Piano Video Lesson: How Slowly Should Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata Be Played?

It's the most amazing thing that playing faster sounds slower when you think the larger note value. By thinking of the half note, at this tempo, it's very relaxed with the way Beethoven intended it to be thinking the half note as the slow beat.

Welcome to LivingPianos .com, Robert Estrin here, and the question today is, how slowly should the moonlight sonata be played? Now, I'm referring to the famous first movement that so many people love to play, and there are some questions as to how slowly it should go. After all, it is written to be played adagio sostenuto, which is slow and sustained.

More than that, it goes on to say, si deve sonore tutto questo pezzo delicatamente e senza sordini. Now, that's a mouthful that translates literally the whole piece must be played very delicately and without deafness. Well, sordini, we know, is mute, without the mute.

And what is the mute on the piano? Well, perhaps he was talking about the soft pedal. Now you might wonder, why wouldn't you want to use a soft pedal in the moonlight sonata? It seems like a natural. Well, you have to remember that the instrument that Beethoven wrote this piece for is drastically different from a modern piano like I'm sitting in front of here. In fact, pianos early in Beethoven's life were quite different from pianos later in his life. He worked closely with instrument builders. So my guess is that the instrument at the time he wrote the moonlight sonata, the tone was not sufficient with the soft pedal if it had some sort of apparatus to achieve that at the time.

So then, getting back to the question of the day of how softly should you play it, I do like to use the soft pedal in the first mode of the moonlight sonata. So let's listen a little bit.

Adagio sostenuto, you might think would be kind of not too fast.

Let's see what that sounds like.

Adagio sostenuto. Now, here is something that is vitally important.

I was teaching a student the moonlight sonata the other day and they were playing at a very slow tempo like this and I took exception with it. Why? Because look in an urtext edition and this piece isn't in 4 -4 time, which I was articulating 1, 2, 3, 4, which is just the tempo I took. Look carefully and you realize it's in cut time, 2 -2 or allabreve. It's got the C with the line through it. That is a completely different story because now instead of having 4 quarter notes getting the beat, you have 2 half notes getting the beat.

So this is a more appropriate tempo. That's a nice slow tempo, isn't it? Listen to what it sounds like with a half note ticking.

It's the most amazing thing that playing faster sounds slower when you think the larger note value. By thinking of the half note at this tempo, it's very relaxed with the way Beethoven intended it to be thinking the half note as the slow beat. Instead of the quarter note, which makes you play it slower if you try to slow down that quarter note, and then the whole piece bogs down. You know it's a fairly long movement as it is to be able to play it with a quarter note ticking. It becomes ponderous. It's not the way the piece was intended by Beethoven. Check out your score and see if you've got the cut time or you've got just 4 -4 common time. If you do, that is not correct in the authoritative urtext editions. It indeed, in Beethoven's autograph, was written in 2 -2 time, not 4 -4 time. So you may want to think your tempo of the Moonlight's not a... I hope this has been helpful for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPiatos .com, your online piano resource. Thanks to all your subscribers. Ring the bell, spread the word. We'll see you next time.

Bye.

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Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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