Sunday, January 26, 2014

Appassionata



From Wikipedia:

Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minorOp. 57 (colloquially known as the Appassionata, meaning "passionate" in Italian) is among the three famous piano sonatas of his middle period (the others being the Waldstein, Op. 53 and Les Adieux, Op. 81a); it was composed during 1804 and 1805, and perhaps 1806, and was dedicated to Count Franz von Brunswick. The first edition was published in February 1807 in Vienna.

Unlike the early Sonata No. 8, Pathétique,[1] the Appassionata was not named during the composer's lifetime, but was so labeled in 1838 by the publisher of a four-hand arrangement of the work.

The Appassionata was considered by Beethoven to be his most tempestuous piano sonata until the twenty-ninth piano sonata (known as the Hammerklavier), being described as a "brilliantly executed display of emotion and music".[citation needed] 1803 was the year Beethoven came to grips with the irreversibility of his progressively deteriorating hearing.

An average performance of the entire Appassionata sonata lasts about twenty-three minutes.

This sonata is comparable to Hammerklavier, and is harder than such works as Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, Chopin's Etudes, Scherzos etc.



In high school, my best friend and I took Introductory Classical Piano. We had no prior training to playing to the piano other than playing by ear. We couldn't read sheet music. The class wasn't just a grade for us. Unknown to us at the time, we both took the class of our own accord to learn the basics and gain reading comprehension to sheet music. We both liked videogame and classical music and wanted to play them.

Within a semester, we were already playing intermediate and hard songs. My best friend progressed much further. We became our piano teacher's best students throughout the whole school. Within a year, our piano teacher wanted to get my best friend to audition for a piano competition for high school students in Orlando, Florida. He chose to play Beethoven's Appassionata, 3rd movement. He practiced for months. He placed 12th.

Less than two years of hard work goes a long way. I could never forget that.

I'm done.

No comments:

Post a Comment