ABSTRACT
This chapter finds possible answers to the questions of the specific intertwining of freedom and strength, fantasy and strictness in Ludwig van Beethoven's compositional process, using two examples of Beethoven's early and late styles, depending on the grace of the respective sources. The tension between formal strength and structural innovation is one of the often-remarked issues to be met in the piano sonatas of Beethoven. At first glance, form, strength and structure on the one hand, and improvisation, fantasy and freedom on the other, seem to belong to strictly separated domains. There is so much commentary literature about the Tempest Sonata that it is hardly possible to mention even the most important authors. Putting all the material together, one gets the impression of a multi-layered creative process which develops from a first continuity draft, via further mental reflection to a written-down final text, which displays more of the expected sonata-form features than the draft, but remains itself a structural riddle.
