♫ …And so it is. Without any pause, the second movement emerges out of that E flat major chord. ♫ So, in a different way, this music is as diametrically opposed to the E flat major music as that C Major interruption in the middle of the first movement was. C minor is the relative major of E flat major, so it’s not like the key is any great surprise. But consider: major to minor; Andante to “Allegro molto e vivace”, as this second movement is marked; and most significant, peaceful to very anxious. (This anxiety is expressed in a number of different ways, which I’ll get to in a moment.) Now, this is not uncommon, of course: Beethoven, and his classical predecessors, often juxtaposed movements of vastly different characters. What is new in op. 27 no. 1, and what makes the juxtaposition more obvious and arresting, is that there is literally no separation – no buffer of silence – between the movements. Another important difference between the first two movements: the first is languorous, and the second is compact. This is not precisely a question of tempo: it has to do with the rate of events. If this sonata has a scherzo, this second movement is clearly it: it’s in ¾ time, and generally unfolds in hyperbars – meaning regular units of 4 bars. Being a scherzo, that means that the form is a clear-cut ABA, just as the first movement was: but it takes just about two minutes to play, in comparison to the first movement’s five. And, unsurprisingly, it is in constant motion. Throughout this scherzo, almost every single quarter note is played, and once the piece gets started, the harmony is nearly always in flux, moving, at a minimum, once each two bars. ♫ Not just flux, but a nervous, scurrying flux. Contrast that to the first movement, which goes for minutes without introducing a third chord! And to top it off, most every section of this movement is punctuated with a forte or fortissimo outburst. ♫ The anger might be a little more performative than genuine, but this movement is terse and brusque – again, a total contrast to what preceded it. So, the B section – the trio, for all practical purposes – is again a contrast in many ways. Whereas the underlying rhythm of the outer sections involves every single quarter note being played, ♫ here the rhythmic backdrop is 3-1, 3-1: what I call “riding horse’ rhythm. ♫ The change of character is palpable... It’s still in the same fast tempo, and it’s still bold, but the c minor has been traded for A flat Major, and the darkness and intensity have been replaced with pride. But this movement’s materials are united by their boldness: this forte exclamation point to the opening phrase, ♫ is outdone by the fortissimo that comes at the trio’s climax. ♫ The only one of the movement’s four sections – both the scherzo and the trio being divided in two – the only one of the four sections that doesn’t end in an outburst is the end of the trio: instead, the trio sort of fritters away, and slinks its way back into the scherzo’s return. ♫ This is not quite a literal return: the first time around, each section was repeated. But this time, Beethoven ups the ante by writing out a repeat – a variant which is more active still. ♫ The hands had always played in tandem, before, ♫ now they are separate, which doubles the rate of motion. ♫ But what Beethoven does is actually a bit more extreme than that: he has the hands playing in different articulations – the right legato, just as it has been, but the left staccato. This creates the impression of a real war between the hands: not only are they not together, with the right hand syncopated and spilling across the bar line, but they are being played with radically different attacks, which inevitably means different characters as well. ♫ This is Beethoven in battle mode, and it heightens the atmosphere that was already present at the start of the movement.
