Beethoven completed his Piano Sonata opus 110 in 1821. It is one of the last three piano sonatas in which he combined tonality, tempo marking, developments of motto motive closely with music structure and specifically for expressing music meaning. Above all, the form of the third movement integrates recitativo and fugue with sonata form which not only innovates the genre of sonata form, but also create inseparable interrelationship of intrinsic meaning and extrinsic form. The late music style of Beethoven is prone to explore meaning and victory via human spirit and willpower. Going through hearing loss, litigation of his nephew Carl, body illness, Beethoven’s music vocabulary becomes more intricate than other contemporary composers so as to devote himself to pursuing tranquility of innermost world in his profound, creative process. He aims not only to transcend common principles and limits but to expand his own peculiar, refined music language to express the story in his heart. Three aspects will be investigated in this paper: first, past research will be reviewed to understand Beethoven’s development of musical styles in the last three piano sonatas and to sum up the common applications of techniques, characteristics; second, seven music theorists will be selected as examples from Rita Steblin’s valuable monograph A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, whose descriptions of different tonality would be explored and compared with the unusual tonal structure and meaning in opus 110 as antithesis; third, opus 110 will be analyzed by tempo marking, rhythm, developments of motto motive so as to trace the possibility of correlation between breakthrough of interior form and exterior living events.
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