Whenever people asked Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) what his music "meant," the composer would generally respond with something rather cryptic. That was the case with the D minor Sonata. Beethoven's advice to the inquirer was to "read Shakespeare's Tempest." Now, no parallel between the Shakespeare play and the Beethoven sonata really exists -- at least none that anyone has discovered. Nonetheless, Donald Tovey has stated that "the tragic power" of the first movement is, "like Prospero, almost as far beyond tragedy as it is beyond mere foul weather." Yet he warned against listening too closely for literal references in the sonata, like those who "confine their attention to the exploits of the Scarlet Pimpemel when the Eroica or the C minor Symphony is played."

The three sonatas of Opus 31 come from 1801-1802, which places them right at the end of his first master period, the period in which the Pathétique Sonata had been published (1799). The second sonata of Op. 31 is the D minor, consisting of three movements, all cast in sonata form. However, what Beethoven does with each movement is quite individual. The first movement opens with a slow-fast-slow-fast introductory passage that leads directly into the powerful exposition. Between the repeated exposition and the development section, appears a reminiscence of the slow introductory passage. Then, following the development, which focuses on the main theme, the slow-fast introductory passage returns -- but this time it is spun out in the style of an operatic recitative. The organic reappearance of this introductory material is a further exploration of an experiment Beethoven had set in motion in the Pathétique Sonata.

The meditative Adagio movement is an abbreviated sonata form (without development) in the major mode. Listeners will note the prominent use of a triplet octave figure that anticipates the rhythmic "motto" of the Fifth Symphony. Beethoven completes the "Tempest" Sonata with an Allegretto finale that we may call a moto perpetuo movement, for every beat and offbeat is filled from beginning to end. 

 Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) could be called a "master miniaturist," since most of his masterpieces are in a single movement. One of the main divisions of his work is the stylized dance, that is, music based on the rhythms and forms of popular ballroom or folk dances of the time. For Chopin, these were Central European waltzes, together with the mazurkas and polonaises of Poland, his native land.

Always, Chopin elevated and ennobled the source of his basic material. This was especially true of his polonaises. As annotator Paolo Petazzi puts it,

The ancient national dance here breathes a note of epic grandeur, heroic and chevaleresque in character, giving voice not to a rhetorical celebration but to a meditation on the national defeat, expressed in despairing, tragic accents.

The Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat is not only Chopin's final essay in polonaise writing, it is considered one of the chief masterpieces of his final creative period as well. Here, he sophisticates the form and gestures of the simple Polonaise, bringing to it the spontaneity of his own rhapsodic, improvisatory style. Petazzi comments that

Liszt himself was disoriented by the work, not so much by the richness and variety of ideas which are sometimes ballade-like in character, and by no means always typical of the polonaise, which is only occasionally recalled in a mood of poetic melancholy as by the actual audacity of the formal design. ... For the composer's contemporaries ... the bold harmony of this masterpiece proved daunting enough in itself.

 

 The daughter born to Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and wife Claude-Emma in 1905 was named for her mother, but she was always called "Chouchou" (pronounced "shoe-shoe"). Chouchou was unusually talented in music and took piano lessons from an early age. She had a British governess who played games with her, and the English titles in Debussy' s Children 's Corner are joking little allusions to her.

Unfortunately, Chouchou died of diphtheria in 1919 just a year after her father, but she was immortalized in the dedication of the Children 's Corner, written for her when she was less than four years old: "To my dearest Chouchou, with her father's tender apologies for what follows."

"Dr. Gradus ad Parnasum. " The parodistic reference in the title is to Clementi's studies, with which children were required to grapple. Debussy humoristically described the piece as "a kind of progressive, hygienic, gymnastic exercise, to be played every morning, fasting; beginning modere' and working up gradually to animé "

"Jimbo's Lullaby. " "Jimbo" was Chouchou's stuffed toy elephant. To put Jimbo to sleep, Chouchou must tell him bedtime stories and sing to him. Here she sings bits of the nursery song, "Do, do, l'enfant do." "Serenade for the Doll." With the soft pedal depressed throughout, the piano imitates the mandolin's serenade accompaniment. Wisps of melody weave in and out, and the middle section seems to pull back to an adult point of view.

"The Snow Is Dancing." The child watches the play of snowflakes on the window. Writer Frank Dawes comments that "Basically the piece is a kind of chopsticks toccata...."

"The Little Shepherd." Oscar Thompson describes this delicate piece as "a toy vignette, with a touch of the sylvan to companion the Noah's Ark figures - shepherd and sheep."

"Golliwogg's Cakewalk." Named for Chouchou's Negro doll, the final piece - with "rhythm on a rampage" (Thompson) -- reflects American ragtime, which was then beginning to be heard at English seaside resorts. Buried in the middle is a cryptic quotation from the opening of Wagner's Tristan and marked "avec une grande émotion." And so, the Children's Corner suite comes full circle through parody and cheerful humor.