Sonata in C minor, Op. 13 'Pathétique': I. Grave; Allegro di molto e con brio, by Beethoven
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How to learn Sonata in C minor, Op. 13 'Pathétique': I. Grave; Allegro di molto e con brio
- Hear it through at Slow (135 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 4 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in C minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: Cm, Fm7♭5, Cdim7 and B♭7. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 135 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (203 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 5 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
The first movement of the sonata that made the young Beethoven famous, published in 1799 as the Grande sonate pathétique and dedicated to his patron Prince Lichnowsky. It opens with a slow, heavy Grave of crashing chords and silences, then breaks into a stormy Allegro over a rumbling left hand, and the slow opening returns twice to interrupt it.
How to play it
Count the Grave in small notes, because its dotted rhythms and fast runs only sound dramatic when they are exact. In the Allegro the left hand's tremolo octaves are a wrist movement, not a finger one, so keep the wrist loose and let the rumble stay quieter than the tune.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #299, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Beethoven sheet music
Who Beethoven was
German composer who bridged the Classical and Romantic eras and, in doing so, changed what a composer was even allowed to be: not a court employee but an artist answerable to no one. He began losing his hearing in his twenties, confessed his despair in a private letter never sent in his lifetime, then kept composing for another quarter century, eventually conducting a premiere he could not hear at all, needing to be turned around to see the audience applauding behind him. His nine symphonies, thirty-two piano sonatas, and chamber works move from Classical poise to a defiant, personal intensity no one had written before. He remains, by most measures, the most performed composer on any concert…
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including C minor.