Beethoven: Sonata No. 25 in G major, Op. 79 | Boris Giltburg | Beethoven 32 project

The genesis of this sonata is closely tied with that of Sonata No. 24, as both were commissioned by Muzio Clementi, an Italian-born, London-based pianist, composer and publisher. The contract for those and other works was signed on 20 April 1807, with Beethoven agreeing to compose the two sonatas ‘in an unspecified time and at his leisure’. This finally happened in the second half of 1809, and both sonatas were published by Clementi in mid-1810. The G major sonata, Op. 79, is a work light both in spirit and in technical difficulty, recognised as such by Beethoven, who asked the German publisher to call it ‘Sonata facile’ (‘Easy Sonata’) or ‘Sonatine’. The first movement (0:11) is a lively dance, titled alla Tedesca (‘in the style of a German dance’), which could refer to any number of quick dances in triple time, of which the Deutscher Tanz, Ländler and waltz were the chief types at the time. Its origin as a contradance is revealed in the coda, where its theme finally assumes the symmetric