Journeys: Beethoven’s Pathétique and Caspar David Friedrich’s “The Wanderer”

A solitary figure looks out over mountaintops, mystery, creation. Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer. The wanderer is us. Wisps of fog everywhere at the beginning or middle or end of a journey. Beethoven’s introduction marked Grave. A big bang dissonant chord grabs us by the arm or scruff of the neck. It is followed immediately by a much softer, moving response, a few chords in dotted rhythms. This gentler all-too-human response is noble, serious, lyrical even, and all-too-aware that it follows in the wake of mightier things like God or creation or the sublime of mountaintops, sky. A soft, hopeful rising melody in octaves is followed by all-out anger in the bass as if Job and God hurl questions at one another. Like Job and Beethoven and all the wanderers before us, we stand on the edge of a cliff. Our next step might be our last.

Beethoven’s slow second movement comforts us. Its gorgeous melody of long sustained breaths: the first four bars lifting up, the next four bars coming down.* Breathe in, breathe out. The best way to view life from a mountaintop or ledge. Just beneath it, barely heard, a rocking cradle in the right hand. Then the third measure’s simple contrary motion as the melody rises in quicker notes while the bass line moves downwards. We are pulled both ways as in Friedrich’s painting. Looking, feeling, searching. Up and down and all around. When Beethoven repeats this same melody an octave higher, we might sing more loudly, feel a bit more. The melody seems half-nostalgic, calling to mind some memory of the past that moves us still. A memory defined by each of us, alone, like all those others who have gone before us, all who will follow in our wake. So many wanderers. So many more journeys to take.

*The first three notes of Beethoven’s famous melody in the second movement is a direct quote, an homage, to Mozart’s Sonata 14 in C Minor.

A performance of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. The pianist is Daniel Barenboim.

Check out my latest book, Tennis Players as Works of Art, now available on Amazon. Called “madly ambitious” and named one its 5 featured books of 2024 in the category of Art/Imagination/Creativity by Publisher’s Weekly Booklife, Tennis Players as Works of Art has also been named “One of the Best Books we Read in 2024” (Independent Book Review), “Book of the Year” (Inside Tennis Magazine), and Outstanding Book of the Year for its Original Concept by Independent Publisher’s Book Awards.

Happy to announce that this blog is listed as one of Feedspot’s 90 Best Tennis Blogs and Websites of 2025

Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer from Wikimedia Commons.