ABSTRACT
One of the earliest compositions to raise these issues is the so-called 'Ghost' Trio of Beethoven composed in 1808, with suggestive affinities to several contemporary narratives for which the same issues are paramount. Clearly, the sound of Beethoven's slow movement was echoing, ghostlike, in his ears, and it is still possible, another century later, to hear it on the same spectral terms. Beethoven's sketchbook for the 'Pastoral' Symphony and the op. 70 trios contains a brief entry for a projected opera on Macbeth; the entry falls on the same page as some sketches for the 'Ghost' Largo. Like Goethe's rushing water, long stretches of the piano part in Beethoven's Largo break into a cloud wave, their continuous tremolos forming the acoustic equivalent of a veil of mist. The opening flourish of the Trio is a rough outburst in bare octaves, with the strings sandwiched between the right- and left-hand piano parts.
