Beethoven's Op. 69 - the 4th movement

[IceQube]

I'm confused about the 4th movement of Beethoven's Cello Sonata no. 3 (Op. 69). According to Wikipedia, there are only three movements. However, a fourth movement seems to exist; several musicians have played the 4th movement.

You can find the 4th movement on Spotify using the search query "beethoven op. 69 iv."

You can also listen to the 4th movement on YouTube. In the below video, the third and fourth movements are combined. The 4th movement starts at around 1:48. The below video does make me wonder though ... could the 4th movement simply be an auxiliary portion of the 3rd movement, played separately by some performers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39fWrKfK9YM

[pulykamell]

You know, that's a good question. I'm curious about the answer to this, too.

I'm looking at various scores for this, and it's clear to me that there are three main divisions that finish with an end bar, but the final movement has two parts: one that is marked Adagio Cantibale in E major before modulating up to A major with an allegro vivace tempo/feel. There's a double bar separating the two (usual in a modulation and a change in tempo/feel), but not the usual indications of an end bar that would suggest the end of a movement.

ETA: And this should be in Cafe Society. I will call the attention of a mod to move it.

[MikeS]

Here's the score of the movement. Looks like it's one "combined" movement in that score; at the beginning of the "fourth movement" in bar 19, the tempo and key change, but it's not denoted as a separate movement.

To really clear up whether Beethoven intended the two sections to be one movement or two, though, you'd have to go back to the manuscript score. It could be that some overzealous editor, years ago, combined two movements into one (or split one into two.)

[samclem]

Moved from GQ to Cafe Society.

samclem, Moderator

[Leo Bloom]

I'll look into that.

This post is simply to lock this thread in my auto-email updates.

[IceQube]

After some further research on Spotify, it does appear that the third and fourth movements are usually combined; the two movements are generally not played separately despite the dramatic shift in tempo and change in key just before the 2 minute mark.

I had originally thought that the 4th movement was some rarely played part of Beethoven's Cello Concerto no. 3, but now I realize that the 4th movement is actually part of the 3rd movement. Some performers, it seems, just choose to split up the 3rd movement to create 4 distinct movements.

My confusion about the 4th movement stemmed from my listening to the first couple seconds of each movement. Because I would only survey the first couple of seconds, I thought the 4th movement was some long-lost fragment of a manuscript, something made up by an editor, or something that just didn't pique the interest of most performers.

Turns out, most performers just don't chop up the third movement into two; the "fourth movement" generally begins around the 2 minute mark in the actual third movement.

In any case, my favorite movement is the third movement, starting around 2:00, or simply the fourth movement . I don't have much of an interest for the slow, cantabile tempo of the third movement.