Piano Sonata No. 17 (Beethoven)

The British music scholar Donald Francis Tovey says in A Companion to Beethoven's Pianoforte Sonatas:[2] "With all the tragic power of its first movement the D minor Sonata is, like Prospero, almost as far beyond tragedy as it is beyond mere foul weather.

It will do you no harm to think of Miranda at bars 31–38 of the slow movement... but people who want to identify Ariel and Caliban and the castaways, good and villainous, may as well confine their attention to the exploits of Scarlet Pimpernel when the Eroica or the C minor Symphony is being played.

The development begins with rolled, long chords, quickly ending to the tremolo theme of the exposition.

The recapitulation, which is preceded by an extensive cadenza-like passage of sixteenth notes for the right hand, is followed by another transition and then another statement of the primary theme.

The refrain undergoes phrase expansion to build tension for the climax of the movement at measure 381, a fortissimo falling chromatic scale.

[citation needed] In the spring of 1802, Beethoven followed the advice of his physician, Johann Adam Schmidt, and left Vienna for rural Heiligenstadt.

The subtitle “Tempest,” may also have occurred due to extensive similarities between Beethoven’s relationship with his brother Carl and that between Prospero and Antonio.