Switching Colors on Beethoven’s Broadwood Fortepiano

Despite Heinrich Schenker’s groundbreaking analysis, William Drabkin’s impressive examination of the sketches and recent analytical overviews by William Kinderman, the variation movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Opus 111 remains only partially understood. A re-examination of this work in terms of timbral effects audible on the original instrument for which it was composed suggests an overall three-part dramatic division corresponding to the form of a resurrection drama where a theme lives, dies and returns in apotheosis. This conclusion is based upon sound recordings made on Beethoven’s original Broadwood fortepiano located in Budapest and similar instruments in Bonn and California. Research into Beethoven‘s manuscripts and sketches support the conclusions presented in this paper.