page_title: Julie Guicciardi
section_title: Connection with Beethoven
hierarchical_section_title: Julie Guicciardi / Connection with Beethoven
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of the first edition of the score for the Piano Sonata No. 14, Op. 27 No. 2. Published 1802 in Vienna by Giovanni Cappi e Comp.
context_page_description: Julie Guicciardi was an Austrian countess and briefly a piano student of Ludwig van Beethoven. He dedicated to her his Piano Sonata No. 14, later known as the Moonlight Sonata.
context_section_description: Beethoven became acquainted with Guicciardi through the Brunsvik family (often known in English as "Brunswick"). He was particularly intimate with her cousins, the sisters Therese and Josephine Brunsvik (whom he had taught the piano since 1799). In late 1801, he became Guicciardi's piano teacher, and apparently became infatuated with her. She is probably the "enchanting girl", about whom he wrote on 16 November 1801 to his friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler: "My life is once more a little more pleasant, I'm out and about again, among people – you can hardly believe how desolate, how sad my life has been since these last two years; this change was caused by a sweet, enchanting girl, who loves me and whom I love. After two years, I am again enjoying some moments of bliss, and it is the first time that – I feel that marriage could make me happy, but unfortunately she is not of my station – and now – I certainly could not marry now."
  In 1802, he dedicated to her (using the Italian form of her name "Giulietta Guicciardi" to conform with the conventions of dedications) the Piano Sonata No. 14, which although originally titled Sonata quasi una Fantasia (like its companion piece) subsequently became known by the popular nickname Moonlight Sonata. This dedication was not Beethoven's original intention, and he did not have Guicciardi in mind when writing the Moonlight Sonata. Thayer, in his Life of Beethoven, states that the work Beethoven originally intended to dedicate to Guicciardi was the Rondo in G, Op. 51 No. 2, but this had to be dedicated to Countess Lichnowsky. So he cast around at the last moment for a piece to dedicate to Guicciardi.
  In 1823, Beethoven confessed to his then-secretary and later biographer Anton Schindler, that he was indeed in love with her at the time. In his 1840 Beethoven biography, Schindler claimed that "Giulietta" was the addressee of the letter to the "Immortal Beloved". This notion was instantly questioned (though not in public) by her cousin Therese Brunsvik: "Three letters by Beethoven, allegedly to Giulietta. Could they be a hoax?" Therese's doubts were well-founded because, unlike Schindler and other contemporaries, she knew all about the intense and long-lasting romance between Beethoven and her sister Josephine: "Three letters by Beethoven ... they must be to Josephine whom he had loved passionately."
  In the 1994 film Immortal Beloved, Countess Guicciardi is played by Valeria Golino.
caption: Title page for the first edition of the Piano Sonata No. 14 (1802)
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