♫ Now I really WILL skip ahead a bit, because the next section is simply a transition, again using material from that last “in between” section” ♫ to cycle through keys in search of the next real destination. But when we do get to that next destination, it is a major event, on a number of levels. ♫ B minor! Now, I know, this fugue modulates so often, and alights on so many far-flung keys – D flat major, G flat Major and e flat minor have already featured prominently in this movement – that I shouldn’t overstate the significance of this particular one. But that landing is so emphatic, ♫ that Beethoven really insists that the listener notice it in a different way from all the ones that have come before it. This is our third movement in B flat major, and a third movement in which the b natural – as a note, and as the root of a tonality – has been improbably important. This not-really-welcome visitor has made its presence felt – planted its flag – time and time again. And if that emphatic arrival ♫ weren’t evidence enough, the significance of this b minor is driven home by what Beethoven does next. ♫ So, in case you couldn’t tell – and if you couldn’t, you are forgiven! – my left hand was playing the retrograde of the subject – which is just a fancy way of saying that this is the subject played backwards. So, instead of playing the leap of the tenth, and then the two short phrases, and then the run-on sixteenths, we first get those sixteenths, backwards, then the two little phrases, backwards, and finally the tenth, backwards. ♫ This is a pretty wild little gambit. Bach wrote many fugues that feature the inversion of the subject – meaning the subject played upside down. Augmentations, like the one we heard earlier ♫ are also commonplace. But this backwards version is far less common. And why? Because it’s weird! Try spelling a word backwards. Or saying a sentence with the words in reverse order. Or even reciting the alphabet backwards. It’s awkward. And again, because this subject is so twisty, it’s all the more surreal, hearing it in reverse. (And with a brand new countersubject, by the way: listen to the upper voice. ♫ Fittingly, this total reimaging of the subject gets its own accompanying material.) So, it’s crazy, but logical. That B flat Major version goes forward; its B minor foil goes backwards. It's the combative, opposed nature of those two notes, felt throughout the piece, boiled down to its essence. Speaking of boiling things down, Beethoven next dispenses with most of the subject, and bases the entire following section entirely on the retrograde version of the two short phrases that come in the middle of the subject. ♫ And there, at long last, in the bass, is the return of the subject, right side up, with its original note values. It sounds almost exotic, given how long it's been since we heard it un-monkeyed around with! So. We’ve had the subject augmented – doubled, rhythmically. We’ve had it backwards. Next, before the first half of the fugue reaches its furious climax, we get it upside down – this is known as the inversion. Every upward interval is traded for an equal downward one, and vice versa. Listen for it, first in the upper voice. ♫ And now, having given us the inversion everywhere – upper voice, middle voice, bass – the focus now shifts entirely to the leap of the tenth – rising and falling – as everything else disappears, and that fragment takes over, repeating again and again, faster and faster, until the whole thing comes to a crashing halt. ♫ Eventually, Beethoven even gives up on the fugue: all three voices move in tandem, in unison even. ♫ This is totally against fugue rules – the whole point is the independence of the voices – but it suits the obsessive nature of this music perfectly, the three voices united in hurtling towards an abyss. Nearly 250 bars into this extremely fast-moving fugue, we have, for the first time, a silence. ♫ And isn’t it just typical of Beethoven that this silence is in no way a relaxation. It is harmonically awaiting resolution, and in no way suggests that the conflict that was inherent in the subject is, after 250 bars and the retrograde, and the inversion, and the augmentation, and the b minor, and the g flat major, and on and on, one bit closer to being resolved…
