The analysis of musical narrativity has important purposes in performance studies of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and the narrative approach to analyzing Beethoven’s piano sonatas shows a compelling connection between music and literature. The purpose of this practice-led research is to discuss musical narrativity in Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata. Specifically, the current performance study analyzes four musical actors penetrating in Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata and discusses the assimilation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s literature, Wilhelm Meister, Faust, The Sorrows of Young Wether, and his concepts of desire, compromise, and sublimation into interpreting Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata from the perspective of musical actors. The result of this study is to subsequently discuss the unique design and interpret the storytelling characteristic and musical plots in Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata from the perspective of musical narrativity through various intonations, dynamics, and musical expression. The Waldstein sonata manifests Beethoven’s narrative compositional strategy and depicts the musical realization of the literary convention of Goethe’s literacy concepts. The current study realizes the goal of studying and interpreting Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata in a new scope of view. Through the analysis of musical narrativity, pianists will have an additional perspective upon which to base their interpretive performance.
Bach, C. P. E. (1778/1985). Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (W. J. Mitchell, Trans.). London: Eulenburg Books. (Original work published in 1778).
Cassirer, E. (1925). Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Mythical Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Davies, S. (1994). Musical Meaning and Expression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Geck, M. (1976). Rowohlt Bildmonographien: Beethoven. Berlin: Rowohlt Raschenbuch Verlag GmbH.
Grabócz, M. (2009). Musique, narrativité, signification. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Grabócz, M. (2016). An Introduction to Theories and Practice of Musical Signification and Narratology. Musical Analysis, 4, 325-340.
Greenberg. R. (2005). Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Course Guidebook. Virginia: The Great Course.
Hepokoski, J. & Warren, D. (2006). Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata.
Rosen, C. (1973). The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. London: Faber and Faber.
Rosen, C. (2002). Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion. Yale University Press.
Tarasti, E. (1991). Beethoven’s Waldstein and the Generative Course. Indiana Theory Review, 12, 99-140.
Tovey, D. F. (1931). A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas. London: The Associate Board of the Royal Schools of Music.
