New goal on the blog: sharing music every day as a break and boost during these unsettling times. Hope this will brighten your day and help you stay well. 🙂 If you’d like to check out earlier posts, you’ll find the first of this series here.

Today’s post features the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 90. This is a video from last fall, but I’m hoping soon to do a new video of the second movement of the same sonata.

If you’ve visited the blog recently, you might have run across a couple of my other Beethoven features. You can find one here, where you can also read more about him, his music, and the effect his deafness had on his work as a composer. Beethoven wrote the Op. 90 sonata toward the end of what’s called his “heroic period,” which was the immediate aftermath of the watershed year when he realized his deafness was irreversible. During that “heroic period,” Beethoven worked to develop his own language as a composer, independently of the usual norms of the time.

The Op. 90 sonata is unusual because it only has two movements, while most sonatas have three or four. The second movement is the real feature, but the first movement, played in the video below, shows a lot of Beethoven’s dramatic, passionate style.

As you listen, consider the emotional palette Beethoven creates with this music. What kinds of feelings does it evoke for you? Do you find yourself thinking of any kind of story or narrative to go with it? As always, you’re welcome to share your thoughts and responses to the music in the comments.

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