Sick Of It All - Hindsight

These days, Beethoven began writing his Twenty-Sixth Sonata for Piano, over the first part of which he noted: “Farewell. "On the departure of His Imperial Highness Archduke Rudolph on May 4, 1809." If you do not know what was happening at that time in Vienna, you might think that it was about sending the Archduke on a pleasant journey. In fact, Rudolph, a purely peaceful man, fled from war. There is no hint of military events in the music of Beethoven’s sonata, it’s about something else - about human feelings at the time of parting. These feelings are so subtle, ambiguous, pierced by the shimmering threads of encrypted associations, that somehow one does not really believe that the true hero of this "romance in sounds" could be Rudolph himself. Of course, not one Archduke was the one to deal with. It was simply that he was the only one who at that moment could openly and fearlessly dedicate this poem about separation, loneliness and hope for a new meeting.