sonata op. 22 and the Quartet op. 18 no. 6, just
as there is between opus 106 and opus 130.17
The Hammerklavier was to be dedicated to the one patron of
Beethoven’s who remained faithful to the end: his pupil and friend
Archduke Rudolph.

DEDICATION AND FIRST PERFORMANCE

Archduke Johannes Joseph Rainer Rudolph (1788–1831), youngest

son of Emperor Leopold II, began taking lessons with Beethoven in
piano and music theory around 1803. A deep friendship soon developed
between the two of them, and this continued until the composer’s final
years, with Rudolph as his composition pupil. Despite the continual wars
in which the House of Austria was embroiled during the early nine-
teenth century, Rudolph was the only one of Beethoven’s patrons that
maintained his personal and especially financial support after the death
of Prince Kinsky and the bankruptcy of Prince Lobkowitz. He is there-
fore a key figure in the last decades of the composer’s life, and it is not
surprising that Beethoven should have dedicated as many as fourteen
compositions to him (table 1).
As well as being a notable pianist, Rudolph composed works for piano
and small chamber groups, outstanding among which are the Forty
Variations, op. 1 (1819), the Sonata for clarinet and piano, op. 2 (1822),
and a variation on Diabelli’s famous waltz (1823), specifically a fugue
(fig. 2).18 We cannot exclude the possibility that Rudolph’s fondness for

16. Anno Hellenbroich and Bruce Director, “On Questions of Motivic Through-Composition in
Beethoven’s Late Work,” EIR: Executive Intelligence Review 25, no. 35 (4 September 1998): 78; online at
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1998/eirv25n35-19980904/eirv25n35-19980904.pdf (ac-
cessed 27 August 2014).
17. Sterling Lambert, “Beethoven in B : Op. 130 and the Hammerklavier,” Journal of Musicology 25,
no. 4 (Fall 2008): 434–72.
18. For a thematic catalog of Rudolph’s compositions, see Susan Kagan, Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven’s
Patron, Pupil, and Friend: His Life and Music (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1988), 313–45.
242 Notes, December 2014

Table 1. Works by Beethoven dedicated to Archduke Rudolph, in chronological order

Piano Concertos no. 4, op. 58 (1808), and no. 5, op. 73 (1811)

Piano Sonata no. 26, op. 81a (1811)
Fidelio, piano transcription, op. 72b (1814)
Violin Sonata no. 10, op. 96 (1816)
Piano Trio in B-flat Major, op. 97, “Archduke” (1816)
Piano Sonatas no. 29, op. 106 (1819), and no. 32, op. 111 (1823)
Grosse Fuge, op. 133 (1827), and piano transcription for four hands, op. 134
(1827)
Missa Solemnis, op. 123 (1827)
(Other minor pieces, canons)

Fig. 2. Vaterländischer Künstlerverein (1823–24), a collection of variations by various

composers on an original waltz by Diabelli. Opening measures of variation 40, composed
by Archduke Rudolph, headed by the initials S.R.D. (Serenissimus Rudolfus Dux).

fugato was one more factor that influenced the very extensive use of
counterpoint in the final stage of Beethoven’s career as a composer.19
The help he gave to Beethoven, particularly of a financial kind, went
much further. He was his great ally in the legal disputes over custody of
his nephew Karl and his emotional support at the most difficult times.
Moreover, as Lockwood points out, the archduke lent him several rooms
in the palace for rehearsals and, in particular, gave him access to the
great musical library that Rudolph gradually amassed over the years.
Information on the reception of the Hammerklavier Sonata following its
publication in 1819 is scarce, although it is clear that from the beginning
the first two movements were greatly appreciated, the third less so, and

19. Lewis Lockwood and Jessie Ann Owens, “Beethoven and His Royal Disciple,” Bulletin of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 57, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 5.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 243

the final fugue hardly at all, which suggests that the period was not yet
ready for Beethoven’s late works.20

BRIEF ANALYSIS OF SONATA OP. 106

Let us now discuss the most important aspects of the work from the
compositional point of view. These have been studied at length by other
authors, and are vital to an understanding of the scope of the work.21
Composing this sonata represented a real challenge for Beethoven;
shortly before publishing it, he wrote that in the past “he did not know
how to compose; he knew now.”22 The many innovative procedures he
uses, together with the enormous dimensions of the work, give us an
idea of the complexity of the initial project.
The structural novelties of the work have three main facets. First,
Beethoven redefines the concept of tonality. The traditional role of the
dominant is nullified and replaced by harmonic shifts to keys a third
away from the original, with a striking use of G.23 The themes of all the
movements are also based on the interval of a third (as we shall see in
figure 4), and this lends unity to the work and opens the way to romantic
sonatas and fantasias.
Second, there is a constant conflict between B  and B  , which reflects
an attempt to move beyond traditional forms, a new counterpoint, a new
way of interpreting sonata form, and at the same time a source of vital en-
ergy throughout the whole work.24 This conflict is present from the open-
ing theme to the subject of the final fugue itself, recurring after the reca-
pitulation in the first movement and with particular violence in the
second movement. It gives rise to notable structural effects, such as a

20. William S. Newman, “Some 19th-Century Consequences of Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata,

Opus 106,” Piano Quarterly no. 67 (Spring 1969): 12–17 (part 1); no. 68 (Summer 1969): 12–17 (part 2).
21. See Donald Francis Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas: (Bar-to-Bar Analysis), rev.
ed., with preface and notes by Barry Cooper (London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music,
1998), 215–42; Barford, “The Piano Music, II,” 155–69; Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, expanded ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 407–34; Charles Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano
Sonatas: A Short Companion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 218–29.
22. Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, ed. Henry Edward Krehbiel, 3 vols.
(New York: The Beethoven Association, 1921), 2:381.
23. Rosen, The Classical Style, 407–22. The range of modulations over the course of the sonata is strik-
ing and extends from six sharps to six flats, but there is not a single modulation to F major, the domi-
nant of the initial key. On the other hand, the key of B minor appears in all the movements, more or less
explicitly.
24. There is a striking clash between F minor and F  minor in one of Mozart’s last works, the Fantasia
KV 608 (reflected by Schubert in the Fantasia for piano four hands, D. 940). Note that Beethoven had a
copy of the manuscript of this work; see Neal Zaslaw, “Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Allegro and Andante
(‘Fantasy’) in F Minor for Mechanical Organ, K. 608,” in The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History
from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives, ed. Jon Newsom and Alfred Mann (Washington,
DC: Library of Congress, 2000), 327–40; available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections
/moldenhauer/2428141.pdf (accessed 27 August 2014).
244 Notes, December 2014

displacement of the climax toward the end of the recapitulation. Thus

the formal scheme of the sonata is modified in the interests of the dra-
matic purpose and balance of the work as a whole.
These features have been emphasized in many studies of the sonata,
but less attention has been paid to the third facet, rhythm, especially the
metrical conflict of duple versus triple time. The use of rhythm as a
source of tension is mentioned by Tovey, Rosen, and others, but as
Ormesher points out, its significance has tended to be overshadowed
by the concentration on harmonic considerations, and no one has fully
explored its role as the factor which, perhaps more than any other, gen-
erates the Herculean struggle that is the very essence of this work.25
Finally, general aspects worth highlighting include the amplification of
compositional elements for maximum expressiveness, with an extreme
range of intervals (from a third to a seventeenth in the opening theme)
and an extreme dynamic range, from ff (the only sonata that begins
with this marking) to  (end of the third movement), and contrasting
textures (homophonic, melody with accompaniment, contrapuntal).
Even traditionally ornamental elements (trills) become expressive de-
vices, especially at the ends of movements.
The first two movements of the Hammerklavier replaced Beethoven’s
original idea of composing a cantata for Saint Rudolph’s day, 17 April
1818, as a tribute to the archduke, a point to be discussed in the next sec-
tion. The surviving sketches include a version of the main opening theme
of the sonata (fig. 3), which fits the words “Vivat, vivat Rudolphus!”26
The second movement, sketched as a minuet and then turned into a
scherzo, is the most insignificant in the work, though only in appearance.
In the middle of one of the drafts of this movement Beethoven wrote: “A
small house here, so small that there is barely room for one. Only a few
days in this divine Brühl! Longing or yearning, liberation or fulfilment.”27
The Adagio sostenuto of opus 106 is the longest piece Beethoven ever
wrote for solo piano, and the only one in the key of F-sharp minor, apart
from the slow movement of Piano Quartet no. 2, WoO 36, which he com-
posed at the age of fifteen. It is a third down (enharmonically G flat)
from the B flat of the previous movements. It has an expressive profun-
dity with which it is difficult to find anything comparable in the com-

25. Richard Ormesher, “Beethoven’s Instrumental Fugal Style: An Investigation of Tonal and
Thematic Characteristics in the Late-Period Fugues” (Ph.D. diss., University of Sheffield, 1988), 99 and
108–12.
26. Edwin Fischer, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas: A Guide for Students and Amateurs, trans. from the
German by Stanley Godman, with Paul Hamburger (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), 103; Lockwood,
“Beethoven and His Royal Disciple,” 5.
27. Massin, Ludwig van Beethoven, 338. Brühl is a river near the Austrian town of Mödling, where
Beethoven spent the summer of 1818 and finished the remaining movements of the Hammerklavier.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 245

Fig. 3. Initial fanfare that opens the first movement of Sonata op. 106

poser’s other works.28 When the sonata was completely finished and
about to be published, Beethoven added the first two notes which form
the first measure.29 The contrasting textures mark the movement’s dra-
matic development of sonata form. The main subject is homophonic in
character, written like a hymn, solemn in its anguish (una corda). A new
aria-like subject emerges, this time in ascending thirds, and now tre corde
and con grand’espressione, an unusual indication in Beethoven. The third
subject is a melody in the major mode, made up of just a few notes and
a static harmony. Through the use of unison and of the diminished-
seventh chord, the tragic character of the movement extends from the
opening to the final chords, which include a Picardy third (A  , enhar-
monically B ), finally expressing the achievement of the goal: to tran-
scend suffering.30 The expressive device of two tied notes with express in-
dication by Beethoven of a change of fingering (m. 165), also used in
other works such as opus 110, continues to be a subject of debate among
musicologists and performers.31
To conclude such a work, Beethoven did not launch straight into the
final fugue. He composed an introduction—a distinctive feature of this
sonata—which anticipates new compositional forms, starting with the no-
tation itself. From the final F  chord of the third movement, the music
descends to an F  , which unfolds over every octave of the keyboard, now

28. For an extensive and stimulating interpretation of the expressive resources used throughout this
movement, see Robert S. Hatten, “Interpreting Expression: the Adagio Sostenuto from Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata in B , Op. 106 (Hammerklavier),” Theory and Practice: Newsletter-Journal of the Music Theory
Society of New York State 19 (1994): 1–17.
29. Letter from Beethoven to Ferdinand Ries, 16 June 1819, in Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, letter no.
1309, 4:278. In this letter, as well as adding the opening measure of the third movement, Beethoven indi-
cates the metronome marks, to be discussed later, which show that he structured the sonata in five move-
ments, beyond the traditional four and in line with the last string quartets.
30. Hatten, “Interpreting Expression,” 14.
31. See Paul Badura-Skoda, “A Tie Is a Tie Is a Tie: Reflections on Beethoven’s Pairs of Tied Notes,”
Early Music 16, no. 1 (February 1988): 84–88.
246 Notes, December 2014

without measure lines and with a sixteenth-note pulse. It makes three

attempts to continue, separated by pauses and based on descending
thirds, trying out ideas in increasingly quick tempos with stronger con-
trapuntal tendencies, all of which are rejected. The constant search
for new paths throughout the sonata is made musically explicit in this
introduction. This brings us to another arpeggio, this time in A, ranging
again over every register: once again the movement is structured around
an interval of a third. These two notes, F and A as the origin of the
arpeggios, form, in turn, the beginning of the fugue. Thus all the move-
ments are connected by the interval of a third (fig. 4).
The structure of the fugue is marked by its modulations, once more in
thirds, so that the sections are progressively interlinked in a manner mid-
way between rondo and variation form. The fundamental pillars are
subject 1, energetic and vigorous, in the tonic B-flat major; subject 2, in
B minor (again the B /B clash), conveying a mixture of sadness and a
feeling of loss; and finally subject 3, in D major, in the manner of the
Benedictus from the Missa Solemnis (in the same key and based on
thirds).32 Thus the effect of the process is similar to the previous move-
ment: whereas in the third movement, suffering (F  ) is transcended only
with the Picardy third in the final chords, in the concluding fugue vital
energy (subject 1) is threatened by suffering (subject 2), and then,
through a kind of religious resignation (subject 3), it manages to tran-
scend it by uniting subjects 1 and 3, as a definitive resolution.33 In this
final section, with the two subjects played simultaneously until the end-
ing, unwaveringly fixed at last in B , the objective has been achieved.
The conflicts raised earlier in the sonata are resolved only in the last
movement, through the development of new tonal and rhythmic proce-
dures which articulate the introduction, the main subject, and the fugue
as a whole.
Having examined the genesis, context, and general structure of
the work, let us now consider the purely interpretative aspects of the
Hammerklavier.

DIFFERING EDITIONS OF THE HAMMERKLAVIER

Disappointingly for researchers, neither the original manuscript nor

the Boldrini sketchbook, regarded as the most important for this work,
has survived.34 The first edition of opus 106 was published in 1819, ini-

32. Marston, “From A to B,” presents an alternative view of the role of D major in the sonata, both at
the start of the third movement (mm. 111–12) and in the final double fugue (mm. 112–22).
33. Hatten, “Interpreting Expression,” 14.
34. For further details of the sketches and notebooks for opus 106, see Marston, “From A to B,” 98–
105.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 247

Fig. 4. Common structure in thirds (between the circled notes) of the main subjects in
the various movements of Sonata op. 106 (adapted from Tovey, A Companion, 221)

tially in Vienna, by Artaria, with two versions of the title, one in French
and the other in German (indicating pianoforte and Hammerklavier respec-
tively), and was dedicated, as we have seen, to Archduke Rudolph. A few
months later it was published in London, by The Regent’s Harmonic
Institution, first without a dedication and subsequently dedicated to
Antonie Brentano.35 In a letter to Ries, his London publisher, Beethoven
even suggested changing the order of the movements, for which the
most plausible explanation is purely economic: once the sonata had
been published in Vienna, his only interest in the English edition was to
obtain some financial benefit.36

35. Alan Tyson, “The Hammerklavier Sonata and its English Editions,” Musical Times 103, no. 1430
(April 1962): 235–37.
36. Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 228.
248 Notes, December 2014

From these original publications in 1819 up to the present day, count-

less editions of opus 106 have appeared. There were some ninety or so
in the nineteenth century alone, half of them in complete editions of
the sonatas, and the rest in individual editions.37 Table 2 summarizes the
details of some of the most widely used, most of which are included in
Newman’s list.38
Among these we can distinguish two main types. First, there are those
that seek to reproduce the first edition as objectively as possible
(Schenker, Wallner, Haushild, Gordon); in recent decades this type of
edition has been considered an urtext, a controversial, imprecise con-
cept with many limitations.39 A second type consists of revised editions
that constitute a reinterpretation of the original source (Schnabel,
Tovey, Pauer and Martienssen, von Bülow); in these, very often, we can-
not distinguish between Beethoven’s original indications (metronome
markings, articulation, etc.) and those added by the editor. These two
types of editions must be treated as complementary and not as mutually
exclusive for a rigorous study of the score, as neither is sufficient on its
own: the concept of a “definitive edition” is an illusion.40
Studying a work on the basis of a single edition, an unfortunate habit
of many piano teachers, can give rise to serious confusion. In the case we
are examining, opus 106 originally began in duple meter (alla breve),
4
and yet in Bülow’s edition we find a quadruple 4 time signature, re-
garded as inexplicable in Schnabel’s edition a few decades later. Both
views, from such eminent figures in the history of piano music, must be
taken into consideration, not summarily rejected, when analyzing and
seeking to understand the sonata, even though we must subsequently
make our own decisions on interpretation. As Kinderman observes, new
editions of Beethoven’s sonatas are not necessarily an improvement on

37. Newman, “Some 19th-Century Consequences,” part 1:16.

38. William S. Newman, “A Chronological Checklist of Collected Editions of Beethoven’s Solo Piano
Sonatas Since His Own Day,” Notes 33, no. 3 (March 1977): 503–30.
39. William Drabkin, “Building a Music Library, 1: The Beethoven Piano Sonatas,” Musical Times 126,
no. 1706 (April 1985): 216. For a fuller exploration of the evolution of the term “interpretation” and of
different editorial approaches, see Cristina Urchueguía, “Critical Editing of Music and Interpretation:
Critical Editions for Critical Musicians?” Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies 16 (2006):
113–29. The highly revealing comments of Hummel, a contemporary of Beethoven, on his own works
call into question the limits of the “authority” of urtext editions; see Walter Schenkman, “Beyond the
Limits of Urtext Authority: A Contemporary Record of Early Nineteenth-Century Performance Practice,”
College Music Symposium 23, no. 2 (Fall 1983): 145–63.
40. For an analysis midway between two editorial extremes and Schenker’s idealist concept of the
score, see Nicholas Cook, “The Editor and the Virtuoso, or Schenker versus Bülow,” Journal of the Royal
Musical Association 116, no. 1 (1991): 78–95.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 249

Table 2. Editions of the Sonata op. 106

Year of Editor (publisher) Reprints

publication
1819 Matthias Artaria First edition
1819 The Regent’s Harmonic Institution
mid- to late Carl Czerny? (Haslinger)
1830s–1842?41
1838–4042 Ignaz Moscheles (Cramer,
Addison & Beale)
1850–5743 William Sterndale Bennett 1890 (revised by
(Leader & Cock) Walter Macfarren)
185644 Charles Hallé (Chappell & Co.) 1865 (separate edition),
1870 “new edition”
1857 Franz Liszt (Holle) 1898 (revised by Kühner and A. E.
Bosworth), 1915 (H. B. Bosworth),
1925 (Watson and Protiwinsky) and
1995 (Zen-on Library)
1858?–1867 Ignaz Moscheles (Hallberger)
at latest
1862 Beethoven Werke Numerous (B.& H.,
(Breitkopf & Härtel) Kalmus, etc.)
1868 Carl Czerny (Simrock) Numerous reprints
1869 Louis Köhler (Peters) 1910 (Köhler/Ruthardt; Peters)
and 1943 (Novello)
1871 Hans von Bülow/Sigmund Lebert 1894 (Schirmer) and
(Stuttgart, J. G. Cotta) 1904 (Lengnick)
1898 Carl Krebs (Breitkopf First Urtext, based on the 1862
& Härtel) edition. 1953 (Schirmer) and Kalmus
1902 Eugen d’Albert (Forberg, Leipzig) 1917 (Martens; Carl Fischer)
1920 Alfredo Casella (Ricordi)
1923 Schenker (Universal) 1975 (Dover)
1923 Frederic Lamond 1969 (Musytschna Ukraina)
(Breitkopf & Härtel)
1927 Pauer (Peters) 1949, 1952 and 1961
(Pauer & Martienssen)

41. These dates are those of the second state of Haslinger’s edition (probably supervised by Czerny),
which includes opus 106; it was omitted from the first state (1828–32?) because Haslinger could not ob-
tain permission from Artaria. See Sandra P. Rosenblum, “Two Sets of Unexplored Metronome Marks for
Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas,” Early Music 16, no. 1 (February 1988): 60–61.
42. Publication of the first issue of Moscheles’s edition of the sonatas probably began in 1834, but the
plate numbers of the two parts containing opus 106 indicate a terminus a quo for this sonata of 1838,
and it had certainly appeared by 1841; see Alan Tyson, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven, All Souls
Studies, 1 (London: Faber & Faber, 1963), 103. Leonardo Miucci, who has made a detailed study of
Moscheles’s edition, has confirmed these dates to me in a personal communication.
43. Sterndale Bennett’s editions of Beethoven’s piano music are undated; these are the dates sug-
gested in Rosemary Williamson, William Sterndale Bennett: A Descriptive Thematic Catalogue (Oxford: Claren-
don Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 501.
44. “In final proof by January 1856,” according to Robert Beale, Charles Hallé: A Musical Life, Music in
Nineteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot, Hants, Eng.; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 73 and n. 196.
250 Notes, December 2014

Table 2 continued

Year of Editor (publisher) Reprints

publication
1927 Schnabel (Ullstein) 1935 (Simon & Schuster), 1949
(Curci) and 1970 (Muzyka)
1931 Craxton/Tovey (ABRSM) Revised edition in 1938
1953 Wallner (Henle) Modern editions
1973 Claudio Arrau (Peters)
1987 Kendall Taylor (Melbourne, Allans PTY)
1994 István Máriássy /Tamás Zászkaliczk
(Budapest, Könemann)
1999 Peter Hauschild (Wiener Urtext)
2003 Takahiro Sonoda (Tokyo, Shunjûsha
Publishing)
2007 Barry Cooper (ABRSM)
2010 Stewart Gordon (Alfred Publishing)
2010 Robert Taub (Schirmer)

previous ones,45 and in our technological era perhaps the time has come
to explore for ourselves the possibilities available to us in the digital
archive of the Beethoven-Haus on matters related to the musical text.
The edition by Liszt (1857), rarely reprinted by comparison with many
other editions of Beethoven’s sonatas, deserves to be examined sepa-
rately. There are certain differences between this edition and Beetho-
ven’s original in articulation and dynamics, although Liszt does not add
suggestions indicating his own interpretation, as he did in his editions of
works by Weber, Schubert, and Chopin.46 As Newman notes, this could
be regarded as a first virtual urtext, judging from Berlioz’s review of
Liszt’s premiere of the Hammerklavier in Paris.47 Curiously enough, there
is evidence that in his last years Liszt taught on the basis of Bülow’s edi-
tion of the Beethoven sonatas, one of the most “invasive,” and one which
constitutes, above all, a treatise on interpretation in its period, late
romanticism, and shows us how far removed its conception of “textual
fidelity” was from that of today.48
45. William Kinderman, “A Place in the Sun: Recent Editions of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas,” Clavier
Companion 4, no. 2 (March–April 2012): 22–26. In this article the author compares four of the most re-
cent editions of Beethoven’s sonatas: Barry Cooper (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music,
2007), Stewart Gordon (Alfred, 2002–10), Robert Taub (G. Schirmer, 2010), and Norbert Gertsch and
Murray Perahia’s ongoing revised edition for Henle.
46. For a more thorough analysis of Liszt’s revision of Beethoven’s sonatas, see William S. Newman,
“Liszt’s Interpreting of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas,” Musical Quarterly 58, no. 2 (April 1972): 200; and
Wang-Hsuan Wu, “Beethoven through Liszt: Myth, Performance, Edition” (D.M.A. diss., University of
Texas at Austin, 2007), 50.
47. Newman, “Liszt’s Interpreting,” 202.
48. Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 205.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 251

Fig. 5. First movement of Sonata op. 106, final measures of the transition to the
recapitulation in the edition revised by Franz Liszt in 1857

The most controversial passage in the sonata, still vigorously debated

by musicologists and pianists, is undoubtedly the measures leading to the
recapitulation in the first movement (mm. 223–27). A progression in ris-
ing sixths ends with an A  , which leads enharmonically to the initial tonic
B  (fig. 5).
There are no discrepancies in the two first editions, published in
Vienna and London, although there is a sketch by the composer himself
and another copied by the Beethoven scholar Nottebohm from the
Boldrini sketchbook (now lost), in which Beethoven constructs the har-
mony preceding the recapitulation on an A  (fig. 6).
Precisely because it leads from one section of the movement to an-
other, this passage is structurally important, and the resulting harmonic
change is very different: the A  creates a conventional dominant chord
to the tonic, and the A  produces an enharmonic modulation to the
tonic. Both positions have had distinguished advocates: A  (Alfred
Brendel, Paul Badura-Skoda) as well as A  (Edwin Fischer, Daniel Baren-
boim, András Schiff). Similarly, the various editions of the work are di-
vided: some give the A  (Liszt, almost all the urtexts, Bülow, Schnabel),
others indicate A  (Casella, Kohler/Ruthhardt, Schenker, Cooper), and
some even include both versions (Pauer and Martienssen, Lamond).
Those who defend the A  base their arguments on Beethoven’s sketch
(fig. 6) and point out that Beethoven frequently omitted accidentals (such
as the proposed natural here) by mistake, arguing also that if Beethoven
had intended an A  he would have written the upper note as E  instead
of F  , that the sixteenth-note progression G–G  (=A )–A–A  (=B ), also
used, for example, in the String Quartet op. 130, is more likely than the
whole-tone step G  –A  , unparalleled in Beethoven’s work, and that the
return to the tonic through the dominant is so characteristic of the com-
poser that it must have been intended here.49 By contrast, those who

49. Paul Badura-Skoda, “Should We Play A  or A  in Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, Opus 106?”
Notes 68, no. 4 ( June 2012): 751–57.
252 Notes, December 2014

Fig. 6. Left: surviving sketch of the first movement (British Library, London). Right:
Nottebohm’s copy of the Boldrini sketchbook, now lost (Marston, “From A to B,” 101)

defend the enharmonic modulation highlight its unconventionality,50 in

keeping with the whole spirit of the Hammerklavier itself, and also cite
other works with similar modulatory processes, such as the Eighth
Symphony.51
This question cannot be definitively resolved and does not admit of
the categorical statements which have sometimes been made. The exis-
tence of the sketch only allows us to claim that “at a certain stage in the
genesis of the movement, and in a very different tonal context, Beetho-
ven clearly intended A rather than A  .”52 The avoidance of the dominant
inherent in the A  reading needs to be considered in the context of the
remarkable absence of dominant F-major tonality throughout the work
(see pg. 243 above). It is also perhaps worth mentioning that Liszt, who,
of all editors (apart from Czerny and Moscheles), was in principle closest
to the composer himself, read an A  , adding a superfluous accidental to
avoid any ambiguity (see fig. 5).53 Although the recovery of the original
manuscript might throw some further light on the problem, it would not
provide a definitive answer, since another dilemma involved in urtext
editions would arise: when the sources diverge, which is considered to
represent the composer’s true intentions, the initial autograph or the
first edition revised by him? The most important thing in this respect, as
in the field of interpretation in general, is to form a judgment based on
the greatest possible amount of information. That judgment, which will
not necessarily remain fixed over time, must guide our interpretation as
a whole.
50. As, for example, Schnabel, in whose opinion “all available arguments in favour of a (even the ref-
erences to the rules of harmony) are too weak, in view of the superior manifestation of genius inherent
in the a  ,” Ludwig van Beethoven, Complete Piano Sonatas in Two Volumes: Historic Edition with Preface in
English, Spanish, Italian, German, and French, ed. Artur Schnabel, Alfred Masterwork Edition, 2 vols. (Van
Nuys, CA: Alfred, 2006), 2:306. The A  reading is also defended in Richard Hauser, “Das Ais in der
Sonate Op. 106,” Beethoven-Jahrbuch 6 (1965–68): 243–59.
51. Barford, “The Piano Music, II,” 159.
52. Marston, “From A to B,” 100.
53. This point is not addressed by Badura-Skoda, who holds Bülow responsible for promulgating the
A , arguing that “the more natural-sounding A  would have been printed and played everywhere, had

not the German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow put his finger on this sore spot” (“Should We
Play,” 751).
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 253

THE PERFORMANCE TRADITION: FROM LISZT TO THE MODERN PIANO

In 1819, the same year that the first edition of the Hammerklavier ap-
peared, Hummel’s Sonata in F-sharp Minor, op. 81, was published in
Vienna. It is a very ambitious work, which has features in common with
Beethoven’s opus 106: very fast metronome markings, formidable techni-
cal demands, an innovative idiom, and fugal passages in the last move-
ment. According to one tradition (which Solomon describes as “far-
fetched”), Beethoven composed opus 106 in competition with this
“unplayable” sonata by Hummel.54 It was one of the best-known works in
the period, but with the passage of time it has not remained in the piano
repertory, despite its influence on such major works as Franz Liszt’s
Sonata in B Minor. The Hammerklavier, however, had a very powerful
impact on the evolution of music, as Beethoven himself anticipated.55 A
host of composers have used opus 106 as a reference for their own
works, from Brahms56 (Piano Sonata, op. 1; Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 15;
Capriccio, op. 76 no. 1; Second and Fourth Symphonies), Mendelssohn
(Piano Sonata no. 3, op. 106), Liszt (Sonata in B Minor), Wagner (Piano
Sonata), Paul Dukas (Piano Sonata), Boulez (Second Piano Sonata), to
the transcription for symphony orchestra made by Felix Weingartner in
1930.57
Franz Liszt was one of the composers who most admired this sonata,
even making a transcription of the third movement for strings, and it was
the last one he performed in his life.58 He is credited with the public pre-
miere of the Hammerklavier, in 1836, in two recitals at the Salle Érard in
Paris, confronting his pianistic rival of the time, Thalberg.59 The work
was apparently not often played at this time, though between 1833 and
1836 the young William Sterndale Bennett studied it at the Royal
Academy of Music in London, having been instructed to purchase it by

54. Solomon, Beethoven, 300.

55. While the composition of opus 106 was in progress, Beethoven said to Czerny: “I am writing a
sonata now which is going to be my greatest” (Barry Cooper, Beethoven, 2d ed. [New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008], 281). Moreover, it is said that when Beethoven submitted the manuscript to the
Viennese publisher, Artaria, he told him: “Now there you have a sonata that will keep the pianists busy
when it is played fifty years hence” (Solomon, Beethoven, 300).
56. For fuller information on the influence of the Hammerklavier on Brahms’s works via Nottebohm,
see Marie Rivers Rule, “The Allure of Beethoven’s ‘Terzen-Ketten’: Third-Chains in Studies by Notte-
bohm and Music by Brahms” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011). Newman
(“Some 19th-Century Consequences,” part 2) also analyses the parallels with the sonatas of Czerny
(op. 268), Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner, and Dukas.
57. For further information on this work, see Ernest Newman, “The ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata for
Orchestra,” American Mercury 22, no. 86 (February 1931): 241–44.
58. Fischer, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, 103.
59. Prod’homme points to earlier performances by Liszt himself in 1821, “very badly, undoubtedly,
but with feeling” (Newman, “Some 19th-Century Consequences,” part 1:12).
254 Notes, December 2014

his teacher, the Beethoven specialist Cipriani Potter, with the words: “Go
and ask for the Sonata that nobody plays.”60
Performers of opus 106 after Liszt include Mortier de Fontaine
(1843),61 Moscheles (1845), Arabella Goddard (1853),62 Clara Schu-
mann (1856), Hans von Bülow (1860), Anton Rubinstein (1881),
Frederic Lamond (1885), and Ferruccio Busoni (1892), who made an
extensive analysis of the final fugue.63 In the twentieth century, numer-
ous recordings of the work were made, many of which are included in
table 3.
As we can see more clearly in table 4, the difference between the short-
est and the longest duration is especially marked in the third movement
(±11 minutes), followed by the first (±7 minutes) and the fourth (±3
minutes). In the overall duration of the work the range is almost eigh-
teen minutes (35–53 minutes), in recordings very close in date (1973–
75). Bearing in mind that the duration of Beethoven’s other sonatas
never exceeds the thirty minutes of opus 7, and considering the versions
that deliberately follow Beethoven’s metronome marks as closely as possi-
ble, a complete performance of the Hammerklavier could last somewhere
around Schnabel’s forty-one minutes (1935). Of the fifty-one recordings
examined, only ten (20 percent) are of this duration or less. At the other
extreme, sixteen (31 percent) are over forty-five minutes, and five
(12 percent) even exceed fifty minutes.
These figures support the conclusion that there is a predominant tra-
dition of performance with slower tempos than those indicated by
Beethoven, a point to be discussed in the next section. These observed
differences obviously have nothing to do with an artistic assessment of
the performances. One must avoid making simplistic statements or judg-
ments about a performance based solely on the duration of a work or a
movement expressed as a numerical value, as music critics are prone to
do. A rigorous comparative analysis of the recordings of opus 106 must

60. James Robert Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1907), 33. (The author, W. S. Bennett’s son, presumably heard this anecdote from his
father himself.)
61. Liszt’s pupil William Mason, in his Memories of a Musical Life (New York: The Century Co., 1901),
31, cites Mortier de Fontaine (1816–1883, a pupil of Hummel) as the first to play the Hammerklavier
Sonata in public. However, as far as we know there are three documented performances of the
Hammerklavier by Mortier de Fontaine and none of them is earlier than Liszt’s first performance in Paris,
since the first was in Germany in 1843 (Newman, “Some 19th-Century Consequences,” part 1:13).
62. A pupil of Kalkbrenner and Thalberg, often cited as the first person to play opus 106 in public in
Britain, though according to Harold Schonberg it had already been performed in London by Alexandre
Billet in 1850 (Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists, rev. ed. [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987],
251).
63. “Analytical Exposition of the Fugue in Beethoven’s Sonata, op. 106,” third appendix to his edition
of The Well-Tempered Clavichord (New York: G. Schirmer; Leipzig: Fr. Hofmeister, [1897]), 195–205; analy-
sis reprinted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/149548561/Busoni-Analytical-Exposition-of-Beethoven-
Fugue-Op106-Hammerklavier-Schirmer-English (accessed 27 August 2014).
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 255

Table 3. Summary of fifty-one performances (1935–2007) of Beethoven’s Sonata op. 106,

with duration of each movement and total duration of the work (lowest and highest values
are highlighted)

Duration
PERFORMER I II III IV Total Reference
Artur Schnabel (1935) 08:56 02:41 18:04 11:15 40:55 CD TIM 205216-303
Wilhelm Kempff (1936) 08:53 02:49 18:26 12:03 42:11 LP Brunswick Polydor 95020
Louis Kentner (1939) 10:28 02:59 16:31 12:58 42:56 CD Pearl GEMM 9480
Mieczysław Horszowski
(1950) 11:39 02:41 17:27 11:27 43:14 CD Vox CDX2-5500
Solomon Cutner (1952) 10:00 02:30 22:15 12:35 45:20 LP EMI 2XEA 5713-14
Wilhelm Backhaus (1952) 11:49 02:41 16:37 11:01 40:08 CD Decca 4757198
Yves Nat (1954) 10:27 02:37 16:13 11:26 40:44 CD EMI CZS 7 62901 2
Egon Petri (1956) 10:21 02:45 14:22 11:18 38:46 LP Westminster XWN 18747
Ernst Levy (1958) 12:06 02:18 20:43 12:00 47:07 CD Marston
Claudio Arrau (1963) 10:47 02:30 20:26 11:43 44:26 CD Decca 0289 478 3694 0
Wilhelm Kempff (1964) 08:51 02:44 16:31 12:05 40:11 CD DG 4777958
Friedrich Gulda (1967) 09:28 02:19 13:42 11:24 36:53 CD Brilliant Classics 92773
Éric Heidsieck (1969) 11:35 02:35 18:21 11:27 43:58 CD EMI 0946 367620 2 9
Claude Frank (1970) 10:47 02:37 18:50 12:04 44:18 CD Music&arts CD 4640
Friedrich Gulda (1970) 07:48 02:25 15:50 10:57 37:10 DVD Euroarts 2558698
Rudolf Serkin (1970) 12:12 02:36 16:25 12:33 43:46 CD Sony MPK 44838
Alfred Brendel (1970) 11:38 02:38 18:32 11:56 42:09 DVD Emi DVA 4901229
Glenn Gould (1970) 11:04 02:52 20:46 13:34 48:16 CD Sony SMK 52645
Yvonne Lefébure (1973) 08:16 02:37 13:49 10:52 35:34 CD Solstice SOCD 238
Grigory Sokolov (1975) 11:28 03:12 23:53 14:34 53:07 CD MFCD 922
Sviatoslav Richter (1975) 10:35 02:50 17:10 11:35 42:15 CD Praga CMX 356022
Christoph Eschenbach
(1976) 11:29 02:33 25:17 11:47 51:06 CD Emi classics 85499
Maurizio Pollini (1977) 10:46 02:43 17:12 12:20 43:01 CD DG 449 740 2
Paul Badura-Skoda (1978) 09:47 02:26 16:46 11:08 40:07 CD Astreé E 8698
Annie Fischer (1978) 11:01 02:53 19:51 11:25 45:16 CD Hungaroton HCD 31629
Bernard Roberts (1979) 11:42 02:52 17:58 11:52 44:24 CD Nimbus NI 1774
Vladimir Ashkenazy (1980) 10:56 02:44 19:20 11:37 44:37 CD Decca 425-5902
Rudolf Buchbinder (1982) 10:32 02:18 20:33 12:35 45:58 CD Teldec 2564 66074 5
Peter Serkin (1983) 09:50 02:31 18:28 11:23 42:12 CD Pro Arte CDD 260
Emil Gilels (1983) 12:25 02:53 19:51 13:38 48:47 CD DG 453 221 2
Daniel Barenboim (1984) 13:03 03:01 21:50 12:22 50:16 CD DG 0289 463 1272 8
Tatiana Nikolayeva (1984) 15:09 03:06 15:48 13:39 47:42 CD Olympia OCD 568
Andrea Lucchesini (1987) 12:53 02:52 20:57 13:36 50:18 CD EMI CDC 7 47738 2
Jen Jandó (1988) 11:27 02:47 14:13 13:04 41:21 CD Naxos 8.550234
Anton Kuerti (1989) 11:08 02:22 21:00 12:21 46:51 CD Analekta FL 2 3007
John O’Conor (1992) 11:09 02:31 14:41 11:06 39:27 CD Telarc CD 80335
Galina Sandovskaya (1992) 12:25 02:59 19:05 12:43 47:12 CD APC 101.009
Richard Goode (1992) 11:14 02:34 17:06 11:25 42:19 CD Nonesuch 79211
Alfred Brendel (1995) 11:22 02:40 17:46 12:33 44:21 CD Philips 446 093-2
Garrick Ohlsson (1998) 11:32 02:36 19:04 11:58 45:10 CD Bridge 9262
Vladimir Feltsman (1998) 11:36 02:34 17:14 12:09 43:33 CD Nimbus 2561
Seymour Lipkin (2004) 11:04 02:36 16:42 11:32 41:54 CD Newport CD 60173/3
256 Notes, December 2014

Table 3 continued

Duration
PERFORMER I II III IV Total Reference
Markus Becker (2004) 10:35 02:29 19:59 11:47 44:50 CD CPO 777 239-2
Alexander Meinel (2004) 11:03 02:50 18:57 12:35 45:25 CD Querstand VKJK0427
Daniel Barenboim (2005) 12:54 03:00 21:01 13:59 50:54 DVD Emi Classics 3 68994 9
András Schiff (2006) 11:06 02:41 15:29 12:50 42:06 CD ECM New series 1948
İdil Biret (2006) 12:32 02:59 20:54 13:39 50:04 CD IBA 8.571269
Gerhard Oppitz (2006) 10:19 02:32 21:55 12:00 46:46 CD Hänssler HAEN98207
Paul Lewis (2006) 11:39 02:48 18:31 12:52 45:50 CD H. Mundi HMX 2901905
Mitsuko Uchida (2007) 11:24 02:42 19:48 12:23 46:18 CD Philips B0009419-02
Ronald Brautigam (2007) 10:33 02:24 15:47 11:40 40:30 CD BIS SACD 1612

Table 4. Descriptive statistics on the duration of recordings of Beethoven’s Sonata op. 106

Range Minimum Maximum Mean

1st mvt. 0:07:21 0:07:48 0:15:09 0:11:03
2nd mvt. 0:00:54 0:02:18 0:03:12 0:02:41
3rd mvt. 0:11:35 0:13:42 0:25:17 0:18:23
4th mvt. 0:03:42 0:10:52 0:14:34 0:12:10
Total time 0:17:33 0:35:34 0:53:07 0:44:09
Cases = 51

therefore combine technical aspects of the work performed with the par-
ticular features of the performers (overall approach, coherence over the
work as a whole, and artistic and communicative value or results), which
are often very individual. These points cannot all be grasped in a single
listening and will not necessarily coincide with our preconceived ideas.
Thus an artistic assessment of such disparate approaches as those of a
historicist orientation (Brautigam, Badura-Skoda), the Russian school
(Richter, Gilels), the Hungarian orthodoxy ( Jandó, Schiff), and others
that are overtly personal (Sokolov, Gould) must naturally range far be-
yond the duration of the movements expressed in minutes and seconds,
and would require an extensive study in itself. For example, we saw ear-
lier that the first movement of opus 106 originated in the initial idea of a
cantata. The choral origin of the piece is used by Edwin Fischer and
András Schiff respectively as an argument against and for Beethoven’s
tempo indication, each in his own sense within the context.64 The fact is

64. Fischer, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 103; András Schiff, “Schiff on Beethoven: Part Seven: The Middle
Period, parts 3–4, Sonata in B-flat Major, opus 106 no. 29 (‘Hammerklavier’),” lecture (2006) available at
http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/page/0,,1943867,00.html; or at http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
/schiffbeethovenlecturerecitals (accessed 27 August 2014).
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 257

that what is often repeated in academic circles is almost self-evident: there

can be tempos, fast or slow, that do not work depending on the resources
employed, the instrument, the acoustics of the auditorium, and so on.
This brings us to the heart of the other most controversial aspect of
the Hammerklavier Sonata: the debate about the tempos.

TEMPO AND CHARACTER OF SONATA OP. 106

The letter in which Beethoven sent Ries the additional first two mea-
sures of the third movement has already been cited above. This same
letter specifies the following metronome marks: first movement:  = 138;
second movement:   = 80; third movement: = 92; fourth movement:
= 76; and fifth movement: = 144; also indicating that the first move-
ment should be Allegro and that “assai” should be removed.65
There is a certain measure of agreement in regarding these original
tempos of Beethoven’s as too fast.66 As early as 1841, Moscheles com-
mented that the marking for the first movement produces “so fearful a
prestissimo as Beethoven could never have intended,” and recom-
mended reducing it to  = 116.67 Undeniably, given the difficulties of
every kind distributed throughout the work, the metronome marks do,
in principle, seem very fast. The pianists and critics who question their
validity usually do so on the basis of their own subjective response, argu-
ing that the marks do not reflect the composer’s true intentions, or that
they are due to a faulty metronome, or to the unfortunate effects of
Beethoven’s deafness, which supposedly made him think in mental tem-
pos faster than the real ones, or simply pointing out the manifest diffi-
culty (or even “impossibility”) of performing the work and expressing its
vast content at that speed. A further factor that may have contributed to
the reluctance to accept Beethoven’s metronome markings is his famous
comment to Schindler: “No more metronome!,” a remark which may
have been another of Schindler’s inventions.68 However, in the light of
Stadlen’s painstaking research on Beethoven’s metronome marks, it is
unlikely that these were significantly distorted by a faulty metronome,

65. Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, letter no. 1309, 4:278–80. In the copy of this letter published in Franz
Gerhard Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Koblenz: bei
K. Bädeker, 1838), 148–50, and reproduced in Beethovens sämtliche Briefe, ed. Alfred Christlieb Kalischer,
5 vols. (Berlin; Leipzig: Schuster & Loeffler, 1906–8), letter no. 764, 4:15–17, the markings for the sec-
ond and fifth movements are given erroneously as  = 80 and  = 144, respectively.
66. Fischer, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 103; Alfred Brendel, Alfred Brendel on Music: Collected Essays
(Chicago: A Cappella Books; London: JR Books, 2007), 85.
67. [Anton Schindler], The Life of Beethoven, Including His Correspondence with His Friends, Numerous
Characteristic Traits, and Remarks on His Musical Works, ed. Ignace Moscheles, 2 vols. (London: Henry
Colburn, 1841), 2:252 n.
68. Anne-Louise Coldicott, “Performance Practice in Beethoven’s Day,” in The Beethoven Compendium:
A Guide to Beethoven’s Life and Music, ed. Barry Cooper, 280–89 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991).
258 Notes, December 2014

and in general there are strong indications that they were carefully estab-
lished and seriously intended.69
We have to start from the principle that using the metronome does
not mean maintaining the same beat from beginning to end; it repre-
sents a base speed, and this, in turn, excludes total subjectivity without
sacrificing the artistic freedom inherent in musical interpretation.70
There is evidence that the tempo of a piece, for Beethoven, originated as
an integral part of the actual conception of the music.71 It is no coinci-
dence, then, that in general, bearing in mind the meter and the figura-
tions used, Beethoven habitually used the same indication for similar
tempos and, most importantly, for movements of a similar character.
Therefore if a given tempo proves impossible in practice, this could
merely indicate the limitations of our technique.72
As we have already seen, Beethoven was consciously using an innova-
tive musical language that was not always understood by his contempo-
raries. This could be the origin of the reluctance to accept his markings
as representing his real intentions, as a direct consequence of which they
are rarely observed in performance practice. Deviations from Beethoven’s
original tempo have thus been gradually consolidated over time, perpetu-
ated as a “fossilized tradition,” to the point of producing highly distorted
results in some cases.73 A handful of interpretations by prestigious per-
formers of the period are all it takes to form an inexorable kind of “sacred
musical heritage,” which becomes part of the collective consciousness of
listeners. Sir Georg Solti highlights his experience as a student in the
1920s, when Beethoven’s metronome markings were already considered
wrong, and recalls this at the end of his life as a kind of fairy tale, since
he had finally come around to the view that these marks of Beethoven’s
give a good approximation of the tempos the composer intended.74

69. Peter Stadlen, “Beethoven und das Metronom,” in Beethoven: Das Problem der Interpretation, 2d ed.,
ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger & Rainer Riehn, Musik Konzepte, 8 (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1985), 12–33.
This volume was first published in 1979, and an English version of Stadlen’s article, “Beethoven and the
Metronome,” appeared in Soundings (Cardiff ) 9 (1982): 38–73. Stadlen had previously published a dif-
ferent article under the same title, “Beethoven and the Metronome,” Music & Letters 48, no. 4 (October
1967): 330–49.
70. For Hummel, variations of tempo were not only permissible but indispensable, within certain “laws
of moderation.” If a relatively conservative figure like Hummel accepted such liberties, all the more rea-
son to follow this line of interpretation in a much less conservative composer such as Beethoven
(Schenkman, “Beyond the Limits,” 161–62).
71. Kolisch, “Tempo and Character.”
72. In the classical period the procedure for choosing the appropriate tempo was not based on analyz-
ing the score; it was rather a matter of looking for an effective way of performing the piece starting from
the tempo indication, on which there was already a certain degree of consensus without the need for a
metronome. The idea that the correct tempo has to be comfortable may therefore be a mistake, and
strictly speaking a great many elements should be taken into account, ranging from the acoustics to the
particular instrument (Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 47).
73. Kolisch, “Tempo and Character.”
74. Georg Solti, Memoirs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 214.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 259

Fig. 7. Evolution of the total duration of Beethoven’s Sonata op. 106 in fifty-one recordings
from 1935 to 2007

Returning to opus 106, it has already been made clear that there is a
tradition of performance tending, in practice, toward slower tempos
than the original markings, since of the fifty-one performances exam-
ined, only one in five is at or below the duration we are taking as a refer-
ence. In figure 7 we can see a rising trend in the total duration of the
work from 1935 to 2007, with some exceptions.
Even though a performance tradition predominantly contrary to those
markings can be observed, Beethoven’s intentions seem unequivocal. As
we have seen, the Hammerklavier was a challenge for the composer himself
and, as such, a very carefully thought-out and considered work. Although
he himself emphasized that the metronome must be used with caution,
the fact is that if his markings are followed, an overall performance time
260 Notes, December 2014

of forty-one minutes does not diverge excessively from his earlier great
sonatas, and particularly from the total duration of his last quartets.
Moreover, those much-criticized markings are consistent with other ele-
ments of the text. Kolisch notes that the Allegro of the first movement of
opus 106 is the fastest of all Beethoven’s works in duple time with this
marking, which range from  = 112 in the First Symphony to  = 138 in
this movement.75 It is an extreme tempo for a sonata which, as we have
seen, is conceived as extreme in every sense: dynamics, registers, inter-
vals. In 1842, Czerny, who had studied the sonata with Beethoven him-
self, described the composer’s prescribed tempo for the first movement
as “unusually quick and impetuous,” but unlike Moscheles he did not
argue for a reduction, and evidently regarded it as representing the com-
poser’s intention, arguing that the difficulty arising from it could be
overcome with sufficient study.76 Liszt maintained Beethoven’s original
tempos in his edition (only in the third movement did he propose a
slightly slower marking of = 84). William Mason describes how Liszt ex-
pressed tremendous indignation at a slow performance of the work.77 In
recent decades there has been a greater willingness than previously to
take Beethoven’s metronome marks seriously and to regard the enor-
mous difficulty of achieving them, and the tension created thereby, as
deliberate and essential to the character of the work, a view trenchantly
expressed by Kaiser, for example.78
The most “unplayable” movement at the original tempo is perhaps the
fugue. As Lederer points out, however, it is crucial to understand that
the overall character of the movement is aggressive and violent, and that
its contrapuntal textures bristle with difficulty. As a fugue, the movement
is inevitably more intellectually driven; so while its three subjects are
strong in character, their development is guided by contrapuntal logic,
rather than by the drama of sonata form: Beethoven did not intend that
the fugue be loved, but rather that it be listened to in awe.79 The rela-
tively widespread view of this sonata as grand and monumental, often
just because of its length, leads people to choose particularly slow tem-

75. Kolisch, “Tempo and Character,” 279.

76. Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, Czerny’s “Reminiscences of
Beethoven” and Chapters II and III of the “Complete Theoretical and Practical Piano Forte School Op. 500,” facsim-
ile of the English translation of Czerny’s Über den richtigen Vortrag der sämtlichen Beethoven’schen Klavierwerke
(Vienna, 1842) published as The Art of Playing the Ancient and Modern Piano Forte Works (London: R. Cocks
& Co., n.d. [1846?]), ed. and with a commentary by Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition,
1970), 64. For Schindler’s testimony that Czerny had “often studied” opus 106 with Beethoven, see p. 16.
77. Mason, Memories of a Musical Life, 103–5.
78. Joachim Kaiser, Beethovens 32 Klaviersonaten und ihre Interpreten (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984;
various printings), 508–9.
79. Victor Lederer, Beethoven’s Piano Music: A Listener’s Guide (Milwaukee: Amadeus Press, 2011), 113.
A Panoramic Survey of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106 261

pos, and reduces the field of vision to merely superficial issues. The
dimensions and technical demands of the work are unparalleled. But
this should not divert us from its essence: confronting an existential chal-
lenge full of energy, with no room for contemplation. In short, it is a de-
cision in which performers have to form a critical judgment of both the
weight of tradition and their personal preferences, and to be aware of
the consequences on an expressive and a structural level: as in life itself,
a small decision can have momentous consequences.80
To sum up: on the one hand, the new harmonic, structural, thematic,
and dynamic elements open the way to the musical language of the late-
nineteenth-century French school, and even to the new forms of piano
writing that were to emerge in the twentieth; in addition, as a whole,
they manage to maintain a constant friction, a sense of continuous strug-
gle throughout the whole work. This conflict, as we have seen, reflects
Beethoven confronting a serious personal and artistic crisis, surpassing
himself in compositional terms, and also facing a vital challenge to over-
come the intense isolation to which he was subjected by the events men-
tioned earlier. The solitude manifested in the Hammerklavier, especially
in the third movement, never left him, as the slow movements of his last
sonatas and quartets show.81
This study has sought to provide some keys to interpretation that may
help to penetrate beneath the surface of this formidable sonata. The
challenge life posed for Beethoven, in painful circumstances, was ex-
treme, as we have seen, and he responded to it with an artistic renais-
sance, reaching new heights, in the most difficult conditions. Neverthe-
less, many areas remain to be explored, given that some of the issues
raised here deserve a whole study in themselves: an analysis of the vari-
ous editions and their evolution, as well as a systematic examination of
interpretative practice based on recordings, with reference to the origi-
nal tempos and markings, taking into account connections with other
works, especially the opus 130 quartet and the opus 133 fugue.82 If
Beethoven believed in 1818 that this sonata would keep pianists busy for
fifty years, he was wrong: it was to do so for several centuries, and not just
pianists, but also scholars.
—translated by Charles Davis

80. Janet M. Levy, “The Power of the Performer: Interpreting Beethoven,” Journal of Musicology 18,
no. 1 (Winter 2001): 31–55.
81. For an extensive review of the emotional and spiritual dimension of the Hammerklavier, see J. W. N.
Sullivan, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927; various reprints), 203–10.
82. Lambert, “Beethoven in B .”
262 Notes, December 2014

ABSTRACT

This article draws together a range of perspectives on one of the

supreme works in the piano repertoire, Beethoven’s Sonata no. 29,
op. 106. Composed in extreme circumstances, it takes sonata form to the
limit, while at the same time revealing a search for new ways forward.
From its first appearance right up to the present day, its complexity has
distanced it from the general public, and even from many performers.
The main object of this study is to provide elements that enable us to
understand what is, in stylistic terms, one of the composer’s most atypical
pieces. For this purpose it examines biographical, contextual, and struc-
tural aspects of the work, as well as questions of interpretation on the
basis of the various existing editions and of fifty-one performances,
which confirm a widespread tradition of slow tempos, despite Beetho-
ven’s precise and consistent indications.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.