Piano Sonata No. 8 (Beethoven)
piano sonata written by Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, commonly known as Sonata Pathétique, was written in 1798 when the composer was 27 years old and was published in 1799. It has remained one of his most celebrated compositions. Beethoven dedicated the work to his friend Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. Although commonly thought to be one of the few works to be named by the composer himself, it was actually named Grande sonate pathétique (to Beethoven's liking) by the publisher, who was impressed by the sonata's tragic sonorities.
Movements
In its entirety, encompassing all three movements, the work takes approximately 17–20 minutes to perform.
The sonata consists of three movements:
I. Grave – Allegro di molto e con brio
The first movement is in sonata form. It begins with a slow introductory theme, marked Grave.
The exposition, marked Allegro di molto con brio, is in 22 time (alla breve) in the home key of C minor and features three themes.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q146113. VIAF identifies the subject as 301897126. The Library of Congress control number is n81133621. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1798 and 1799.
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This entry incorporates text from “Piano Sonata No. 8 (Beethoven)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.