Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, “Moonlight,” Op. 27 No. 2

• Beethoven composed this sonata in 1801. He subtitled it, not “Moonlight,” but “quasi una fantastia” (Almost a Fantasia)¹
• Beethoven dedicated this work to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, one of his piano students, for whom he had romantic feelings.²
  • Beethoven referred to Guicciardi in a letter to his friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler.

“You can scarcely believe what an empty, sad life I have had for the last two years. My poor hearing haunted me everywhere like a ghost; and I avoided all human society. I was forced to seem a misanthrope, and yet I am far from being one. This change has been brought about by a dear charming girl who loves me and whom I love … and for the first time I feel that marriage might bring me happiness. Unfortunately she is not of my class.”

Beethoven to Wegeler, 1801

• Guicciardi was 16 when Beethoven wrote this letter. in 1803 she married a nobleman who was much closer to her in age.
  • Apparently her name was actually Julie and we only know her as Giulietta because the dedication of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata was originally printed in Italian.
• The “Moonlight” nickname was coined by the poet Ludwig Rellstab. In 1832, Rellstab wrote that the first movement of the sonata was reminiscent of moonlight on Lake Lucerne.³

1. Douglas Johnson et al, “Beethoven, Ludwig van,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), accessed February 10, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040026.
2. Ibid.
3.  “Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata,” The British Library, accessed February 10, 2021, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/beethoven-moonlight-sonata#.