Sonata No. 17 · Op. 31 No. 2 · Movement I

The Tempest

The sonata begins on its own dominant — a rolled arpeggio, marked pp, in a tempo that does not survive the bar. What follows is a sonata form in D minor of 232 measures that declines to cadence in its home key until eleven bars from the end. The movement is built on a gesture and a withholding.

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— i —

A key withheld

D minor sounds from the third bar and is not confirmed by an authentic cadence for 196 of the movement's 232 measures. The one perfect authentic cadence the home key receives in the whole movement arrives at m. 221, with the coda already in sight.

— ii —

A gesture that does not change

The rolled Largo arpeggio of the first bar returns at every structural boundary — the head of the exposition, the head of the development, the head of the recapitulation — and survives into the retransition as two grace notes. In a movement that shortens its transition, re-registers its second group and replaces the first theme's continuation with unaccompanied recitative, it is the only material that comes back untouched.

— iii —

Cadences graded backwards

The imperfect cadences resolve to complete triads. The two perfect ones — one closing the exposition in A minor, one closing the recapitulation in D minor — arrive on bare octaves and state no third. At the two moments of greatest formal consequence the music sounds a pitch and declines to name its mode.

The structure

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The two openings — mm. 1–20

Three tempi in six bars

The Largo arpeggio, the Adagio that answers it, and the Allegro that breaks in. The first group opens on the dominant and states its theme twice before the music moves.

The transition — mm. 21–40

An ascent, not a modulation

Driven, unbroken, and cadencing nowhere. It arrives at the second group by force of register and dynamic alone.

The second group and the close — mm. 41–96

A minor, the minor dominant

The darker of the two standard destinations for a minor-mode sonata. The flattened second degree colours it throughout, and the exposition's cadences gather in its final bars.

The development — mm. 97–146

No cadence of any kind

The arpeggio returns destabilised, the music turns to the sharp side, and a dominant pedal is walked away from rather than resolved.

Recapitulation and coda — mm. 147–232

The arpeggio, restored

The first theme's continuation gives way to two unaccompanied recitatives. The second group is resolved to D minor, and the home key's single perfect cadence arrives at m. 221.

At a glance

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Key

D minor

Op. 31 No. 2, Movement I.

Form

Sonata form

232 measures.

Subordinate key

A minor

The minor dominant, not the relative major.

Cadences

Eight in the movement

One PAC in the home key.

Instrumentation

Solo piano

Concert pitch throughout.

Coming next

A companion reading of the sonata's remaining movements is in preparation, so the Tempest can be heard as a whole rather than as its first movement alone. Beethoven's Op. 13 second movement and the Op. 95 quartet are already published here, and a short comparison setting the Tempest's withheld tonic against the Pathétique's is planned alongside them.