Today’s tune is the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14, more commonly known as the Moonlight Sonata. This beautiful, haunting piece of music was written in 1801 when the composer was in his thirties and is one of his most well-known compositions. It was popular in his day, too: Berlioz said that the first movement “is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify”, though Beethoven became a bit exasperated at the adoration of this one piece of music, commenting to composer Czerny “surely I’ve written better things”!

I hope you enjoy this piece. There’s more classical music in my collection here, and if it’s your first time on the site, find out why I’m playing one song a day for the whole of 2015 or listen to my October songs here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/moonlight-sonata