"Wondrous Emanations of a Transcendently Transfigured Sublimity and Profundity": The Reception of Beethoven's Last Three Piano Sonatas in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Authors

• Nicholas S. Kennedy, University of SydneyFollow

Abstract

Ludwig van Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, Opp. 109, 110, and 111, have captured the imaginations of critics from the nineteenth century to the present. As “late” works penned towards the end of the composer’s life, these sonatas have often been read as infused with existential or transcendental meaning, frequently aligned with Beethoven’s own experiences. Reception studies have identified broader tropes of autobiographical explanation and poetic analogy as applied to these works by early critics; however, these studies frequently stop short of identifying more specific patterns in the images employed to describe the sonatas. Focusing on mainly German literature from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I explore in detail how different commentators treated the extramusical themes of Beethoven’s biography, death, reminiscences, and the supernatural in each movement from among these sonatas. Furthermore, I show that these critiques coalesced within a common hermeneutic through-line involving profound existential imagery. Specifically, the Sonata Op. 109 was understood as evoking a dream-world, threatened by the specter of mortality; Op. 110 as something akin to a near-death experience, resonating with Beethoven’s own illness and convalescence; and Op. 111 as enacting almighty struggle, death, and transcendence to Paradise. Treating form, narrative content, and the composer’s biography as inseparable and even interchangeable, these recurring metaphors particularize both the long-held transcendental essence of these works and the oft-cited fantastical elements of Romantic and post-Romantic criticism. They bring florid historical hermeneutics into dialogue with twentieth-century appraisals of “late style,” and the lofty terms in which Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas are still discussed today.

Recommended Citation

Kennedy, Nicholas S. (2026) ""Wondrous Emanations of a Transcendently Transfigured Sublimity and Profundity": The Reception of Beethoven's Last Three Piano Sonatas in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," The Beethoven Journal: Vol. 38, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55917/2771-3938.1026
Available at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/beethovenjournal/vol38/iss1/3