- Beethoven wrote this piano sonata in 1814. Beethoven has been taking a break from the genre; this was the first piano sonata he’d written in four years.
- This sonata was published in Vienna in 1815, and dedicated to Beethoven’s close friend, Count Moritz von Lichnowsky.
- Lichnowsky (not to be confused with his elder brother Karl, also a patron of Beethoven) was also the dedicatee of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Variations, Op. 35. Beethoven dedicated the two Rondos, Op. 51, to Lichnowsky’s wife, Countess Henriette Lichnowsky. The couple would go on to be supporters of Frederic Chopin as well.
- Along with Beethoven’s subsequent late piano sonatas, Op. 90 is among Beethoven’s works which most look forward to the Romantic style, rather than back to the Viennese Classicism.1
Sources
- Douglas Johnson et al, “Beethoven, Ludwig van,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), accessed August 11, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040026.
Cut IDs
21998 40099