♫ But happily, at this point in this piece, the menuet itself begins to wrest control of the piece away from the elephants. The first time around, the trio section was not just infinitely more forceful than the menuet; it was actually longer as well. The second appearance of the menuet is not longer than the first, but the ornamentation makes it feel bigger, more expansive… …and this second appearance of the trio IS shorter than the first one – vastly shorter, in fact, 11 bars, compared with 45, with the A flat major music omitted entirely. ♫ Both times, the trio ends with it seeming to have exhausted itself; that moment just arrives much quicker the second time around. And the return of the menuet is also handled much differently this time. Whereas the first time around, there was a long-winded but ultimately smooth transition back, ♫ this time, there is no transition at all: instead, a hard stop on a dominant 7th chord, and then, without further ado, the third appearance of the menuet. ♫ If the first appearance of the trio had an effect on how the menuet seemed to us the second time, the second appearance of the trio – unnecessary, from a structural point of view, and therefore unexpected – has taken this transformation further. Those lower voices – the counterpoint under the long Fs – are different this time, darker and less stable. ♫ Even in this small and highly unconventional work, we can see Beethoven’s extraordinary command of structure at work: he has taken a theme which seemed to have a limited expressive range, and through context, significantly changed its color and meaning. And those harmonic shifts are not the only significant change – far from it. The ornamentation, moderate in the second iteration of the menuet, becomes very elaborate in the third – more and more so, as it continues, furthering the sense that as the trio gets smaller, the menuet gets “bigger”. ♫ It’s almost hard to tell, because the writing is so florid, but that is the precise moment where the menuet proper ends, which means that everything that follows is a coda: and it’s quite a coda! It begins with a continuation of this sextuplets, flitting about in search of resolution: ♫ and then, suddenly, enters the word of opera, with a true vocal cadenza, beginning with a flourish, continuing with a giant leap, for the “singer” to show off her range, and finally the freest moment of all, marked “Adagio” but really, with its fermatas, out of tempo entirely. ♫ I find the emotional transformation of the music quite stunning: for the first time, this menuet feels not formal, but personal, deeply personal. And this only becomes more the case as the coda continues, beyond the cadenza, with music that is based on the opening of the piece. Now, though, what might have seemed a little stilted before plays as a beautiful, hard-earned sense of repose. ♫ And finally, before the music comes to a gentle end, one more outburst – not a joke-y or a belligerent one, as in the trios, but a moment of great and sincere intensity. ♫ This wonderful coda doesn’t just put a cap on the movement, as codas often do; it changes its meaning altogether. It would be tempting to hear this determinedly strange music as a piece of absurdist comedy – and it does have elements of that. But the coda reveals that it is much more: that however odd its events are, Beethoven means them, and that making his way through them means something TO him. This movement is strange and, in important ways, unlike anything else Beethoven wrote, but it remains Beethoven, which means neither its intensity nor its integrity can be called into question.
