One could see and hear the composer’s angst in this piano piece. It is a piece that captures his anguishes with his health, is deafness, his thoughts of suicide and many other things that plague his life at this time. The Moonlight Sonata is perhaps the most moving and intriguing of all of his piano works. It was written around 1810 in the middle period of his compositional escapades. It is in a painful C sharp minor. It starts off with the slow wondering tonality that could bring one to their knees.
The second movement has this C# major-centered tonality followed by an A-flat-centered tonality that picks excepting speed as time goes on. In contrast to the first moment, the second movement has a bouncy texture and rhythm. It seems to suggest a happier tone, a more joyous tone as if sorrow is over. It is pretty peculiar that Beethoven would start the second movement and the parallel major instead of the related major like in most sonata-form movements. It's a different change of pace. This might so just changes in mood that Beethoven had from time to time. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like he had depression that fluctuated. One can read in history in his letters to someone he couldn't have that he expressed a great deal of depression and sadness. Even from his childhood on up, he had times at the piano where he would just cry.
The third movement which I'd like to call the Presto movement, seems to be all his angst gushing out all at once. It's gushing out with the ferocious speed of a running cheetah. It's definitely quite the challenge for the advanced pianist. If you want something to warm your fingers up, this is the challenge for you. I can't help but think that he's angry in this last movement and he is putting all the accents where they need to be to accurately showcase his anger. This is written right at the time that he became fully deaf and he was dealing with that. This is why we composers have music in our lives. Studies have been shown to conclude that music can heal a broken heart, can heal the broken mind, can heal of drunkenness, can heal of doubt—anything. This is why composers are composers because the music helps us communicate feelings that cannot be expressed in words. Feelings are way more than words. They're more likely to be accessed and expressed through sound and in sound. The music that we hear from Beethoven in this piece captures a portrait of a very difficult time in his life.
