Beethoven Stems 3 continued

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John Ruggero
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Beethoven Stems 3 continued

Post by John Ruggero »

Beethoven has used an important motive seen at A in the following example many times in the course of the first movement of his Sonata op. 111. In the two measures that follow this one, he is suddenly forced to change the third note so that it repeats the second note instead of descending a tone because of potential parallel perfect fifths with the lower counterpoint as shown by the arrows. The changes are clearly seen in the MS:
op 111 slurs.jpeg
op 111 slurs.jpeg (119.11 KiB) Viewed 7384 times
And according to the practice that I describe in the previous post on this subject, he also changes the slurring to avoid slurring over the repeated tones! (Note for one the erasure that converted the first long slur over the second measure into a short one of two notes only.) He did this in spite of the fact that he undoubtedly wanted this compromised form of the motive to sound as much like the preferred form at A as possible and therefore completely legato through the first five tones to contrast with the staccato of the final two.
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