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Time to start hearing it! Here is that monothematic, mini-exposition. ♫ The contrast with the first movement is stark, and makes itself felt instantly. The motion of this Allegretto is fluid, and calm – the stop-start nature of the menuet obviously prevented that, and while the motion of the trio may have been constant, you wouldn’t call it “fluid” and you CERTAINLY wouldn’t call it calm. Marked dolce, piano, and legato, we understand instantly that this will be a very different kind of movement. But while the movement is calm, mellifluous, on account of its tempo and these other factors, it would be a mistake to hear the words “perpetual motion” and think that there isn’t a lot of invention and interest in each phrase, even in each bar: there is. Just like in the Tempest’s finale, which is already disrupted in its very first phrase by a second, sustained voice, which always comes on the second sixteenth of the bar, ♫ op. 54 has emphases in odd places which prevent a certain flatline quality from setting in. In the third bar, there is an accent placed, like in the Tempest, on the second sixteenth of the bar, coming across as a mini-spasm disrupting the smoothness. ♫ We are deeply conditioned as listeners to hear beats, to feel that the music unfolds in a rhythmic way: 1-2, 1-2, 1-2. And so an accent on a weak part of the bar is both a disruption, and a welcome distraction from this beatiness, which can become particularly exhausting when the motion is altogether so regular. In the first four bar phrase, there is only one of these offbeat accents; in the second phrase there are two. ♫ And shortly after, they start coming thick and fast, first one to a bar, then two, coming across as a kind of acceleration – a neat trick, when the actual motion is imperturbable. ♫ But the interest – the detail – in this perpetual motion is not all, or even primarily rhythmic: it is motivic and harmonic as well. After eight bars that are mostly rising sixths, ♫ a new pattern emerges: third, sixth, third, sixth. ♫ This pattern, which recurs often throughout the movement, is what is so extremely reminiscent of op. 26’s finale. ♫ So again, unlike the first movement, which seems to have come out of nowhere, the second movement of op. 54, while still unusual, has some precedents and relations. So, we’ve covered rhythm and melody – motive. But ultimately, it’s the harmony that is most active and surprising and prevents this movement from lapsing into monotone. I feel like apologizing here for a being a broken record – I haven’t shut up about harmony for five minutes since this course started 7 years ago! But if you’ve made it this far, you have presumably built up a tolerance for my fixations. And truly, there is a LOT of a very significant harmonic activity in this movement. Really, the little “exposition” is the most stable 20 bars of the whole movement, simply going from the F Major tonic, ♫ to the C Major dominant, ♫ without any intermediary points. But as soon as the brief exposition comes to an end, there is a major harmonic event, and from that point on, the music is extremely active in this department. The event in question: ♫ Suddenly, A Major! This is really a perfect example of harmony as color. If the F major opening is dolce, sweet, ♫ the A Major arrives like a mirage, a dreamscape. ♫ This is probably the most sudden shift of harmony – and, thus, color – in the whole piece, but there are numerous passages of constant harmonic flux, passages where the harmonic rhythm is the bar, meaning that every single, brief bar takes us into new harmonic territory. Passages like this, ♫ this, ♫ and this. ♫ Again, contrast all of this harmonic flitting about with the first movement. The entire menuet section never left F Major, and aside from this brief moment of motion, ♫ it really only even used three chords. The elephant stampede trio remained stubbornly in F Major for fourteen bars, and then spent an even more stubborn fifteen in A flat major. So ironically, while the second movement is placid on the surface, and placid in its rhythm, it is infinitely more active from a harmonic point of view – the point of view which, to my way of thinking, is most significant in terms of grasping the character of the music. And there are other kinds of detail as well – other factors making this perpetual motion more complex and interesting than it might otherwise be. Take this passage, also from the development. ♫ It is, again, modulating all the time, but that’s not the aspect that I’m referring to. Those appoggiaturas in the left hand, ♫ they toggle back and forth between being half steps and whole steps. Half step, ♫ then whole, ♫ then again half. ♫ The change in interval also causes a subtle but significant shift in character, one Beethoven is clearly conscious of, because he marks the bars with the half steps “espressivo’, ♫ while giving no direction for the whole step bars. Is this detail important in the grand scheme of things, in understanding the meaning of the movement as a whole? No. But the existence of all the detail is worth pointing out, because it is particularly easy to overlook in a movement whose rhythm provides no aural relief.
