Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Beethoven - Pathétique easier than Moonlight?

This could seem quite a trivial question to most of you, but since I decided to go "self-teaching" I don't have the answer.

At the moment I'm trying to learn Beethoven's op. 27 no. 2 (Moonlight sonata). Well, I'm trying to learn mvt. 3, since I already know mvt. 1 and 2.

And it's quite difficult for me. I can "perform" it (???) up to ~80% of the signature tempo, but I'm not satisfied: the sound is meh, the articulation is terrible as the notes don't seem "equal one to another" during arpeggios, the execution is not clean (lots of dirty notes here and there) and I can feel a lot of tension in my right arm, wrist and fingers during certain passages.

I have been studying the piece for one month and a half, and while the first weeks felt very rewarding I'm seeing very little progress in the last few weeks.

It's not a big deal. I could try and see if I can improve a bit, or put the piece on the "later shelf" for the moment.

But there is one thing that I was wondering.
When I was younger I remember that my piano teacher used to rate the whole Moonlight sonata as easier than Pathétique sonata (op. 13).
Now, the fact is... I can play all 3 mvts. of Pathétique easily (well, decently at least). And mvt. 3 of Moonlight seems A LOT harder than mvt. 1 of Pathétique, which was the hardest for me.

So, is it really true that Moonlight as a whole is easier than Pathétique as a whole? If that's the case, does this mean that I'm facing difficulties due to specific lacks of technique?

I'm asking because my memory fails me sometimes, so I could remember wrong what my teacher used to say. I started studying Moonlight mvt. 3 based on this memory (I just wanted to add something "rewarding" to my repertoire without too much effort), but if it's not like this I could re-think my objectives and goals.

That is, of course, subjective but in almost all the rankings I have seen on this and other forums the Moonlight was always rated more difficult than the Pathétique; sometimes much more, sometimes only slightly.

I think the 3rd mvt of Moonlight is more difficult than Pathetique in general. If you're struggling, then perhaps choose some other Beethoven to work on for now.

Maurice Hinson's Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire is an excellent resource, often listing difficulty level of pieces, or in the case of sonatas and other collections of opera lists them in order of difficulty.

Thanks for the replies.

Uuh, that Hinson's Guide seems really interesting! Thanks for the tip, @Morodiene!

With the last Movement 3 of the moonlight, I think you need to do a lot of agility exercises and work to get the piece sounding fluidly. This will take a lot of work to achieve. I suspect it will be many months, not weeks. Also you need to know how and what to practice . If you have not got a pianist to show you these tricks then you may not be able to get it solid. I know myself to collect the thumb in right hand can help with the quick arpeggios. I would be given by my teacher agility exercises to practice which would help with this and regular reviews and tips. I am not brave enough, and I do not like the last movement enough to spend months to get it to a high standard, but this is the only tip I know for the last movement. kKudos if you can try! The pathetic Beethoven, the challenges are different. The 1st I would need to do a lot to get the impact and pizaz for it. It is also very challenging. I found the 2nd movement challenging to balance the sounds but have done a lot on this movement. The feel is quite different. The last movement I have not played but looks quite nice and a piece I think I will need to play now I have seen.

The 3rd movement of Pathetique sonata is the easiest movement of all 3 movements to me. Although once you've worked out the voicing technique, the 2nd movement is rather manageable too. The 3rd movement is included as a grade 7 exam piece for AMEB. The entire sonata is included as a Associate Diploma exam piece. The Moonlight sonata is not included in any part of the AMEB exam.

I've not attempted the Moonlight sonata but listening to the music, I'd say that:

- Moonlight 1st movement is quite a lot easier than Pathetique 2nd movement
- Moonlight 2nd movement is a lot easier than Pathetique 3rd movement
- Moonlight 3rd movement is moderately harder than Pathetique 1st movement

P/S: When you wrote "The pathetic Beethoven", it made me giggle a bit!

The third movement of the Moonlight is indeed harder than any of the Op. 13 Pathétique Sonata movements in my experience. However, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses in their technique. One cannot just say that if you can play a piece rated a certain difficulty (the Pathetique in your example) that you should be able to play something "rated" less or equally difficult (the Moonlight) with as much ease.

You say you've been working on this for a month and a half and are self taught. My suggestion would be to take a break from the piece for a while. Work on other repertoire. When you do feel like you want to come back to the 'Moonlight' 3rd movement, start slow and work hard to develop good technique, good articulation over all else before you start speeding up. I bet you will get much further than the plateau you currently have described.

Apologies, I had confused two different books. See my repost further down the page.

I'm leaving the strikethrough stuff below because it's been quoted by the next post..

This book conveniently eliminates the need to seek out all the difficulty rating lists on the internet, download test syllabuses, and view contents pages of repertoire series. There's lots of free info out there, but the problem is that the grading schemes disagree depending who's rating, their perceptions of difficulty, and even how many levels to have.,

Aside from the huge range of pieces rated (lots of modern stuff alongside the classical standards), the Hinton book has the big advantage that all the ratings are from a single source, so there's not the need to interweave the divergent grading systems..

It is a great book, but I find the new publication very expensive for looking at the general repertoire. If you're willing to settle for an earlier publication version, they are available Used on the Internet for under five dollars

Oops I apologize, I totally messed up. I had that Hinton book from the library, but the similar book for teachers and piano students that I was raving about was this one:

Pianists Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature

The entirely different Jane McGrath Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature conveniently eliminates the need to seek out all the difficulty rating lists on the internet, download test syllabuses, and view contents pages of repertoire series. There's lots of free info out there, but the problem is that the grading schemes disagree depending who's rating, their perceptions of difficulty, and even how many levels to have.,

Aside from the huge range of pieces rated (lots of modern stuff alongside the classical standards), the Hinton book has the big advantage that all the ratings are from a single source, so there's not the need to interweave the divergent grading systems..

And it's a lot less expensive than Hinson's excellent guide (which is more useful for pianists way more skilled than I).

pathétique... c'est 'pathetic' en français? ... n'est pas? :S

PS: Ma grand-mère, elle dit que je parle les francais comme un singe :P.

(my grandma, she says I speak french like a monkey :P)

The word "pathétique" in French does not have the usual meaning of "pathetic" in English (Wiktionary is wrong). It means "arousing very strong emotions".

Les singes ne parlent pas français.

Tous les animaux parlent le français - a la perfection - comme moi ! :P

Pas s'ils n'utilisent pas les accents ! "à la" :p D'accord, maintenant je peux me tenir bien...

And now I'll have to fight to get the rest of this in actual English rather than Franglais. Grrrr.

I've been learning Pathétique, and I've attempted Mvt 3 of Moonlight, and I can say with complete confidence that Moonlight is waaaay harder for me. Not that I'm brilliant at Pathétique, but even before I started learning I was able to stumble through it with the result bearing some very slight resemblance to what it was supposed to be. Not so Moonlight, sight reading that was possibly my biggest disaster to date... My ears couldn't stand it anymore after about two pages.

Thanks again everyone.

I think I will stop "studying" Moonlight 3rd movement. But since I don't want to drop it altogether, I'll try and maintain it (maybe by playing it once in 1-2 days with slow metronome). Just to be precise, the piece "sounds"... OK-ish (?) when I play it. Only, I'm a bit of a nitpicker. :P Probably because I heard so many recordings, I really can't stand if the piece is dirty and the notes aren't well articulated. And I'm a bit scared of the tension I feel sometimes, I really don't want to get hurt. So, better avoiding the problem for the moment.