♫ In the last lecture, we talked about the problem of how to follow a slow movement that explores dark territory. In op. 10 no. 3, in which the slow movement is a bit of an earthquake, Beethoven follows it with a menuet that’s very much on the delicate end of the spectrum. In the “Pastorale”, whose second movement has a much more measured, resigned sadness, Beethoven goes a different direction: humor. This is not a menuet, but a scherzo. And while some scherzos are hybrids, meaning that they retain some of the elegance of a menuet – for example, the one found in op. 2 no. 2 – ♫ the “pastorale” scherzo is not like that: it is a straight-up scherzo, by which I mean that its priority is to be funny, and that no one would ever be able to dance to it. The first – and best – joke of the movement comes right at the top. ♫ Those are the first four bars! Now, forgive me for stating the obvious, but the beginning of a movement is, well, the beginning. Before it comes, we don’t have any information: we don’t know the movement’s key, or meter, or character – anything. So, normally, the opening bars give us that information: by the time we’re a phrase in, we have our bearings. These four bars tell us nothing. They could be in any meter. Their character is nebulous. We can be pretty sure that we are no longer in the slow movement’s d minor, because that note that gets played four times is an F sharp, which is not a part of the d minor scale. ♫ But “not d minor” is not a key, and we have really no idea what key we are in. The information comes in the fifth bar. ♫ D Major. ¾ time. Scherzo. That f sharp turns out to be the third in a D Major chord. ♫ But how were we to know that? In fact, we already have a bit of a history with f sharp in this piece: that’s the pedal point in the remarkable passage in the development of the first movement. ♫ F sharps are not always not benign presences. And pieces virtually never begin on their third scale degree – which is to say that if you don’t know the piece, and you hear those first four bars, you are not saying to yourself, “must be D Major”. All of which is to say, the answering phrase – it's funny. ♫ Just the juxtaposition between the laconic first four bars and the quicksilver response is funny – and it continues throughout the scherzo. But it’s the way in which the second phrase makes us retroactively understand what we’ve just heard – “I get it – D Major! Roger” – that's what's so amusing about it. And it helps us instantly move on from whatever residual tension the second movement had left behind. So here is the scherzo section in its entirety. ♫ Really, the whole thing is dominated by those eight bar phrases: the lazy, one-note-to-a-bar first half, and then the crisp, no-dawdling response. And no matter how many times it comes, it retains its sly nature. This scherzo, naturally, has a trio – notably, it is the only section of the entire not in D Major or minor, instead moving to b minor. ♫ There are several notable things here. First of all, I find it striking that the trio, like the scherzo, begins on that f sharp. ♫ The context, the meaning is completely different, because in D Major, F sharp was the third scale degree, ♫ whereas in b minor, it is the fifth. ♫ Nevertheless, I feel certain that the listener is meant to hear a relationship between the two. Further interesting is how Beethoven makes the trio seem so much faster than the scherzo, even played at an identical tempo. In the scherzo, which, like much of the first movement, it's in hyperbars, one counts just one beat to the bar. ♫ One one one one, one one one one. The meter is ¾, but there simply is not enough activity in the bar to merit counting all three beats. In the trio, by contrast, the left hand in particular becomes so busy, it is not only possible, but necessary to feel all three beats of the bar. ♫ So, while the tempo itself is unaltered, the feeling is enormously faster. Dee dah Dee dah. Dee Ba Ba dum bom bom bom bom. The return of the scherzo is absolutely literal – nothing is changed, and there is no coda – but context does a bit of a number on it. When the scherzo began the first time around, we had no idea what that f sharp meant. When it comes back, we should know, having heard it once already. But having just heard the trio, in b minor, certain doubts creep in. Could this f sharp now mean b minor, just as it did in the trio? ♫ Erm, no, it couldn't. ♫ Once again, with that second phrase, order and good humor are restored. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: humor is an incredibly under-appreciated aspect of Beethoven’s personality. Without it, the entire meaning of his music would be completely different.
