The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No.

2, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is popularly known as the "Moonlight" Sonata (Mondscheinsonate in German). The work was completed in 1801 and rumored to be dedicated to his pupil, 17-year-old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, with whom Beethoven was, or had been, in love. The name "Moonlight" Sonata derives from an 1832 description of the first movement by music critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared it to moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne.

(See also below.) Beethoven included the phrase "Quasi una fantasia" (Italian: Almost a fantasy) in the title partly because the sonata does not follow the traditional sonata pattern where the first movement is in regular sonata form, and where the three or four movements are arranged in a fast-slow-[fast]-fast sequence. Instead, the Moonlight sonata possesses an end-weighted trajectory; the climax is held off until the third movement. To be sure, the deviation from traditional sonata form is intentional.

In his analysis of the Moonlight sonata, German critic Paul Bekker states that “The opening sonata-allegro movement gave the work a definite character from the beginning…which succeeding movements could supplement but not change. Beethoven rebelled against this determinative quality in the first movement. He wanted a prelude, an introduction, not a proposition.” By placing the most dramatic form (sonata form) at the end of the piece, Beethoven could magnify the drama inherent in the form.

The work is probably the most famous of all Beethoven's piano sonatas, and is widely performed and recorded.

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