The haunting melody moves the listener gently through the piece with rolling arpeggios. The first movement is dark, moody, and the most famous.
He adds the epithet Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia, which lets the listener know this piece is more free-form than the usual sonata. Each section creates a mood or theme and focuses on one central instrument (in this case, the piano).īeethoven follows the format of a sonata to a point, but as usual, he breaks more rules than he follows. Like a proper sonata, the Moonlight sonata is divided into three different movements.
