♫ So, most of the remainder of this movement plays out just the way an almost-rondo should, with the expected succession of A and B sections. But the movement does have a wonderful, 11th-hour plot twist, which changes our perception of the piece and its shape: When the triumphant music of the first B section comes back again, ♫ it veers off script, taking us not back to the A section, but instead coming to a screeching halt on a dominant seventh chord. ♫ What IS this? Could there be another movement coming? Somehow, even though everything about this piece has been so irregular and basically unprecedented, this movement has always read clearly as A Finale. So that sudden hard stop, ♫ which at first feels destined to herald the arrival of new music, is a real surprise in a piece filled with surprises… …what actually happens is a different kind of surprise. That chord is not heralding new music, but rather the RETURN of the Adagio – the previous movement, or the introduction to this one, if you prefer. ♫ Beethoven marks this “Tempo 1”, which to me suggests that he really did hear that A flat major music as an introduction to the finale. (If it was really a separate movement, marking it “tempo one” wouldn’t make sense in this context.) So when we last heard it, it was in A flat Major. Now, restored to the home key of E flat, the key that the piece began in, ♫ and the key that it will end in, the sense of contentment in it is only enhanced. The A flat section was already brief, but the version here is even much more truncated. ♫ It’s really only there to help this schizophrenic, little-bit-of-this, little-bit-of-that piece settle, to ground it, and it serves that purpose absolutely beautifully. Once out of the adagio, we’re ready for a proper coda – Presto to the rest of the movement’s Allegro Vivace, and thus, very fast indeed – a coda which goes by in a flash. ♫ And yet again, it’s ALL based on the four note idea. You wouldn’t necessarily know it at first, except that Beethoven specifically slurs it that way. ♫ And even that rambunctious whirlwind that the piece ends with can be broken down into four note sequences. ♫ But leaving that bit of pedantry aside, it really is a rambunctious, irrepressible whirlwind, and as such, a fitting conclusion to a piece that makes its own rules and won’t be dictated to by convention. That anarchic spirit makes this very compelling music, and while it is true that many of its experiments turned out to be one-offs, and it is not really a piece that points the way to the future, its daring is itself an important step in Beethoven’s development. The prior sonata, op. 26, was already groundbreaking, leaving behind the model that had been so stable in the first thirteen sonatas, and being the first sonata to eschew sonata form entirely. But Op. 27. No. 1, with its blurred lines between movements, and indeed between forms – sonata and fantasia – leaves convention even further behind. It is both a fascinating document of Beethoven at the moment at which he was clearly determined to move beyond what he had achieved in his early period, and a delightful, irresistible piece of music purely on its own terms.
