2nd movement of Moonlight Sonata-Pedal

[DuLudvig]

I played this piece today for class and performed it well...I thought, my teacher thought otherwise. Her reason, I didn't use the pedal.

My copy of the score has no pedaling suggestions and everytime I tried to add pedaling during practice it sounded Terrible!

How should it be pedaled?

Du

[faulty_damper]

The original instructions says to never use the pedal throught the entire piece.  Why?  Because he wrote it so.  And because the pianos now sound different than the one he composed the sonata on.

And another thing:  Beethoven played his sonatas using a lot more pedal than was written by him.

And this particular movement:  You have to know what this movement is: a minuet and Tri - a dance.  The opening bars is an introduction.  I imagine that it's a man introducing himself and then bowing and the woman reciprocates this.  Then they show to each other - first the man, then the woman -  and then they fall together into the dance.

About pedaling: use it a lot.  You may, depending on the sound characteristics of the piano you're playing on, have to use half damper and full damper.

I use half damper during the opening introduction, then full damper during the showing, then continue the full during the get together.

...
It sounded terrible?

Yeah, you have to be diligent about doing it.  Don't hold it for too long, otherwise it will blur.  Use short pumps and release during the down beat.