Sublime Music
The melody to the middle movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique is one of the few pieces of music that deserves the descriptive sublime. It was written over 200 years ago and it’s still gorgeous to the modern ear. He wrote it at age 27.
Here’s the :29 second melody:
Listen for the moment, about fifteen seconds in, when the melody hits a high note. It sounds like some sort of reach for the spirtual, an aching grasp toward higher ground, that doesn’t quite make it. Yet then, at the melody’s end, there appears to be no sense of loss for this missed reach, only a feeling that the reach itself was its own reward.