Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When did Beethoven write his first piano sonata?
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his 32 piano sonatas between 1795 and 1822. Although originally not intended to be a meaningful whole, as a set they compose one of the most important collections of works in the history of music.[1] Hans von Bülow called them "The New Testament" of the piano literature (Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier being "The Old Testament").[2]
Nevertheless, fugues did not take on a truly central role in Beethoven's work until his late period. The finale of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata contains a fugue, which was practically unperformed until the late 19th century, due to its tremendous technical difficulty and length. The last movement of his Cello Sonata, Op. 102 No. 2 is a fugue, and there are fugal passages in the last movements of his Piano Sonatas in A major, Op. 101 and A major Op. 110. According to Charles Rosen (1971, p. 503) "With the finale of 110, Beethoven re-conceived the significance of the most traditional elements of fugue writing."
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, composed in 1820, is the antepenultimate of his piano sonatas. In it, after the huge "Hammerklavier" Sonata, Op. 106, Beethoven returns to a smaller scale and a more intimate character. It is dedicated to Maximiliane Brentano, the daughter of Beethoven's long-standing friend Antonie Brentano, for whom Beethoven had already composed the short Piano Trio in B major WoO 39 in 1812. Musically, the work is characterised by a free and original approach to the traditional sonata form. Its focus is the third movement, a set of variations that interpret its theme in a wide variety of individual ways.
The Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, is the last of Ludwig van Beethoven's piano sonatas. Along with Beethoven's "33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli", Op. 120 (1823) and his two collections of bagatelles—Op. 119 (1822) and Op. 126 (1823)—this was one of Beethoven's last compositions for piano. The work was written between 1821 and 1822. Like other "late period" sonatas, it contains fugal elements. It was dedicated to his friend, pupil, and patron, Archduke Rudolf.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2, No. 3, is a sonata written for solo piano, composed in 1795. It is dedicated to Joseph Haydn and is often referred to as Beethoven's first virtuosic piano sonata. The three Op. 2 sonatas all contain four movements each, an unusual length which seems to show that Beethoven was aspiring towards composing a symphony. It is both the weightiest and longest of the three Op. 2 sonatas, lasting over 25 minutes, presenting many difficulties, including difficult trills, awkward hand movements, and forearm rotation. It is Beethoven's second longest piano sonata in his early period, only to Beethoven's Grand Sonata in E Major, Op. 7, published a year later.
Ludwig van Beethoven was familiar with fugal writing from childhood, as an important part of his training was playing from "The Well-Tempered Clavier". During his early career in Vienna, Beethoven attracted notice for his performance of these fugues. There are fugal sections in Beethoven's early piano sonatas, and fugal writing is to be found in the second and fourth movements of the "Eroica Symphony" (1805). Beethoven incorporated fugues in his sonatas, and reshaped the episode's purpose and compositional technique for later generations of composers. 
Like Mozart's, Beethoven's musical talent was recognized at a young age, and these three sonatas give an early glimpse of the composer's abilities, as well as his boldness. Beethoven was writing in a form usually attempted by older, more mature composers, as the sonata was a cornerstone of Classical piano literature.
The final movement is a "rondo". Out of not only his piano sonatas but all of his published works up to this point, this is the first time that Beethoven decides to write "ma non troppo". Some critics attribute the repeating bass line to a bagpipe, others to a dancing gigue. Beethoven employs various amusing, interesting and very adventurous episodes, all with different moods, rhythms, and harmonic texture. The coda, played a little faster than the allegro ("Più allegro"), can be termed as the only 'virtuoso' passage in the whole sonata.
One of his greatest and most technically challenging piano sonatas, the "Appassionata" was considered by Beethoven to be his most tempestuous piano sonata until the twenty-ninth piano sonata (known as the "Hammerklavier"). 1803 was the year Beethoven came to grips with the irreversibility of his progressively deteriorating hearing.
The sonata is structured in three movements:Cole Tutino, in his thesis notes that while written before Ries studied with Beethoven, the older composers influence clearly shows both in the piano writing and in the structure of the sonata which shows signs of being modeled on elements drawn from several of Beethoven's piano sonatas, most notably the Pathétique Sonata, Op. 13, published the same year that Ries composed this sonata. Tutino also notes that while in many ways the piano part is more technically challenging than the cello part, the work is nonetheless written as a true duo sonata.
The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 of Johannes Brahms was written in 1853 and published the following year. The sonata is unusually large, consisting of five movements, as opposed to the traditional three or four. When he wrote this piano sonata, the genre was seen by many to be past its heyday. Brahms, enamored of Beethoven, composed Piano Sonata No. 3 with a masterful combination of free Romantic spirit and strict classical architecture. As a further testament to Brahms' affinity for Beethoven, the Piano Sonata is infused with the instantly recognizable motive from Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 during the first, third, and fourth movements. Composed in Düsseldorf, it marks the end of his cycle of three sonatas, and was presented to Robert Schumann in November of that year; it was the last work that Brahms submitted to Schumann for commentary. Brahms was barely 20 years old at its composition. The piece is dedicated to Countess Ida von Hohenthal of Leipzig.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53, known as the , is one of the three most notable sonatas of his middle period (the other two being the "Appassionata", Op. 57, and "Les Adieux", Op. 81a). Completed in summer 1804 and surpassing Beethoven's previous piano sonatas in its scope, the "" is a key early work of Beethoven's "Heroic" decade (1803–1812) and set a standard for piano composition in the grand manner.
The first and fourth movements of the concerto pay tribute to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Frédéric Chopin. The first movement, for example, is a set of 32 variations inspired by the seven-note chord at measure 208 of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The number of variations itself is a nod to Beethoven, whose 32 Variations in C minor and 32 piano sonatas are among his most significant works. The movement's twenty-second variation additionally references the opening of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 26, "Les Adieux". Similarly, the fourth movement was inspired by an eleven-note theme from the final movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor.
After he wrote his first 15 sonatas (up to Op. 28), he wrote to Wenzel Krumpholz, "From now on, I'm going to take a new path." Beethoven's sonatas from this period are very different from his earlier ones. His experimentation in modifications to the common sonata form of Haydn and Mozart became more daring, as did the depth of expression. Most Romantic period sonatas were highly influenced by those of Beethoven. After 1804, Beethoven ceased publishing sonatas in sets and only composed them as a single opus. It is unclear why he did so.
Following Beethoven's death, a number of unpublished works were discovered amongst his papers including the Piano Trio, WoO. 38, the Piano Sonata, WoO. 51, the Rondino, WoO. 25 and this sonata for flute and keyboard. Alexander Thayer noted that when the sonata was discovered, the manuscript was not in Beethoven's handwriting, making attribution to the composer problematic. Keith Anderson, writing in the liner notes to the 2018 Naxos recording of the sonata comments that musicologist Willy Hess argued that Beethoven would not have retained the work in his papers unless he had some personal connection with the composition.
For the first time Beethoven used the German term "Hammerklavier" to refer to the piano (although it was the next of his sonatas, Op. 106, that became widely known as the "Hammerklavier" sonata).
Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28, is a piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven. The name Pastoral or Pastorale became known through A. Cranz publishing of Beethoven's work, but was first coined by a London publisher, Broderip & Wilkinson. While not as famous as its immediate predecessor, Piano Sonata No. 14, it is generally admired for its intricate technicality as well as for its beauty. The sonata takes roughly twenty-five minutes to play with its intended repeats.
The piece is one of Beethoven's most popular compositions for the piano, and it was a popular favorite even in his own day. Beethoven wrote the "Moonlight Sonata" in his early thirties, after he had finished with some commissioned work; there is no evidence that he was commissioned to write this sonata.
The main theme of Schubert's Impromptu in A major, Op. 142 No. 2 is strikingly similar to the theme in the first movement of Beethoven's sonata. The four-bar phrases that open these pieces are almost identical in most musical aspects: key, harmony, voicing, register, and basic as well as harmonic rhythm. Another less immediate connection exists with the main theme, also in A major, of the "Adagio" movement in Schubert's piano sonata in C minor, D. 958. Indeed, Schubert may have borrowed these themes from Beethoven, as he often did in his compositions.
When Beethoven composed these three piano quartets at age 15 the genre was rare. Two works by Mozart, Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor (1785) and Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat minor (1786), are the only significant contemporary contributions that are comparable. Beethoven modeled his piano quartets after a set of Mozart violin sonatas published in 1781, with Beethoven's C major work written in the same key and borrowing some thematic material from Mozart's Violin Sonata No. 17, K. 296. Apart from Beethoven's own arrangement of his Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments (Op. 16) for piano quartet, these three works are the only compositions he wrote for piano, violin, viola, and cello.
Beethoven conceived of the plan for his final three piano sonatas (Op. 109, 110 and 111) during the summer of 1820, while he worked on his "Missa Solemnis". Although the work was only seriously outlined by 1819, the famous first theme of the "allegro ed appassionato" was found in a draft book dating from 1801–1802, contemporary to his Second Symphony. Moreover, the study of these draft books implies that Beethoven initially had plans for a sonata in three movements, quite different from that which we know: it is only thereafter that the initial theme of the first movement became that of the String Quartet No. 13, and that what should have been used as the theme with the adagio—a slow melody in A—was abandoned. Only the motif planned for the third movement, the famous theme mentioned above, was preserved to become that of the first movement. The "Arietta", too, offers a considerable amount of research on its themes; the drafts found for this movement seem to indicate that as the second movement took form, Beethoven gave up the idea of a third movement, the sonata finally appearing to him as ideal.
Chopin greatly admired this sonata. In two of his works, the second piano sonata and the Revolutionary Étude, he alluded to the opening and ending of the sonata's first movement, respectively (compare the opening bars of the two sonatas, and bars 77–81 of Chopin's Étude with bars 150–152 in the first movement of Beethoven's sonata).
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 4, in E major, Op. 7, sometimes nicknamed the Grand Sonata, is dedicated to his student Babette, the Countess Keglevics. This piano sonata was composed in Bratislava, in 1796, in November, during his visit of Keglevich Palace in Bratislava. Beethoven named it "Great Sonata", because it was published alone, which was unusual for the time.
Along with the "Hammerklavier Sonata", it is one of the longest piano sonatas of Beethoven. A typical performance lasts about 28 minutes.
The Piano Sonata No. 20 was possibly written around the time Beethoven composed the Third and Fourth sonatas, but because it was published in Vienna in 1805, nearly a decade after it was actually written, it was assigned then-current opus and sonata numbers, which classified it alongside works from the composer's middle period. Very similar circumstances caused Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 to appear as his second, even though it predated the first.
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert's piano sonatas, Beethoven's piano concertos (with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and Otto Klemperer), and Mozart's piano concertos (conducting the English Chamber Orchestra from the piano). Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words", and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's "Trout Quintet" (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta).
In 1802, he dedicated to her (as "Giulietta Guicciardi") the Piano Sonata No. 14, which although originally titled "Sonata quasi una Fantasia" (like its companion piece) subsequently became known by the popular nickname "Moonlight Sonata". This dedication was not Beethoven's original intention, and he did not have Guicciardi in mind when writing the "Moonlight" Sonata. Thayer, in his "Life of Beethoven", states that the work Beethoven originally intended to dedicate to Guicciardi was the Rondo in G, Op. 51 No. 2, but this had to be dedicated to Countess Lichnowsky. So he cast around at the last moment for a piece to dedicate to Guicciardi.