Concluding Registral Strategies in Movements of Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Abstract

This essay discusses various ways in which Beethoven exploits registral connections among high tones to maintain tension until the very end of eight piano sonata movements. Within the codas of seven piano sonata movements, one or more high tones of a V7 (and its inversions) or V9 chord are left hanging, due to an immediate downward shift of register (Opp. 2/3/1, 14/2/I, 28/II, 53/I, 31/2/I, 78/2). Beethoven delays resolution until near the end of the coda, where these hanging high tones move by step to the tonic at the same register. The second registral procedure begins shortly before the codas of two movements (Opp. 14/1/I, 54/I). The sixth scale degree, supported by a II6 chord, is left hanging in its high register by a downward leap of two octaves to the leading tone Near the end of each of the movements the leading tone appears in the same high register as the previous sixth scale degree, and resolves upward to the tonic scale degree four bars from the end. There is reason to believe that Beethoven’s techniques for maintaining registral tension until the end of a movement were inspired by brief keyboard works by Bach, since in many brief keyboard pieces by Bach, musical tension is sustained up to the end because the ^1 supported by a tonic chord appears only in the very last bar.