Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata's last chord

Cafe Society
1

I love playing Moonlight Sonata mov.1 (it is one of the very few pieces I actually can play). I’ve never played it for an audience beyond my friends/family, but I often have this thought: “would an audience hearing this for the first time think the piece was over too soon?”

The movement ends with

  1. a single note that could be the end of the piece
  2. a big fat chord that reinforces, “this is the end”
  3. a repeat of 2.

There is a lot of “air” between each of these events - esp. 2 and 3. If you didn’t know 3 was coming, you could think the piece was over at 2 (in fact, you could even think it was done at 1).

My question: Why 3? Why did Beethoven repeat that big fat closing chord? I would be happy, have a sense of completion, stopping at 2. Is there some meaning I’m missing for that repetition? Is it some structure I don’t see that demands it? a backreference in the other movements? Is there even an answer to the question beyond “Ludwig wrote it that way - play it, damn it”?

2

I think it’s just the different of feeling the piece in two or four. In four, there’s a lack of finality having that chord on the the third beat of the previous measure.

3

It always drove me crazy even as a kid. They would play it for nap time at my daycare. If I stayed awake long enough for the end of the song, I remember being irritated that it sounded like it could have kept going.

4

If you want to hear the phenomenon you describe taken to absurd extremes, give a listen to the last movement of Ludwig’s 5th Symphony.

5

I have no idea, but threes always work for me. Listening to the ending of it again, you could end at the single note. But once the chord comes in to reinforce the ending, I feel like I need one more for it to sound complete. I have no idea why. But it seems natural to structure it in three.

ETA: Actually, BigT does have a good point. You could end on that first, single note. But once you hit that chord that starts on beat three, it feels like you need a full-measure chord to really give it a sense of finality, which is where the last chord comes in. I suppose you could also hold the chord across the bars, but it just doesn’t sound right to me. I really need to hear that last chord.