Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat major, Op. 22, composed in 1800.
Prominent musicologist Donald Francis Tovey has called this work the crowning achievement and culmination of Beethoven's early "grand" piano sonatas. (The "grand" modifier was applied by Beethoven to sonatas with four movements instead of three). The sonatas after this one find Beethoven experimenting more with form and concept.
The sonata has four movements:
A typical per...
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Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat major, Op. 22, composed in 1800.
Prominent musicologist Donald Francis Tovey has called this work the crowning achievement and culmination of Beethoven's early "grand" piano sonatas. (The "grand" modifier was applied by Beethoven to sonatas with four movements instead of three). The sonatas after this one find Beethoven experimenting more with form and concept.
The sonata has four movements:
A typical performance lasts 23 minutes.
The first movement is in typical sonata form. The exposition starts in the tonic key and transitions into the dominant key as the second theme begins. The development plays around with the closing measures of the exposition before making the right hand play arpeggios as the bass line slowly descends chromatically. The theme of the closing octaves from the exposition comes back again in the bass, leading into a chromatic scale resolving in an FMm7 chord (dominant function of the sonata), which sets up the...
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