Piano Sonata No. 9 (Beethoven)

1, is an early-period work by Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to Baroness Josefa von Braun, one of his patrons at that time.

Anton Schindler recalled that Beethoven would play the E-minor section furiously, before pausing at length on the E-major chord and giving a calmer account of the Maggiore.

Not withstanding its seeming simplicity, this sonata introduces the "Sturm und Drang" character that became so commonly identified with Beethoven.

The pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen considers both of the Opus 14 sonatas to be "considerably more modest than their predecessors", "destined for use in the home" and with "few technical difficulties".

According to Donald Francis Tovey, the instrumentation of this sonata for string quartet is “one of the most interesting documents in the history of Beethoven’s art… There is hardly a bar of the quartet-version that does not shed some light on the nature of the pianoforte, of quartet-writing and of the general structure of music… he takes one of his smallest sonatas and shows [...] that hardly a bar of pianoforte music can be turned into good quartet-writing without quantities of new material besides drastic transformation of the old.”[3] Tovey singles out the opening of the Allegretto second movement as an example not only of what Beethoven adds, but also of what he leaves out in re-imagining the piano sound for strings:“Beethoven shows his profoundest insight in not allowing the four stringed instruments to reproduce the thick pianoforte chords, though this would be possible with quite easy double stops.”[4]