This sonata consists of two movements:
This short, almost enigmatic work demonstrates in a concentrated form how Beethoven was ready to challenge and even subvert the sonata structures he inherited from composers such as Haydn and Mozart.
Its overall structure is very similar to the contemporary piano sonata Op. 101.
Both movements recall the long-established convention of a slow introduction to a brisk main section in sonata form, but with significant modifications.
In the first movement, the introductory portion entirely lacks the portentousness of a conventional slow introduction, consisting of a brief elegiac theme repeated several times without change of key and largely unvaried; it concludes with an elaborate cadence in C major that is then contradicted by the sonata portion being in the relative minor, largely avoiding the key of C major except at the opening of the development.
The second movement opens more in the manner of a traditional slow introduction and eventually leads to a sonata-form portion in the 'correct' key of C. However, before this point is reached, the opening material of the sonata reappears for a final, almost ecstatic variation, a procedure paralleled elsewhere in Beethoven's work only in the drama of the fifth and ninth symphonies.
