About six months after Beethoven composed the piano work he called “Das Lebewohl” (Day 216), he began the two other movements that formed his Piano Sonata No. 26. By this time, an armistice between Austria and France had been signed and the countries were again at peace.
Continuing with the titling of the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 26 as “Das Lebewohl” (“Farewell”), Beethoven formed a complete cycle by calling the second movement “Die Abwesenheit” (“Absence”) and the third movement “Das Wiedersehn” (“Reunion”).
It’s commonly believed that the three movements of the Piano Sonata No. 26 (Opus 81a) reflect Beethoven’s feelings about the Archduke Rudolph’s departure from Vienna, his sadness at the Archduke’s absence, and his happiness on the Archduke’s return.
In a 2010 article “‘Lebe wohl tönt überall’ and a ‘Reunion after So Much Sorrow’: Beethoven’s Op. 81a and the Journeys of 1809” in “The Musical Quarterly,” (jstor.com/stable/41060777) music theorist L. Poundie Burstein contests the common interpretation.
In a fascinating demythification, Professor Burstein demonstrates that Beethoven and the Archduke Rudolph were not close friends, that Beethoven didn’t like teaching composition to the Archduke, and that their relationship was mostly that of patron and grateful recipient. Moreover, Beethoven began composing the second and third movements of the Piano Sonata No. 26 several months before Archduke Rudolph actually returned to Vienna — when it was not even certain that he would be back.
It makes more sense for the Piano Sonata No. 26 to be interpreted as reflecting Beethoven’s reactions to the war with France: the 1st movement suggesting the “excitement and joy, as well as anxiety and apprehension” of soldiers going off to battle, the 2nd movement “at least partly inspired by the profound misery that came in the wake of the devastating occupation and battles that had occurred so recently” and the 3rd movement “in part inspired by the joyous relief that accompanied the recent end of the conflict.”
When the Piano Sonata No. 26 appeared in print, the publisher insisted on giving it a French title: “Les Adieux,” and that’s the much more common nickname. “Why, pray?” Beethoven wrote to his publisher, “For ‘Lebewohl’ means something quite different from ‘Les Adieux’. The first is said in a warm-hearted manner to one person, the other to a whole assembly, to entire towns.”
#Beethoven250 Day 232
Piano Sonata No. 26 “Les Adieux” in E♭ Major (Opus 81a), 1809
The great András Schiff performing in a studio in Tokyo.
After an Adagio introduction with the famous “Le-be-wohl” horn call, the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 26 becomes jaunty, perhaps suggesting the hustle-bustle of a departure, tinged with several conflicting emotions.
In the liner notes to her Hyperion CD of the Piano Sonata No. 26, Angela Hewitt writes of the end of the first movement, “there’s nothing more to do other than to observe the stagecoach disappearing into the distance, and to return inside, slamming shut the door.”
The forlorn opening of the slow movement of the Piano Sonata No. 26 would not be inappropriate in a movie scene accompanying the solemn procession of dispirited and beleaguered forces retreating from the battlefield carrying the dead and wounded.
The attacca transition from the 2nd movement to the 3rd in the Piano Sonata No. 26 occurs first in a sudden burst of pleasure — “like a happy puppy, joyously jumping all over his master,” Angela Hewitt writes — before settling into a multitude expressions of happiness.
After the Piano Sonata No. 26, Beethoven would not compose another piano sonata for five years.