Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata: An Ostinato for the Creative Soul

Ludwig von Beethoven, one of the world’s greatest composers, is a relevant and current inspiration hundreds of years beyond his lifetime. The master of many works, a popular song recognizable by most is what’s known as his Moonlight Sonata, a composition completed during his early 30s soon after his hearing began to fade. A prolific and deaf artist who gifted the world numerous audible works, Beethoven is a shining example of how the overcoming of our most seeming impairments can be our greatest source of power for the most impactful impression we can leave in our lifetime.

Piano Sonata №14 in C-sharp minor (Quasi una fantasia, Op. 27, №2), adagio sustenato — this translated to mean slow and sustained — is said to have been nicknamed the Moonlight Sonata by an appreciator of the work once heard in a live performance long after Beethoven’s death, comparing the listening experience of this first of the three movements to the visual of the moon’s reflection across a lake. A contemporary of Beethoven’s, composer Carl Czerny, said of the movement to be “a nocturnal scene, in which a mournful ghostly voice sounds from the distance.” (source) There is a pulsing ostinato to be heard — a repeated rhythmic drive from the lower register — throughout this movement that provokes forward motion from the depths, felt deep within the soul. The imagery of which it evokes could not ring more true of this hauntingly vivid interpretation.

Likening the harmonic, sonic directive from the unified bass line and tripleted higher-level activity to an oracle as a source of elevated learning and divine guidance, the Moonlight Sonata shows us the complexities of life broken down into tangible, repetitive themes that develop together as we write our own symphonic, thematic life story through how we create and relate to the world around us. Through these cyclical movements over time that wax and wane, with moments of fullness and newness, we can gain clarity in times of darkness and our most luminous beauty. We can melodically flow under the glow of brilliant moon-like wonder and be guided by our intuition, from the harnessing of our dreams to the fullest embodiment of our greatest creative power.

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What evocative, intuitive message do I have to compose that others need to hear?

How can I harness my greatest obstacle as the source from which I can powerfully create?

Where will this hauntingly deep expression of creativity illuminate beauty for those that experience it?

What’s the ostinato (underlying drive or theme) of this whole journey?