♫ OK, that’s a lot of dancing around the piece! Let’s now begin with the beginning: the exposition of op. 2 no. 2’s 1st movement. ♫ So! This music is irrepressible, and full of humor, and it is also surprisingly ambitious – surprising in the sense that its scope turns out to be larger than the first few bars might lead one to expect. The first phrase is composed of two elements: the staccato, deadpan, two note figure, ♫ and that scale response – carefree, even tossed off. ♫ To me it almost seems like two kinds of laughter – “ha-ha”, and then a ripple. When the music gets going properly, two phrases in, these two types of “laughing” music get a more extended treatment. First, the staccato figure, ♫ and then the scale. ♫ bringing with it a level of virtuosity not found in Haydn’s sonatas, or Mozart’s, for that matter. All three of the opus 2 sonatas are virtuosic – another way in which Beethoven shows his ambition early. But the character of the virtuosity is different in each case – anxious and driven in no. 1, brilliant and strong in no. 3, very light and effervescent here. The virtuosity is different because the three pieces are different, and the virtuosity is never just for virtuosity’s sake – it always fits the broader character of the music at hand. Before returning to the Haydn connection, I’d just like to say a word about this sonata’s place within the op. 2 trilogy. The first sonata in f minor, was dramatic, even melodramatic at times, with plenty of sturm und drang; the third, in C Major, is grand and muscular, constantly swinging for the fences. This “in-between” sonata is predominantly a work of humor, wit, and graciousness. Its emotional makeup is a bit more complex than that, as you’ll see, and there are, in fact, points of overlap with the other two op. 2s, but those three qualities – Haydnesque ones -- are on display in those bars, and they remain for much of the piece. It’s one thing for me to simply say that this piece has Haydnesque qualities; it’s another to listen to the music itself. So here is the opening of Haydn’s C Major sonata. ♫ Now, these works were written just two years apart, in 1794 and 1796. I have no idea if Beethoven knew Haydn’s C Major sonata – though he certainly was generally aware of what Haydn was up to. But whether or not he did, the similarities are striking. You have the deadpan, rhythmic figures. ♫ You have the more virtuosic thirty-second notes. ♫ And you have the way in which the theme comes first in a whisper, and then a shout. ♫ These are meaningful similarities, but they could be coincidental. More meaningful, and certainly not coincidental, is the similar character, and the similar means of conveying character. Haydn and Beethoven are virtually winking at their listeners. Of the triumvirate of great classical composers, Mozart was probably the most theatrical, but he was never theatrical in this way. He speaks directly, not in fits and starts. He is not one to wink conspiratorially at the listener, and he is also not out to jolt the listener. But Haydn and Beethoven love those kinds of games, and each is playing them in these sonatas.