🌘Piano Sonata No. 14, Moonlight

Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2, 1801. Three movements, about a quarter of an hour.

On repeat on 2025-07-15-Tuesday and for most of the fortnight around it. Thirty-odd degrees, the windows open, Jonas at the studio until late. I was not sad. I was flat, which is the word I used in 🕯️ The flat weeks, and this was the only music that did not ask me to be anything else.

Mostly the first movement, the slow one. A triplet in the right hand that never stops, a bass that moves once a bar, and a tune made of almost one note. It does not develop so much as continue. That month I found that restful.

• Beethoven did not call it Moonlight. He called it a sonata in the manner of a fantasy. The nickname came from a critic, years after his death, who thought of moonlight on a lake.
• The second movement is short and nearly cheerful. I skipped it every time.
• The third is a storm, and I only let it play through twice in the whole of July.

Looking back

Written on the last day of August, from Slovenia.

I think I used the first movement as a way of not finishing things. It ends quietly and can be started again without anyone noticing, me included. The sonata as written does something else: it goes from stillness, through a small dance, to the fastest and angriest music in it. The order is the point, and I spent a month refusing the second and third parts.

Not a lesson. A thing I noticed about how I listened.