The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience [Paperback]

... one of the most interesting, useful and even exciting books on the process of musical creation. American Music Teacher

... noteworthy contribution... with plenty of insight into interpretation... remarkable as an insiders account of the works in an individual perspective. European Music Teacher

Drake groups the Beethoven piano sonatas according to their musical qualities, rather than their chronology. He explores the interpretive implications of rhythm, dynamics, slurs, harmonic effects, and melodic development and identifies specific measures where Beethoven skillfully employs these compositional devices.

Preface

1. The First Raptus, and All Subsequent Ones

*The Sounds of Involvement

2. Technique as Touch
3. Tempo and the Pacing of Musical Ideas
4. Dynamic Nuance and Musical Line
5. The Role of Silence
6. Sound as Color

*The Sonatas

7. Descriptive Music: Op.81a, Op.13
8. Motivic Development: Op.2 No.1, Op.57, Op.110
9. Quasi una Fantasia: Op.27 Nos.1 and 2, Op.26
10. Line and Space: Op. 2 No.2, Op 101
11. Movement as Energized Color: Op.53
12. The Moment of Creation: Op.28, Op.31 Nos.2 and 3
13. Facing Two Directions: Op.49 Nos.1 and 2, Op.54, Op. 78, Op. 90
14. The Enjoyment of Fluency: Op.10 Nos.2 and 3, Op. 14 No. 2, Op.22, Op.31 No.1, Op.79
15. The Cosmopolitan Impostor: Op.2 No.3, Op.14 No.1
16. Embracing the Dachstein: Op. 7, Op. 106
17. A Higher Revelation: Op.10 No.1, Op.109, Op.111
18. The Witness Tree

*Notes

Kenneth Drake is Professor Emeritus of Piano at the University of Illinois and author ofThe Sonatas of Beethoven as He Played and Taught Them. He is active as a performer on period pianos.

Cover illustration: The Beethoven Broadwood fortepiano. Courtesy of the Hungarian National Museum. Photo by Sheila Rock, Thorn EMI London.