En mayo de 1820, Beethoven acordó componer tres piano sonatas para el editor berlinés Adolf Martin Schlesinger. Completó la primera, Op. 109, en otoño y aparentemente comenzó las otras dos, pero la enfermedad y el trabajo en la Missa Solemnis intervinieron. El autógrafo del Op. 110 está fechado el 25 de diciembre de 1821, pero la revisión continuó en enero de 1822.

Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas each present a world apart, a unique distillation and synthesis of formal and expressive devices. The first movement of Op. 110 opens softly and simply—though stopping on a mini-cadenza in the fourth bar is an early warning of the liberties to come, as are the movement heading (Moderato cantabile molto espressivo) and the marking “con amabilità.” Changes of texture and figuration are as important as harmony in marking the structural pillars of this rhapsodic movement.

The second movement is a scherzo in the manner of the composer’s late Bagatelles, a highly charged joke of meter-jarring accents, odd gaps, and explosive dynamic contrasts. Musicologist Martin Cooper found it included musical references to two popular songs, “Unsa Kätz häd Katzln ghab” (Our cat has had kittens) and “Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich” (I am draggletailed, you are draggletailed). The specific force of the allusions may not be felt, but their boisterous, comic character is clear.

Remarkable as these movements are, the extraordinary third movement dominates discussion of this sonata. Beethoven combined slow movement and finale into a single cathartic span, the principal elements of which are an arioso dolente (lamenting song) and a three-voice fugue. “In the context of the last three piano sonatas, it is both a Passion and a Pietà,” pianist Claudio Arrau said.

The finale begins with a recitative that modulates from the key of the scherzo (F minor/major) to A-flat minor for the arioso dolente, a tragic melody over a throbbing accompaniment that ends in dark exhaustion. The confident, propulsive fugue (in A-flat major) offers sharp contrast.

The fugue breaks off with a loud trill and fading arpeggios, and with a little semitone slip E-flat major becomes G minor and the arioso returns, marked “wearily, lamenting.” Setting this statement of the arioso a half step lower is a symbol of exhaustion, and the melody itself is now full of sighs and little gasps, as if the music itself were short of breath.

The fugue also returns, now in inversion and marked “little by little gaining new life” and modulating back to A-flat. Beethoven also effects a kind of textural modulation as the fugue sheds polyphony and grows in volume and speed, until the original theme (right side up) is hammered out in big chords over rapid left-hand figuration.

The effect of the fugal development and “new life” attained can be overwhelming. It is “an exertion of will to banish suffering,” according to composer Vincent d’Indy. Or for pianist Alfred Brendel: “In a last euphoric effort, its conclusion reaches out beyond homophonic emancipation, throwing off the chains of music itself.”

-John Henken