Recap: Westminster Wednesdays workshop series explores Beethoven's ‘Moonlight’ Sonata

JAY CARTER: Professor of voice here at Westminster Choir College and I wanted to take a moment and welcome you to the first of this year's Westminster Wednesdays. I'm pleased that you could all join us, so welcome from me.

I want to call your attention to the fact that the Westminster Wednesdays seminar series, there will be several offerings offered on a monthly basis, and there’s a website that will be posted in the chat in a moment or two that will direct your attention to the rest of those. 

The next one is on Wednesday, December 15th and it’s about belting for beginners, and I believe it is Dr. Sean McArthur that’s leading that particular seminar, and I hope you’ll be able to join us for that as well. 

Also, I would call your attention to a wide number of virtual offerings if you've not been able to watch concerts in person or either here in New Jersey but we have a number of things that have recently posted, the Durufle Requiem from a few weeks ago, as last weeks chapel choir and Schola Cantorum concert has also just posted, so I hope if you weren’t able to attend live or you’re living somewhere else in the world or in the country that you’ll be able to log on and watch those at your leisure. They’re beautiful performances and it’s wonderful to be on the other side of COVID and at least be able to make music together live.

Let me introduce our guest for this evening, professor James Goldsworthy. In his 23 years of service to the community here at Westminster Choir College, in Rider University, professor Goldsworthy has served as an associate dean, the chair of three different departments, as the coordinator of the piano secondary, if you’re a Westminster alumnus, you’ve been through that arduous process, and also as a member of university-wide and Westminster specific community committees. 

He was the recipient of a New Jersey Educational Opportunity Fund Champion Award, and as an avid lifelong student of the art of music, in 2021 we honored professor Goldsworthy with a distinguished teaching award.

In addition to his service here at Westminster and Rider University, he has also taught at Goshen College, Stanford University and the University of St. Thomas. During residencies in Vienna, one of which was under the auspices of a Fulbright grant, Dr. Goldsworthy studied late 18th and 19th-century fortepiano construction, and did research in pianoforte instruction of the same time period, as well as coaching voice students at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst.

His work as a collaborative accompanist is exceptional and his recital with Eli mely Emeritus, professor at Westminster of Schubert's interest in the fall of 2019, was my first introduction to his exceptional and gravitas imbued work.

We're fortunate to have someone with such remarkable skill on our faculty, as well as a passion for ongoing and learning and exploration as a part of our community, here, welcome Dr. Goldsworthy, I'll turn it over to you.

JAMES GOLDWORTHY: Thank you very much Jamie I really appreciate it. Hi everybody, even though I don't see you, but I'll imagine that all of those cinder blocks behind Jay are pictures of you. 

So it's great to be with you and I guess my usual style is, and there's nothing like having an experienced Westminster with me talking about me having Westminster experiences of learning because I have to say my great journey with Westminster has been one of learning and growing, and I thank each and every one of you that have contributed to that for me.

So I guess what I'm gonna do tonight is just give you another one of my news flashes on what I've been looking at in terms of Beethoven's first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. A title that he did not put on the sonata but that's okay, it's known that way. 

What's exciting about this for me is that I decided, I don't know i guess it was like it was before I came to Westminster, so it was about almost 30 years ago, I decided I want to figure out why is it that people cannot keep their ears off of these certain pieces, or in the case of being a piano teacher why can they not keep their paws off of these kinds of pieces, and of course probably the piece that people cannot keep their ears off of, or their paws off of, that is a piano work, is the first movement of the moonlight sonata.

What's extraordinary about the moonlight sonata is that Beethoven is actually targeting that there's something special going on, because it is paired with another sonata. There are two sonatas that he calls Sonatas Quasi Una Fantasia sonatas, that are like a fantasy, and so what I believe is happening is that Beethoven is actually experimenting and lo and behold since he's writing these in 1801, I think he's excited about the change of century and making a decision, “I'm going to do something novel”.

There's also a chance because his deafness is so pronounced at this point, he may be hearing things internally, more than he's hearing things externally, and so his imagination is becoming a real font of possibilities in composition, and possibilities in terms of new explorations for him.

All right so with that being said, let's talk about some of the things that might be going on, and here's my plan. I think I'll talk about things; I'll show you some of the ideas that I've been wrestling with lately, and then what I'll do is I'll sort of go through the movement, and play it, and then talk about things as we go through the movement.

Jay said that he was going to land the scores in your chat box or something like that so, hopefully, you'll be able to follow along. If not, I'll do some play-by-play action for it, and then at the very end, I think what I'll do is I'll just play it for you, so we can just hear the wonders of this movement play out okay.

So I have the feeling that music is just motion, and motion I feel is manifested in two different ways, and that is through time in the human experience of time duration or how time passes of course. Physicists like to say that time doesn't exist, which is kind of a depressing thing to hear for a musician, but let's take for tonight that time exists enough that we can talk about Beethoven exploring how humans might experience time as it relates to music, and then the other aspect of motion that is music, is vibration and that would be pitch and it would be harmony, and so I'll talk about both of these things and talk about some of the new discoveries, that I've been making about this piece and let's see if we hear new things in it together.

The first thing that's interesting about the piece is the fact that Beethoven writes this in cut time. He writes it in 2-2 meter, at least that's what it is in the Henley edition. Let me see, it's not in the Shermer edition and it's not, I don't believe in the Shanker edition, which is the Dover edition, but in the Henley edition, it's in cut time.

I have the feeling that the experience of the piece is helped by feeling it in cut time, and I feel that cut time is valuable for another reason that I'll get to in a little bit. All right so keep in mind the cut time idea which means that the music is in 2-2 as opposed to 4-4. Each measure is filled with triplet eighth notes, well if you fill the measure with triplet eighth notes you have 12 eighth notes in the measure. I think Beethoven is interested in 12 because 12 is not only two times three times two, or three times two times two, or something like that, but it's also four times three. So Beethoven is able to explore I feel, not just the worlds of two and the worlds of three, as they might interact with each other, but I think he's also playing around with the world of four and the world of three against each other, which is very much involved when he has a dotted eighth 16th against a triplet.

Now what's interesting about a triplet against a dotted eighth 16th is that if you're going to line those up exactly, if you want to really get them exactly in a groove where they work, and you know exactly where the 16th note occurs in relationship to the dotted eighth and where that occurs in relationship to the triplet. You've got to divide the beat into 12 units, and so those 12 units I'll show you the picture that I made, actually here's the picture of the dotted 8th and the 16th, and then there are the triplets. So if you're going to actually figure out how those two things work with each other, you then need to divide that beat into 12 units, so that you can exactly find the increment where they land.

Not to disappoint you, but when I was in Vienna and doing research on piano instruction that was occurring at the turn of the century, namely from the 1700’s to the 1800’s, I found a book from 1802 that actually had a picture in the glossary of a dotted eighth 16 and a triplet underneath it. I almost came unglued because the thing in performance practice is a great camp, two camps of argument that it must be rendered exactly, or just put the 16th note with a third of the triplet. In other words, sort of rhythmus approximatus.

Well, what was so great in seeing that instruction book is the translation of the German that followed it, in terms of the definition of what was going on, in that way, if you can do it, do it, if you can't, don't, and I love that because it was a reflection of the whole dichotomy of Kenner or Leaphober. The person who is in the know about music and the person who is a love haver, the person who is an amateur, and so it gives a reflection, a sociological reflection of the late 18th century of the middle class suddenly having access to music, which was not accessible to them because it was only in the court or in the church among those who were learned. So the whole notion that you could do those dotted eighths 16ths with the triplet, if you really were not able to manage the delicacy of the intricate time distribution that is related to the two of them, so be it.

I don't think Beethoven would have maybe approved, because, the fact that he has 12 in terms of divisions that are going on in the measure here, was an opportunity to have the 12 in a slightly larger format, and 12 in a slightly smaller format in terms of a B. 

Another way in which I think 12 occurs is just at the very end where Beethoven ends the piece with six pitches at the same time, and six pitches at the same time. Who knows, it may be an accident, but these are the kinds of accidents that get me excited. Right, nothing like lining up six pitches six pitches that happen twice and you've got 12 there you have 12 triplet ace that are going through a measure and you have the lineup of the 12 that organizes the dotted 16th against the triplet.

Ok, enough of that, other than I promised you I would talk about the cut time all right, I think that the cut time is important because in the piece you will find that Beethoven is very interested in two quarter note units at the end of a measure. He'll have something like this, this is in measure 13. 

Well if you have two quarter notes at the end of a measure, which again he does in measure 22, this is a very famous figure that occurs in music that he inherits from the Baroque cut time, two time notes on the second half of the measure that are leaning or pushing you toward the next measure, is like a cell of a Gavotte.

Mozart is famous for starting off a number of his last movements, this happens in symphonies, it happens in his chamber music, it happens in his piano sonatas, it happens in his violin and piano sonatas, he'll start the last movement with what appears to be a Gavotte it's in cut time. It has a two-quarter note pickup, and then after a little while in the movement, he will overlay triplets.

Well, if you dance a Gavotte the way a Gavotte is danced, and you actually put triplets on it, you actually get a Gavotte that turns into a jig. Who said that there were not sweets in Vienna, in the symphonies and in the chamber music and in the piano sonatas, that are happening after all of these Baroque dances, have made a huge impression on people throughout the Baroque period.

So that is another way in which Beethoven may be fantasizing, he may be fantasizing on how a Gavotte is overlaid with these triplets, but of course, he's doing it at an adagio sostenuto tempo. So this is a slower jig, but the jig was famous for being slow or fast. In fact the slowest of jigs was called allure, or it was an outgrowth of the pastoral music of the Baroque period, and it was the Siciliano that was influencing. So he may be just starting with the overlay of the triplets first and then later introducing the Gavotte stuff.

What a guy. It's amazing, amazing how he could have all of these ideas that he's inherited from the past, and reconstituting them, and my feeling is that because of that hearing of his, his imagination could be much more ripe for fantastic ways in which things could be combined, that are inherited from the past. 

Of course, I'll say all the time in my classes, that any great composer is a traditional innovator or an innovative traditionalist. So in this case Beethoven is probably using those things that he's inherited, but he's doing it in a new way.

Ok, I want to quickly show you about how pitch is working in this piece because it's very wild. The piece is in C sharp minor, of the piece before this is in E flat major. Talk about chromaticism, the sonata before this is E flat major, this one's in C sharp minor. What has always bewildered me, and i thought wow what the heck is going on, here is the fact that Beethoven actually points to C major in the context of this piece and he does it in measure 12, going, no sorry measure 11 going into 12, and then he's out of it.

What is C major doing in a piece that's in C sharp minor? Well, I decided this time as I was getting ready for us being together, I'm going to do this from the inside out. What does Beethoven do when he's in C major? Well when he's in C major in his opus two, number three sonata he starts with, he starts with C major but the pitch that's shining up above it is E. 

What does he do in the second movement? He writes the second movement in E major. You go to opus 53 the Waldstein sonata, the second key area of the sonata which is supposed to be G major by the way, so none of this in C major the second key area is supposed to be G major, the second key area is E major.

Well thank god it's a chorale and there's a trip to church, because you can pray about the fact that you're in the wrong key, but it's in E major. The last of the sonatas opus 111, the last of the sonatas is in two keys. The first movement is in C minor the second movement is in C major, but that last sonata is in a set of three sonatas, E major, A flat major, C minor, C major.

What happens is Beethoven with a single pitch E, shining forth on the top of the first chord of opus two number three, translates into the key of the second movement, evolves over time in opus 53 the Waldstein sonata, as the second key area in the context of the first movement, evolves into the key of an entire sonata that is in the trio of opus 109 110 111.

This is Beethoven, what he does in pitch, he does in harmony, what he does in harmony, he does in key, what he does in key, he does in an entire work. It's really quite exciting how E major and C major become kissing cousins, well how do they become kissing cousins? This is how it works all right, the thing about harmonic progression, or how chords go from one to the other, is about gravity.

Think of a piece just going from the beginning to the end, it's sort of like a bunch of dominoes, but of course how do those dominoes go, gravity. So you have this harmony that goes to this harmony, that goes to this harmony, that goes to this harmony, this goes to this harmony, goes to this harmony, that's a domino effect.

What's interesting me these days is the horizontal in music, but also the vertical in music, also with harmony there's the chance that you have a tonal center which is not unlike maybe let's say a planet. You can take a rocket ship away from that planet to somewhere very distant, and then find your way back, I guess this is from my youth when I used to love to watch all of those rockets take off, and then see the astronauts come back to earth with the big parachute on the space capsule, so away, and then back, again, this is how gravity works. 

Here is an example in a major key of how you have a home, you can get there by way of five which is a fifth away. You get to five by way of two which is a fifth away from that, you can get to two by means of six which is a fifth away from that, and you can get to six by way of three which is a fifth away from that.

I did it in a minor key since we're in a minor key, whoops that's not it, wrong card here it is one, five, two, four, i'm sorry six, I'm looking at it backwards, six, three. You need to know that in the late 18th century the theorists that were describing how composition worked talked about the five of six. The five of six as being the point of furthest remove. Now if that's the case and the five of six is the point of furthest remove, if you use the harmonies of a given key, what if you use the five of three, which now is even farther out. What if you use the two of three, what if you use the six of three, and what if you start using the things that create, it's like another story of going farther out in terms of the harmony.

This is Beethoven reaching out, it's almost like he's involved in space exploration. This explains C major, C major is the six of E minor, and E minor is the parallel minor of E major, and E major is the three of C sharp minor.

I feel like I finally understood what Beethoven is doing. So one, five, two, six, three. Alright, those are those harmonies that move out by fifth. Right root movement by fifth is something that happens around sixteen hundred when the major minor tonal system is established. Alright, the C major is the six of E minor, which is the parallel minor of E major, which is the five of six. That point and furthest remove, E major is the five of six of C sharp minor. It's like the point of furthest remove, pointed furthest remove, of the point of furthest remove with an end harmonicism that occurs.

Okay, I see that we're getting close to me having to stop this because it's fine I've presented these ideas to you so you can have these ideas. I'm going to now play the piece for you and then if you have any questions let me have it. I want to tell you just a couple of other things that are important to keep in mind in the territory of two, remember, one, five, two. Five is in the realm of tea, two is in the realm of far me so is four, so is the Neapolitan, so are the augmented sixth chords. These are all dominant prefixes, and they're happening in the piece.

Alright, boy, I could go on for a long time about this piece but I think the best thing is for me to play it, let me play it, if you have any questions we can just talk about it. I want to give enough time for us to talk about it, hopefully, this was understandable.

Okay here it goes. I'm gonna play it for you, get the last page out.

[Q+A]

JAY CARTER: First thank you so much for taking us through the piece and for showing us those things both from your standpoint as a performer, but also as somebody who's being a tour guide and showing us the things that help us feel the way that we do when we listen to those pieces, and move us a particular way to understanding how that factor is playing with us I suppose.

JAMES GOLDSWORTH: My honor and pleasure.

JAY CARTER: It was beautiful work and I'm the better for having had a chance to listen to it and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much Jim, for the rest of you that joined us this evening, thank you so much for joining us it's good to let you know of the good work that we are about here at Westminster and at Rider University and we are so excited for the fact that life is moving ahead and we're able to do a live performance, but we're also able to take advantage of our fluency and new technologies to make sure that our good work is made available to people who aren't just happening to be in central New Jersey but can join us from all over the country.

Again in kind of closure, I would remind you that on the university website you'll be able to find information about the other upcoming Westminster Wednesdays. The next one being on Wednesday, December 15th talking about belting for beginners, and there are also a number of offerings that are virtual recordings of concerts, a number of which have come from the last couple of weeks of live performance as we all begin to open up again and find our way forward.