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A story from Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos by Edwin Mmm Good. This is an interesting book, but at least one third of it is so technical that probably only a tech could understand it(I just skip those parts).

Ludwig Rellstab, later a famous critic, visited Beethoven in 1825 and reported that the composer proudly showed off his Broadwood:

"It is a handsome gift", he continued, stretching his hands towards the keys without ceasing to hold my eyes. He gently stuck a chord. Never again will one penetrate my soul with such a wealth of woe, with so heart-rending an accent! He had played a C major chord in the fight hand and played a B to it in the bass, his eyes never leaving mine. And in order that he might make the soft tone of the instrument sound at its best- he repeated the chord several times and-the greatest musician on earth did not heat its dissonance!

Rellstab, is the twit that gave the "Moonlight" it's nickname.

lol, what's wrong with the nick name Moonlight sonata?

There's little, if anything at all, to do with moonlight in the work. I truly wonder how many would "hear" moonlight on Lake Lucerne (choose your own lake), were the nickname not attached.

Do you feel the same for the Chopin etudes?

For the most part, yes. The only nick I use with any consistency there is the "black key".

Beethoven may have been trying to be funny . . .

Beethoven, never knew of the title.

I'm with stores on the nicknames for the etudes - I'd never heard most of them until I started frequenting PW, and now I keep wasting time thinking "winter wind? which one is that?"
And as for the stupid names for the preludes! Suffocation is too good for whomever thought that one up!

Yeah, this is kind of personal and it's easy to be inconsistent. I happen to respond to "Black Key", "Revolutionary", "Aoliean Harp", "Butterfly" and "Winter Wind", but I scorn at "Ocean", and, like currawong, all the prelude nicknames. All of them. (Except "Raindrop", I guess.) It probably has everything to do with what you first heard when you first got to know them....


-Jason

Nicknames for the etudes don't bother me, but "Moonlight" sort of does.

Sad chords: I can't think of a specific one, but the e minor prelude by Chopin seems to get progressively sadder/deeper.

Gsmonks, did you mean -- Beethoven was playing a joke on Rellstab with the chord?

In 1825? Maybe not.

-Daniel

Nicknames bother me too... Particularly when people don't know they were not the composer's wish, like in Chopin's case or the Moonlight Sonata, and give them too much importance.

About the sad chords...
Maybe the chords in the left hand in Chopin's Prelude Op.28 No.4?

I absolutely agree. Funny, is it, that I so often agree with currawong? I wonder why ...

Keep in mind that Rellstab had never heard anything by Chopin, Schumann, Debussy, etc, because he couldn't have.. even for someone on the vanguard of music at the turn of the 19th century, such an evocative, even Romantic, piece of music would have been that much more powerful than it is taken out of context today.

From Rellstab's account, Ludwig was watching him very carefully, studying his reaction. Rellstab was assuming a great deal and had absolutely no idea what was on Ludwig's mind. We have no idea what his opinion of Rellstab was. For all we know, he may have thought him a patronising oaf, and was testing him for honesty.

Besides, do you really think a pianist of Ludwig's caliber, deaf for not, would forget where he left C, three times running?

Rellstab, certainly, heard Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt and many others (no Debussy as you say though because the dates make it an impossibility).

There is no record in my reference book (The Beethoven Compendium by Barry Cooper ... 351 pages) of Rellstab (whoever he might be) having met the stone deaf Beethoven in 1825 (two years before LB’s death) ... and reportedly having heard the jangling Broadwood C major chord with the strident lower B.

Where does this story originate ... and the supposed (twit) Moonlight appellation?