Moonlight Sonata Opus 27 No. 2

The Anacrouse collection offers pianists, beginners and advanced alike, a wide choice of classical works from the Renaissance to the present day. It brings together major works of the repertoire as well as rarer pieces, and also offers transcriptions for piano solo or four hands, selected for their musical and educational interest. Each score, available individually, benefits from careful editorial work: a rigorously established musical text, clear and legible engraving, accompanied by a short biography of the composer and a note on the work.

The first movement, “Adagio sostenuto”, of the “Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2”, universally known as the “Moonlight Sonata”, is a page of unequalled emotional depth. For the pianist, it is a masterly study in sound control, pedal management and the balance of sound planes: the aim is to make the upper melody sing while keeping the triplet accompaniment in a constant, even murmur.

Composed in 1801 and dedicated to the young Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, this sonata was described by Beethoven himself as Quasi una fantasia. The title “Moonlight” is not the composer’s, but that of the poet Ludwig Rellstab who, a few years after Beethoven’s death, compared this movement to the reflection of the moon on the waters of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, thus engraving this image in the collective imagination for eternity.