Adagio, from Beethoven's Sonata quasi fantasia : known as The moonlight sonata

The first movement of Beethoven's C♯ minor sonata, issued separately as it has been countless times since, because this movement alone accounts for nearly all the work's fame. Beethoven's instruction is that the whole movement be played with the dampers raised, letting the harmonies blur into one another. The music is built from almost nothing: a rocking triplet figure, a slowly breathing bass, and a melody that hardly rises above a whisper. Extracting it does leave a false impression of the sonata, whose real weight falls in the violent finale.