A brilliant aspect of this passage is its double element of surprise that borders on ironic. Since the entire second group of the exposition is in G major -- a third below the tonic -- the B-flat of the first ending, foreign to the key of G major, strikes with the force of being abruptly awoken from a dream. The second time, however, it is the B natural that astonishes, despite belonging to G major and having been precisely expected at this point in the initial exposition. By undercutting first the expected B natural with B-flat, and later this very B-flat with B natural, Beethoven vehemently announces an opposition which will assume symbolic significance throughout the course of the entire sonata.

In the transition to the second theme group of the recapitulation, the main theme enters suddenly in B minor:

Ex. 2: Op. 106 (i), mm. 263-65

Here the movement's opening theme itself, and with it its elements of the heroic, are threatened not only by the invasion of the minor mode-and hence its association with the tragic-but also by the already emphasized struggle between B-flat and B natural. In addition, this latter opposition now appears at the level of the key (B-flat major vs. B minor) and not merely at the pitch level, thus incurring higher-level significance in the dramatic discourse.

Note that in this example the composer respells the D-flat of m. 263 as C-sharp, thus changing its function to part of the dominant of B minor. Interestingly, the dominant's defining pitch of A-sharp is missing, and the music halts, pianissimo, on an open fifth that cannot properly be called the dominant. The effect is that the B minor entry of the theme is no less startling, even having been prepared. As I will argue in the Piano Sonata, Op. 110, Beethoven could sometimes infuse a passage with subtle additional meaning by omitting correct respellings of notes or chords.[7]

The B-flat vs. B natural opposition returns again in the first movement's coda in the form of a trill, the B natural this time disguised enharmonically as C-flat. The trill (which will in the final movement assume thematic import) is first written out as slowly alternating eighth notes in the alto voice, and then switches to a six measure-long fast trill in the major mode as the C-flat is raised to C natural.

Ex. 3: Op. 106 (i), mm. 362-66

The second movement is a scherzo whose opening motive is an abbreviated form of the rising and falling thirds that form the edges of the first movement's main theme. (The interval of a third forms the organizational backbone of the entire sonata. Though I will later discuss Beethoven's innovative use of it in the introduction to the final movement, it would be both tedious and superfluous to analyze its countless appearances throughout the sonata.) The scherzo ends by calling attention to the conflict between B-flat and B natural almost to the point of parody. Here the B-flat and B natural are each played alone, one after the other, contrasted by register and dynamics:

Ex. 4: Op. 106 (ii), mm. 160-64

...and a subsequent presto outburst on B natural races up the keyboard before at last settling, a tempo, back to B-flat:

Ex. 5: Op. 106 (ii), mm. 169-73

The introductions to the final movements of the Piano Sonata, Op. 101, the Cello Sonata, Op. 102/1 and the Ninth Symphony each return briefly to their opening movements, a procedure previously unknown in the Classical period. This device of musical retrospective was used to introduce a new compositional unity demanded by the composer's need to expand the capabilities of a multi-movement structure from a traditional series of loosely related movements to the inseparable units that only together constitute a complete narrative, each part informing the others past and future. The Hammerklavier Sonata expands on this idea by taking not a thematic motive from an earlier movement but the very structural premise upon which the entire work is founded, a chain of descending thirds, which can be found at the motivic as well as harmonic levels. By calling attention to this principle, Beethoven makes the compositional process itself the very subject of musical discourse, reflexively directing its own progression. The introduction to the colossal final fugue dramatizes the chain of descending thirds through their appearance in off-the-beat left-hand octaves punctuated by a series of experimental episodes. These episodes can be called experimental since their material appears nowhere else in the sonata; their effect is like a series of sketches that the composer tries and discards until he finds what he is looking for. What Beethoven is looking for is ultimately the necessary home key of B-flat major for his triumphant finale; the tonic becomes, in the fugue, both the resolution of the symbolic tension that preceded it (note that the preceding Adagio sostenuto is in the very remote key of F-sharp minor) and the psychological battleground for further dramatic activity.

By exposing the chain of descending thirds as the foundation stones of the composition as a whole, the work itself is imbued with an agency reminiscent of self-consciousness, seemingly becoming aware of its own compositional process and thereby abstracting from its very self. Further, its agency is now external to the musical events that make up the preceding movements; the sonata is observing itself, as if in a mirror, somehow "watching" itself being composed, making seemingly extemporaneous compositional decisions as though of its own accord. The traditional dramatic agencies of a sonata movement's first and second themes are no longer at play as the composer himself becomes foregrounded in a virtual compositional self-portrait. Simultaneously part of the artwork and something external to it, the sonata's "object"-the formal conditions upon which it is built-become for a moment the subject of its musical discourse, infused with its own chameleon-like temperament, like an M. C. Escher drawing whose subjects create a visual paradox by seeming to draw themselves.

The introduction to the fugue is born of dramatic necessity, no longer constrained by the purely structural considerations mandated by either sonata or fugal formal conventions. Rather, Beethoven, in his late style, demanded new expressive possibilities that were not merely the formal workings-out of earlier stylistic constraints. On the other hand, nor are these new expressive possibilities simply absent of a recognizable form; instead, they react to and grow out of their formal boundaries, deriving meaning from the leashes of history as codified in Classical musical structures and indeed by Beethoven himself, insofar as his music partially comprises the Classical style. The result is a new freedom in music, not the comparatively amorphous liberty that was later to inspire Wagner (let us recall Nietzsche's ironic criticism of Wagner, whom he called "the greatest miniaturist in music"[8] for his uninhibited excess that could not be tempered by enclosure within traditional structures), but a freedom born of expressive necessity which itself must interact with musical form to derive its emotional meaning. Thus, the passage is not mere musical rhetoric that emotes of its own accord absent of time or logic, but rather earns its emotional meaning by being rigidly bound to a formal concept while simultaneously seeming utterly improvisatory.

As he was to do increasingly in his late compositions, Beethoven turned to the Baroque fugue form for the final movement. The fugue's theme is based on a series of descending thirds, which gives it kinship to the main themes of each of the preceding three movements, each of which is founded on thirds.

After a climax on B minor (mm. 149-52), the fugue subject appears not only in the "schwarze Tonart," but does so in retrograde (the notes of the subject appearing backwards)-another means of opposition-and in a soft dynamic, in opposition to the dominating forte of the finale. The reversed fugue subject now moves upwards by sequential thirds, and together with its pianissimo dynamic seems to cast doubt on the cataclysmic certainty of the heroic and confident subject that precedes it, the whole passage mirroring the inflections of a spoken question.

It may be protested that such devices are mere formal tools, detached from any emotional or philosophical import. But when examined in light of the salient symbolic elements of the sonata as a whole, this passage takes on entirely new meaning. The tension between B-flat and B natural manifests itself at both the pitch and the harmonic levels, a device which Beethoven came to use frequently as a means of infusing his works with symbolic meaning; by shifting to the more "objective" level of the key (as German theorist August Halm recognized a century ago) from the more subjective motivic and thematic levels, Beethoven could alter not only the immediate affect of a passage but the very trajectory of the composition, thereby creating structural tensions that demand symbolic resolutions that lie beyond mere formal conventions.

Later in the fugue, towards the end of the sonata, appears a new subject (making the finale technically a double fugue, given the new subject's full exposition) -- in D major, the relative major of B minor and sharing its key signature of two sharps. The two keys are separated by the interval of a third, and the introduction of D major here marks an opportunity to resolve both sources of dramatic tension, the falling third -- which is here reversed, as D lies a third above B-flat-as well as the threat of B minor. Thus the challenge introduced by the sinister key, which plays a significant role throughout the composition, even to the point of obsession, is at long last resolved: minor becomes major, frantic sixteenth-note motion becomes quarter notes, loud becomes soft. The conflict between B-flat major and B minor must end in favor of B-flat for the work's expressive requirements and therefore its symbolic resolution to be complete, however. The second subject is thus combined with the first, thereby integrating two disparate elements of the movement, and the gradual transformation of B minor from overt threat in the opening movement to a climax of the fugue's central independent episode to a quiet retrograde of the subject to its dissolution into the relative major for the second fugal exposition, and finally the triumph of the tonic key achieved by integration of the subjects, with all the implied expressive meanings of these devices, is at last complete.[9]

More serious, even philosophical meaning in music can also be incorporated into the ironic or even absurd, given the appropriate context. The second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110, quotes the popular German folk song Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich ("I'm a slob, you're a slob"). Kinderman notes:

... its main artistic significance lies in Beethoven's assimilation of the lowly, droll, and commonplace into the work, where such material proves complementary to the most elevated of sentiments. Some musicians, such as [Hans] von Bülow and Martin Cooper, have looked askance at the unsophisticated humour of Ich bin lüderlich; Cooper comments on 'that Dutch vein of humour which reminds us that the composer's forebears may well have been among the peasants whose gross amusements we know from the pictures of the Breughels'. Yet here, once more, 'a problem may lie hidden', in Goethe's sense.[10]

Kinderman later remarks on the affinity between Ich bin lüderlich and the critical fugue theme of the last movement that plays the dominant dramatic role in the sonata as a whole,[11] which I will discuss below in relation to its additional appearance in the opening phrase of the sonata. Indeed, a problem lies hidden: In a work as tightly integrated as Op. 110 -- and especially considering the fierce concentration of compositional material through broad expanses that Beethoven achieved with his late style-such parallels are far too numerous and their contexts too revealing for them to be merely coincidental. More importantly, in Beethoven's late music such unifying compositional details occur in new and organic formal contexts that have necessary expressive consequences. In fact, the very opening of the sonata traces the fugue subject (whose notes, in the right hand, are indicated by the small notes above the staff):

Ex. 6: Op. 110 (i), mm. 1-5

Ex. 7: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 27-31 (Fugue subject)

The structure of the second movement is itself incongruous, playing on the scherzo form by fully functioning as a scherzo without technically being one. Indeed, the movement can for all intents and purposes be called a scherzo -- due to its short and repetitive structure, the use of a central trio, the movement's placement between long and serious outer movements and, more importantly, its jest (the word "scherzo" means a musical joke) in the form of rude dynamic contrasts and interruptions -- and yet its meter is 2/4 rather than the necessary 3/4 as dictated by the formal type. One is reminded of Schumann's bewilderment with Chopin's frightfully dramatic B minor Scherzo: "How are seriousness and gravity to be clothed if jest is to go about in such dark-colored garments?" The jest is therefore on the musical form itself, a sort of "musical joke on a musical joke." The movement's expected fortissimo ending is interrupted by a soft, rising broken arpeggio in the bass that segues into the finale both formally through its use as the dominant of the B-flat minor tonality that opens the last movement, and strategically in terms of what will be revealed as the emerging thematicism of the arpeggio.

The final movement of Op. 110 exhibits perhaps the most unusual form of all of Beethoven's sonata movements. A heartrending recitative and aria (which the composer titled "Arioso") in A-flat minor (the parallel minor to the work's tonic key) that begin the movement give way to an almost meditative fugue in A-flat major. What is unique about the movement is that the fugue collapses, signaling a return of the Arioso, this time a half-step lower in the darker key of G minor, and even more tragic (i.e., more embellished and dissonant). A prolonged G major chord leads to a return of the fugue in inversion, its subject turned upside-down, also in G major. The fugue subject returns upright in the necessary tonic key as rhythmic diminutions of the subject mutate the fugue into brilliant homophony.

Unique to Beethoven's late style, the movement can only be understood as part of a whole where each part sheds new light on the other. The fugue itself, whose subject, shown above (Ex. 7), is composed of three successively rising perfect fourths followed by the stepwise descent of a fourth, is a wealth of symbolic meaning. Kinderman[12] compares the subject to the "Dona nobis pacem" (mm. 107-10) in the Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis, worked on concurrently, whereby the word "pacem" (peace) is set to a melody that outlines two ascending perfect fourths followed by a stepwise descent and might thus be loosely interpreted as a prayer for peace. As in the Hammerklavier Sonata, the very use of the Baroque fugue topic (the so-called "learned style," since imitative forms demand compositional rigor) suggests turning to the past to solve current problems posed by the sonata's musical events, problems not sufficiently accounted for in earlier movements (e.g. the dramatic justification for the Ich bin lüderlich quote). Notably, the listener only becomes aware of the existence of the dramatic "problems" of the scherzo when confronted with the gravity of the final movement, whose effect is far wider-reaching than that of mere contrast, due in part to its integration or reconciliation of opposing expressive elements (Ich bin lüderlich and the fugue subject).

The aforementioned collapse of the first fugue occurs on a dominant seventh chord in the tonic key, which chord is, given its "false" resolution to G minor rather than A-flat major, only in retrospect revealed as a German augmented sixth. The chord appears innocently in the key of A-flat on the page:

Ex. 8: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 111-15

However, its unanticipated resolution entirely changes its function, and is used to signal an even more tragic version of the complete Arioso, one half-step lower (akin to the familiar two-note "sigh" motive, with its suggestion of resignation, but at the harmonic and structural levels).[13] The ambiguous chord is played fortissimo, and an arpeggio descending into the bass register and then returning upwards to its starting point separates the climax of the first fugue from the piano transition to new Arioso. The entire movement pivots upon this seemingly timeless moment. While it is a common enough expressive device in the Classical style to surprise listeners with unexpected resolutions, here the composer seems to attempt to surprise even the pianist by not changing to the correct spelling of the chord:

Ex. 9: "Correct" respelling of Op. 110 (iii), mm. 114-15

Although properly respelling the chord would change neither its sound nor its function, Beethoven seems to emphasize its importance by not revealing its real identity, as it were, even to the performer. What is expected by the listener is the tonic chord of A-flat major, but what ensues at this crucial moment is instead the birth of a form entirely new to the Classical period and necessitated by its expressive demands.[14]

At this crucial moment Beethoven employs an arpeggio that descends into the bass register before reversing direction, where it settles on the ambiguous chord that triggers the return of the tragic Arioso (L'istesso tempo di Arioso). Immediately upon the unexpected resolution to G minor appears another arpeggio, this time descending only and followed by a series of repeated G minor chords that then form the accompaniment to the singer's lament:

Ex. 10: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 115-17

The arpeggio, incomplete in its expressive need to return to its starting point (d2) by ascending in register (reinforced by its affinity to other passages in the sonata, as will be discussed), is at last afforded this opportunity after the complete restatement of the Arioso, at the transition to the (inverted) fugue:

Ex. 11: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 133-37

The crucial note d2 is both the final note of this upward arpeggio and the first note of the inverted fugue subject, creating an elision that connects the D natural of the L'istesso tempo di Arioso -- the unexpected result of the upward resolution of the critical German sixth -- over a vast compositional stretch to the L'inversione della Fuga. The second statement of the Arioso is thereby framed by a divided arpeggio gesture, the first sinking into despair (note Beethoven's expressive marking, "Ermattet, klagend" [exhausted, grief-stricken]), its tension resolved into the major mode upon the rise to the inverted fugue. This falling and rising arpeggio will be seen to have still greater import for the sonata as a whole.

The transition to the inverted fugue contains an almost strangely uncharacteristic passage, whereby Beethoven meditates on a G major chord as a means of transitioning from the second Arioso to the inversion of the fugue (Ex. 11). The chord, which can be heard in relation to the minor-mode chords that bring in the Arioso and form its accompaniment, is played fully ten times in the adagio tempo, each time slightly louder and creating a moment of stasis that suggests timelessness. Rests occur between each repetition, signaling the performer to release the keys; however, the sound is not interrupted due to Beethoven's long pedal marking. More interestingly, the chords appear off the beat, even though there is essentially no means for the performer to indicate the upbeats or downbeats in this passage; the listener may assume the notes are played on the beat due to its very slow tempo and ultimately the sheer length of the passage. Only upon the commencement of the slow G major arpeggio in the bass (m. 136), with its iambic rhythm, is the meter rectified. Only then does the listener discover that his understanding of the rhythm of the immediately preceding measures was wrong, and the passage is thus akin to a retrospective insight; one discovers that his experience of the world did not conform to reality.

With this new insight, the fugue is then played in inversion in G major, its successive perfect fourths now falling:

Ex. 12: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 137-41

The inversion of the fugue indicates a reversal of meaning from the original fugue subject, with its implied religious affect derived partially from its similarity to the Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis. The downward motion of the inverted subject carries with it a return from the higher stylistic register of the religious drama, supported by not only by Beethoven's written direction, "nach und nach wieder auflebend" (gradually returning to life), but also by steadily increased activity among the three voices, stretti, rhythmic diminutions, and the subject's eventual appearance right side-up.

Like the first fugue that capitulates in favor of an Arioso even more tragic than the first, the inversion of the fugue collapses under the force of its own willful energy. It is not until this moment that Beethoven makes explicit the connection between the Ich bin lüderlich quotation of the second movement and the fugue subject -- as well as the very opening of the sonata:

Ex. 13: Op. 110 (i), mm. 4-5

Ex. 14: Op. 110 (ii), mm. 17-18 (Ich bin lüderlich)

Ex. 15: Op. 110 (iii), m. 169

Beethoven does not simply achieve here a formal integration amongst the work's three movements, but more importantly, he simultaneously elevates the crude humor of the scherzo and reveals a more human element to the transformed fugue subject.

There is an altogether astonishing transition from counterpoint to a more homophonic texture, with the fugue subject no longer controlled by contrapuntal practices but accompanied by rapid sixteenth notes that recall the first movement's integration of the first theme and transition subject that mark its recapitulation:

Ex. 16: Op. 110 (i), mm. 56-7

Ex. 17: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 185-87

The sonata ends triumphantly on a series of falling, then rising, A-flat major arpeggios that again call to mind the arpeggios on the opening page of the sonata that bridge the first and second theme groups:

Ex. 18: Op. 110 (i), mm. 12-13

Ex. 19: Op. 110 (iii), mm. 210-end

The result is a unity of compositional material that is not merely structural in an abstract sense but imbued with dramatic implication, reflecting, as it were, on its own past. The first transition within the sonata structure, the starting point for the work's dramatic activity as a sonata, can be seen in this light to be resolved at last by the reappearance of the upward arpeggios in the tonic. This gesture corresponds not only to the arpeggios that frame the second Arioso, as discussed, but also to the ascending major-mode arpeggio that ends the scherzo, which can be seen in part as a symbolic resolution both of the tension of the movement's minor key and of the competing motion of the right and left hands throughout the movement.

The peculiar design of the finale of Op. 110 does not readily permit classification as a formal type or even types that entail customary correlations dictated by the Classical style, but is undeniably expressively motivated. As such, its satisfactory comprehension, and finally its interpretation, derives from its understanding as an expressive genre (tragic-to-triumphant)[15] that suggests a willful overcoming of tragedy and a renewed hope for the world, not a programmatic interpretation but a hermeneutic one justifiable by clear factual and internal evidence.

Opp. 106 and 110 demonstrate the capacity for music to symbolically reflect philosophical mechanisms within strategic contexts. Central to our understanding of these mechanisms and to establishing their meaning is their context: Meaning is impotent without a suitable context from which it can be derived. Nor is it enough simply to associate musical structures with the external world, either of emotions or concepts or things, by means of reduction to symbolic or iconic representation. Music is indeed its own universe, yet one that derives meaning not only from within its own context, as a reaction to itself[16] (both within individual works as well as the development of styles), but also by its often tantalizingly vague, "unconsummated" correlations with the external world.

Analysis can only supplement and inform interpretation, not replace it, since great music will always be more than the sum of its parts. In the final analysis, music must be played to be communicated, and the interpretive process is not concluded until the music is realized in sound. In turn, if indeed great music is greater than it can be played, as is sometimes claimed, then the interpretive process is never truly complete, and the unconsummated cycle that results, surely part of the beauty of music, creates a ceaseless search for meaning that is the artist's responsibility and joy.

[1] Note that this statement does not assume that only so-called “authentic” interpretations are valid, only that it is the artistic responsibility and indeed duty of the interpreter to arrive at an understanding of the music she plays, from which she may draw her own artistic and aesthetic conclusions.

[2] I note that it would be superfluous for my current purpose to analyze the works complete, or even to offer a chronological description of each movement, either of which numerous commentators have already done. Therefore, I have chosen to concentrate on elements of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, Opp. 106 and 110, that offer particular opportunities for contemplation, as well as on constructive features that to my knowledge have not been pointed out in other sources.

[3] Beethoven (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 2.

[4] Music Alone (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991).

[5] “Da haben Sie eine Sonate, die den Pianisten zu schaffen machen wird, die man in fünfzig Jahren spielen wird.”

[6] Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation and Interpretation (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 36.

[7] “Meaning” need not be serious -- in a passage at the end of the first movement of the Seventh Symphony (mm. 401-22), Beethoven demonstrated a rather uncharitable sense of humor by consistently writing the harder-to-read B-sharps as C naturals to accommodate his violists, despite having written the B-sharps correctly in the duplicate cello and double bass parts!

[8] "Nochmals gesagt: bewunderungswürdig, liebenswürdig ist Wagner nur in der Erfindung des Kleinsten, in der Ausdichtung des Details -- man hat alles Recht auf seiner Seite, ihn hier als einen Meister ersten Ranges zu proklamieren, als unsern größten Miniaturisten der Musik, der in den kleinsten Raum eine Unendlichkeit von Sinn und Süße drängt" (Der Fall Wagner, §7). It is interesting to note that Nietzsche mentions musical semiotics, on whose assumptions this article in part relies, in the very same section: "Bei Wagner steht im Anfang die Halluzination: nicht von Tönen, sondern von Gebärden. Zu ihnen sucht er erst die Ton-Semiotik." Walter Kaufmann’s generally excellent standard English translation favors explicating its meaning over a literal translation, thus: “Wagner begins from a hallucination -- not of sounds but of gestures. Then he seeks the sign language of sounds for them” (Basic Writings of Nietzsche [New York: Modern Library Edition, 1992], 626). Nonetheless, while a literal mapping of Wagner’s leitmotifs onto categories of meaning (hence "sign language") would be a rather grotesque oversimplification of semiotics as it applies to musical signs, the concept provides at least a worthwhile starting point for harder-to-grasp musical relations that cannot simply be systematically codified into one-to-one constructs of meaning—which in music is sometimes ambiguous and often deliberately so—any more than language can have meaning absent of context. For that matter, nor can Wagner’s leitmotifs.

[9] Hatten offers a convincing interpretation of the fugue’s second exposition based on its relation in key and character to the second theme of the Adagio sostenuto, and understands the combination of fugue subjects as motivated still further by the slow movement's expressive needs: "Thus, the moment of relief that the second exposition provides might also be interpreted as a motivated spiritual insight akin to the positively resigned acceptance of the second theme in the previous movement. In the finale, when the second subject is combined with the first for a double-fugal closing section, integration is completed not only within the movement, but with respect to a significant expressive goal of the previous movement. The integration of fugue subjects entails a corresponding semantic interaction, or troping, of meaning that tempers the heroic first subject with a spirituality born of the more serene second subject's reference to spiritual resignation" (op. cit., 28).

[10] op. cit., 227.

[11] "Tovey claimed that in this closing fugue Beethoven eschewed an 'organ-like climax' with its ascetic connotations as a 'negation of the world'. It is significant in this regard that the transitional double-diminution passage seems to recall the earlier comic allusion in the Allegro molto. The rhythmic and registral correspondence renders the beginning of the Meno allegro transparent to Ich bin lüderlich, reinforcing Tovey's sense of an absorption of the 'world'" (op. cit., 229).

[12] ibid., 228.

[13] Note that the second Arioso contains explicit sigh gestures throughout as its primary means of ornamenting (i.e., making more tragic) the original aria. A reversed sigh gesture, an upward two-note slur, can thus be understood in opposition to the sigh’s meaning of resignation, or striving. Such a gesture can be seen not only in the climax of the second Arioso, but already in the first movement in preparing the climax of the exposition (mm. 28-31).

Such isomorphic correlations between, in this case, upward and downward motion and striving or resignation, respectively, are directly compatible with Langer’s notion of symbolism in music (cf. Hatten, 236-37).

[14] Kinderman notes, "The pairing of the Arioso dolente with the fugue in A-flat major has no precedent in Beethoven's earlier instrumental music; its closest affinity is with the Agnus Dei and 'Dona nobis pacem' of the Missa solemnis, the movements of the Mass that occupied him contemporaneously with the sonata” (ibid., 227). This observation would support an argument that the fugue subject, which, as has been noted, has a specific parallel in the "Dona nobis pacem," has religious (or "religious-like") implication or correlation.

[15] Cf. Hatten, 86-87.

[16] After a draft of this article was sent to the publisher I found a fascinating quote by noted pianist and scholar Charles Rosen that precisely corroborates this core argument: "The content -- the subject-matter -- of the Hammerklavier is the nature of the contemporary musical language. The work of art which is literally about its own technique is almost too familiar by now.... But music, where denotation is at once precise and totally unspecific, presents a special problem. If we omit the occasional imitative effects… and the direct conventions of pathos, we can deny neither that music has significance nor that it signifies most clearly and most often itself" (The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Expanded edition [New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997], 434).