LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Complete String Quartets including the Grosse Fugue

String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1* I. Allegro con brio 09 : 24 II. Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato 09 : 38 III. Scherzo. Allegro molto 03 : 25 IV. Allegro 06 : 05

String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2* I. Allegro 07 : 23 II. Adagio cantabile 06 : 1 8 III. Scherzo. Allegro 04 : 08 IV. Allegro molto quasi presto 05 : 34 String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3** I. Allegro 05 : 57 II. Andante con moto 09 : 40 III. Allegro 03 : 08 IV. Presto 04 : 46

String Quartet No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4** I. Allegro ma non tanto 07 : 05 II. Scherzo. Andante scherzoso quasi allegretto 06 : 02 III. Menuetto. Allegretto 04 : 1 5 IV. Allegro 04 : 1 7 String Quartet No. 5 in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5* I. Allegro 04 : 58 II. Menuetto 05 : 1 4 III. Andante cantabile 1 0 : 1 6 IV. Allegro 04 : 41

String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6* I. Allegro con brio 05 : 56 II. Adagio ma non troppo 06 : 50 III. Scherzo. Allegro 03 : 07 IV. La Malinconia. Adagio - Allegretto quasi allegro 07 : 57 String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 “Rasumovsky 1”* I. Allegro 10 : 55 II. Allegro vivace e sempre scherzando 09 : 04 III. Adagio molto e mesto 1 1 : 1 0 IV. Allegro 06 : 22

String Quartet No. 8 in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2 “Rasumovsky 2”* I. Allegro 07 : 46 II. Molto allegro 1 2 : 00 III. Allegretto 07 : 25 IV. Presto 05 : 1 9 String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 “Rasumovsky 3”* I. Andante - Allegro vivace 08 : 25 II. Andante con moto quasi allegretto 08 : 39 III. Menuetto 05 : 19 IV. Allegro molto 05 : 53

String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat Major, Op. 74 “Harp”* I. Poco adagio – Allegro 08 : 04 II. Adagio ma non troppo 09 : 5 1 III. Presto 05 : 07 IV. Allegretto con variazioni 06 : 55 String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95* I. Allegro con brio 04 : 29 II. Allegretto ma non troppo 06 : 39 III. Allegro assai vivace ma serioso - Più allegro 04 : 41 IV. Larghetto espressivo - Allegretto agitato – Allegro 04 : 47

String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat Major, Op. 127** I. Maestoso – Allegro 06 : 55 II. Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile 1 6 : 1 3 III. Scherzando vivace 07 : 04 IV. Finale 06 : 24 String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130** I. Adagio ma non troppo 09 : 42 II. Presto 0 1 : 54 III. Andante con moto ma non troppo 07 : 0 1 IV. Alla danza tedesca. Allegro assai 03 : 26 V. Cavatina. Adagio molto espressivo 06 : 34 VI. Finale. Allegro 07 : 49

String Quartet No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 131** I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo 07 : 1 1 II. Allegro molto vivace 03 : 03 III. Allegro moderato 00 : 5 1 IV. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile 1 5 : 29 V. Presto 05 : 38 VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante 02 : 05 VII.Allegro 06 : 50 String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132**

I. Assai sostenuto – Allegro 1 0 : 1 5 II. Allegro ma non tanto 07 : 06 III. Molto adagio 1 6 : 1 4 IV. Alla marcia, assai vivace 02 : 20 V. Allegro appassionato 07 : 0 1

Grosse Fugue in B-flat Major, Op. 133* 1 5 : 26 String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135**

I. Allegretto 06 : 52 II. Vivace 03 : 13 III. Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo 07 : 18 IV. Grave, ma non troppo tratto – Allegro 06 : 51

The Fine Arts Quartet Leonard Sorkin, Violin; Abram Loft, Violin; Gerald Stanick, Viola*; Irving Ilmer, Viola**; George Sopkin, Cello THE COMPLETE QUARTETS OF reading, “Zusammengestohlen aus Verschiedenem diesem und BEETHOVEN jenem,” “Put together from various stolen odds and ends.” Not The Fine Arts Quartet surprisingly, the Beethoven correspondence contains another letter, dated not long after, in which the composer assured the anxious and upset Schott that the work was really brand-new and all his. INTRODUCTION The three groups of quartets provide something like a capsule history of Beethoven’s development. Opus 18 is still very much Beethoven’s string quartets fall into three groups. These are the the work of the young man who not long before had been sent six early works of Opus 18, completed by 1801. In 1806 come the to Vienna “to receive the spirit of Mozart at the hands of Haydn.” three quartets of Opus 59, followed three and four years later In Opus 59, the pieces are longer, the pitch gamut is wider, the by Opp. 74 and 95. Then, in the last years of his life, with the dynamic range is expanded in both directions, the harmonic Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, and the final great piano vocabulary is stretched – they are in every sense “bigger”. works behind him, Beethoven returned to the quartet. In 1824, But as Beethoven’s music becomes bigger, so it also becomes he wrote Opus 127; the following year brought Opp. 132 and 130 more economical, more concise, denser. In the symphonies, (in that order); and in 1826 he completed Opp. 131 and 135 as for example, the Eroica’s first movement is extraordinarily well as an alternate finale for Opus 130. Work on Opus 131 was expansive, that of the Fifth unprecedentedly tight; then, in the finished by May 20, 1826, and on August 12, it was delivered to Ninth we find a synthesis of something that is huge and at the Schott, who paid 80 ducats for it. Beethoven caused his publisher same time contains more music per minute, per note, or what some alarm by sending the manuscript with a covering note have you, than anything previous. His immensity was a side of Beethoven which the nineteenth this march: had Beethoven lived longer, we would now clearly century immediately understood and made its own. Let us not understand the Quartet in F as one of the first works ushering forget, however, that Beethoven in his later years became more in a new stylistic period in his life. and more preoccupied with the problems of concision of form and statement. This means not only that the large movements contain no waste motion, but also that he wrote works like The Fine Arts Quartet the two-movement sonata, Opus 111, and that in the Vivace ma non troppo of the sonata, Opus 109, he designed the most The Fine Arts Quartet – Leonard Sorkin, Abram Loft, Gerald concentrated and terse sonata form movement ever written. Stanick, George Sopkin – is one of the leading concert In his later music, Beethoven, a little like Mahler, sought to ensembles of America today. And one of the most versatile. include a larger and larger vision of a whole world within Appointed Artists-in-Residence and members of the faculty each piece; at the same time, he was taking endless pains to at The University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), the four musicians create music as pure, rich, condensed, and free of gratuitous are no strangers to the classroom. But they have long been and fortuitous effect as possible. Both Beethoven’s journeys, familiar in other settings as well. Millions have seen them that toward expansion and that toward contraction, meet here on the NBC-TV Today program. The huge audience of the climactically in Opus 131. Of the late quartets, Opus 127 is the National Educational Television network has enjoyed numerous most nearly conventional, and each subsequent work takes programs by The Fine Arts Quartet, the ensemble playing and new steps toward new regions of both diversity and unity. It discussing music from Haydn to Bartok (Four score was the title should be understood, however, that Opus 135 stands outside of their most recent NET series). Concert halls – from the Pasadena Playhouse to New York’s Town THE EARLY QUARTETS Hall, from the Aspen Festival to Tanglewood; from London’s Royal Festival Hall to Melbourne’s National Gallery; from the Beethovenhalle in Bonn to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam Quartets Nos. 1-6, Opus 18, Numbers 1 through 6 to the Salle Gaveau in Paris – all have resounded with applause for the playing of this ensemble. In its native Chicago, The Fine Although it is not at all unusual for a composer’s style to Arts Quartet is in the fifth season of a concert series enjoyed by gradually evolve or even radically change during his creative an audience of close to 2,000 subscribers. life, Beethoven’s three periods do represent something entirely In a variety of languages, The Fine Arts Quartet has been unique in musical history. His creative output began during the acclaimed for “execution of the most elevated plane” (Paris), Classic period, and ended at the beginning of the Romantic typed as “a phenomenal quartet, unsurpassed” (Amsterdam), period. Clearly then, the time of Beethoven’s activity was a and – straight from the Midwest – cherished as “tender, even time of intense change, and the reason for this change was a trace Viennese” (Vienna)! More tersely, the group has been Beethoven himself. awarded the New York Time accolade: “Irresistibly eloquent”. The six STRING QUARTETS, Opus 18, were composed from 1798- 1800, and were published by Mollo of Vienna in 1801. They are the best examples of Beethoven’s early period, which was, not incidentally, his happiest. It was during this period that Beethoven synthesized the formal achievements of the Classicists Haydn and Mozart. That he learned from both of them is obvious. From Haydn, he took the concept of motivic than classical periodic repetitions. The second movement is development, later carrying it to undreamt-of heights; from more lyrical than the first; melodies with accompaniment are Mozart, he took the spirit of harmonic adventure and the the main musical texture of this sonata form movement. The concept of formal elasticity within the framework of formal third and fourth movements are quite typical: a scherzo with clarity. What emerges in this early period, then, is a synthesis of trio and sonatarondo, respectively. traits of Haydn and Mozart, leading to an overpowering sense of dynamic, evolutionary form; this synthesis came to its final QUARTET NO. 2, in G major. This quartet has a higher emotional fruition in his middle period. impact than No. 1, deriving mainly from the first movement’s rhythmical and ornamental interest. It is in sonata form, and the QUARTET NO. 1, in F major. From the very first measure, we are recapitulation again contains further development. The second aware of a unique musical personality. The main theme is merely movement is in a gradually accelerating ternary structure, a one-measure motif; how different from a Mozart theme, which with rather florid ornamental writing in the third section. is usually an entire melody. Also, we soon become aware of The scherzo and trio are typical, except that the trio is in the another distinctively Beethovian trait – sudden accents, usually subdominant, rather than dominant key. The fourth movement on weak beats, tending to drive the rhythm compulsively is again in sonata form; the clearly defined tonality of G major forward. The second theme of this sonata form movement is given a rather interesting poignancy when the development contrasts with the first in being harmonically unstable. The section begins in Eb major. This relationship of thirds becomes recapitulation is quite different from the exposition, giving an quite common in Beethoven’s middle period. Other interesting early indication of Beethoven’s sense of dynamic form, rather aspects of this movement are the performance designations “sul D” and “sul una corda”, this type of instrumental precision which the recapitulation is almost identical to the exposition. also prefigures later practices. QUARTET NO. 4, in C minor. The first movement is an emotionally QUARTET NO. 3, in D major. The first movement is in sonata form; powerful sonata structure. Beethoven’s impatience with characteristically, the development begins almost immediately, classical formalism is illustrated by the second movement: it is after the theme’s striking initial leap finally comes to rest. There a scherzo. Opening with a fugato, it is strikingly similar to the are the typical weak-beat accents, and the second key area is second movement of Symphony No. 1, which dates from this C# major, which is quite unusual. The second movement is in a period. The third movement returns to the classical mold – a two-part structure, in which the second develops the first: A A’. It minuet and trio. As in Quartet No. 3, Beethoven is impatient is in B flat, again emphasizing the relationship, harmonically, of with exact repetitions, again illustrating his rebellion against thirds, but on an overall structural level here, as opposed to the formalism. In this movement, the rebellion has two aspects: the inner tension created by this same kind of progression in Quartet trio’s second section is not repeated, and the da capo of the No. 2’s last movement. All the other movements in Opus 18 are Minuet is played faster than the initial statement. The fourth closely harmonically related to the main key of the work. The movement is a spirited rondo. scherzo of the third movement is in D major; the trio is labeled “minore” (it is in D minor) and the scherzo recapitulation, QUARTET NO. 5, in A major. The first movement is, as usual, a which is written out and slightly varied, is labelled “maggiore”. sonata structure; the development begins vaguely in C sharp After this experimentation with traditional practices, the fourth minor, hinting at harmonic progression by thirds. The second movement seems rather regressive, being a sonata structure in movement is a minuet and trio, formally typical, but “out of order” in the overall classical scheme, just as in Quartet No. This moving introduction yields to a gay little rondo. These are 4. But this quartet does not return to the usual scheme in its necessarily only brief descriptions of some of the formal and third movement, as the previous quartet did; this quartet’s aesthetic foundations of Beethoven’s Opus 18. This music must third movement is a theme and five variations, plus coda. In be experienced aurally, and when so done, the listener becomes each variation, the melody is clearly discernible; the particular fully aware of the profundity of musical imagination and depth character of each variation is derived from an accompanimental of emotional expression to which words can only allude. The configuration. The coda brings the movement to a quiet enthusiastic listener is advised to continue his perusal of conclusion. The fourth movement is a typically classical sonata Beethoven’s three periods by experiencing the middle and late structure, both themes being developed. period quartets; only then can the full impact of these early masterpieces be seen in their clearest perspective. QUARTET NO. 6, in B-flat major. As in the last movement of Quartet No. 5, Beethoven is classically oriented in the first movement of this quartet. Both movements have contrasting second themes, but in this quartet’s first movement, only the first theme is developed. The second movement is a ternary (ABA) design, the middle section using new material and key areas. The third movement is a scherzo and trio. The fourth movement has a dramatic introduction, entitled “La Maliconia”; Beethoven directs it to be played with “the greatest delicacy”. THE MIDDLE QUARTETS with so much emotion as must always be spilled inadvertently into his creations by a craftsman of genius; it was a sublimated The period during which the Middle Quartets were written slice of the composer’s emotional life. Craftsmanship was covers the years from around 1806 to 1810: the three Quartets, becoming more and more a means only, not an end – and we Opus 59 date from 1806-7, Opus 74 from 1809, and Opus 95 from must acknowledge that in reducing it to a mere means the 1810. During these same years, Beethoven composed his Fifth composer lost a good deal of the pure joy of it.” and Sixth Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, the E flat Piano Concerto, and the music to Egmont. It is clear that something different is happening, musically, in Beethoven’s late period than in his early period, and Historians have divided Beethoven’s works into three that difference – the shift from Classicism to Romanticism periods, not without basis. It is interesting to quote the noted – subtly takes place throughout his middle period. Instead musicologist, Gerald Abraham, as he reflects upon this middle of the controlled formal structuring of the early works, period, which saw the closing of Classicism and the opening of Beethoven begins to shift toward a more liberated, freely Romanticism: breathing attitude in his compositions. The emphasis begins “With Romanticism – one sees signs of the new attitude in late to shift from the overpowering first movement and distinctly Haydn and late Mozart, years before Beethoven’s maturity – the separate movements of the Classic period, to a powerful whole conception, not of the quartet, but of music itself was concluding movement, thus giving the work a dynamic sweep changing. A sonata or symphony or quartet was no longer a which projects toward a conclusion as a whole, enlarges the more or less objective piece of craftsmanship, shot through only psychological time span of the music, and creates an inner drama from the character of the music itself, which is closely Quartets Nos. 7-9, Opus 59, No. 1, 2, 3 akin to human drama. In the later decades of the Romantic period (nineteenth century), composers articulate this drama The QUARTET, Opus 59, No. 1 is musically very much of the Classic ever more emphatically, by use of leitmotifs, one-movement period, but design wise it looks forward. The first movement, forms, and finally, the cyclical structure form. with its ABA Coda scheme, motivic development, including a fughetta, is very much straight forward in its proportions; it The three Quartets of Opus 59 are commonly referred to as conforms to the Classical mold, except for the final statement the “Rasumovsky Quartets”, since they are dedicated to the of the main subject which is set to a chordal accompaniment, Count Rasumovsky, an amateur violinist and composer, who for re-emphasis before embarking on the Coda, which begins commissioned them. some further development, but quickly settles down to a conclusion. It is almost singularly unique to find a scherzo in the ABA schematic design, but that is the case in this second movement (unique in itself to find the scherzo as the second, rather than third movement), a light-hearted scherzo, written out rather than utilizing repeat signs, with the opening rhythmic motif permeating the entire movement. Both the third and fourth movements are also in the ABA design, and there is no pause between them; a florid violin solo at the end of the Coda of the third movement leads directly to the fourth movement, perhaps prefiguring the recitative-like sections of Beethoven’s unisons increase the dramatic tension, as does the chromatic late period. It is clear that this conjoining of movements has the development. Two chords dynamically introduce the main effect of more heavily weighting the ending of the Quartet as subject and key area, then – a full measure’s silence, as if to a whole, even though the musical language per se is decidedly regather forces. Then, there is the use of chromatic development, Classical. The fourth movement utilizes a “Russian” theme, also wherein small melodic intervals contrast with the great range carried out in the trio of Opus 59, No. 2 (both themes derived of harmonic change; this chromatic development seems from the collection of Ivan Prach), that is the main building derived from the cadential material which closes both the first block of the movement, the development section mostly and second subjects. The use of silences – heard again at the concentrating on it. beginning of the development section – create the need for a movement of great proportions to balance this dramatic effect, The QUARTET, Opus 59, No. 2, clearly leans forward in direction a need which is met partially by the chromatic development, – musically and constructionally. The mood of personal partially by the repeated development-recapitulation, and communication which is so prevalent in Beethoven’s late finally by the use of unisons, which slowdown the motion in period is very much evident in this quartet. The first movement order to bring the recapitulation and quiet ending. The second is different in many ways from Classical conceptions. In the movement, again cast in ABA form, is wonderfully rhapsodic first place, the design, while ABA, calls a repetition of the in feeling, with a fantastically absorbing harmonic continuum development-recapitulation section, as is sometimes seen which seldom rests. It is a truly passionate movement, which in Mozart, and this repetition gives an entirely different Beethoven marks “The point of this movement (piece) is very perspective to the movement. Secondly, the use of silences and expressive.” The harmonic grandeur gives rise to a movement of very large proportions, which finally comes to rest on a Pedal In fact, the tonality is not reached until after the beginning E in the Coda, only after one last chromatic chordal outburst. The of the allegro. The movement is in an ABA coda design. The third movement is not a typical scherzo; rather, it’s a movement second movement, also in ABA design, features a unique cello with scherzo design (ABABA) in triple meter. It’s somewhat more accompaniment, played pizzicato. The texture of the movement heavily weighted than the usual scherzo, bringing the Brahms is basically homophonic, i.e. solos with accompaniment. A Symphonies to mind; indeed, the second section of the scherzo feeling of melancholy seems to pervade the movement, as a is more dramatic than the first, again atypical. The trio uses few simple motifs develop and overlap, going through some another “Russian” theme, which finally moves to a four-voice distant keys. Logically enough, the movement ends with the stretto after several solo appearances. The fourth movement, as Cello pizzicato assuming the solo, rather than accompanimental in the previous three, has irregular phrases; it is in a modified role, much as the conclusion of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8’s rondo structure, which incorporated ABA design – it is graphed second movement. The third movement is a Classical menuetto thus: A B A (developed) B (developed) A (developed) coda. A and trio, with a coda which, rather than ending the movement, remarkable ending to a singular quartet. introduces the fourth movement, which follows immediately from the third. This fourth movement a powerful fugue has The QUARTET, Opus 59, No. 3, moves ever closer to the Romantic a double exposition, with the contours of the developments period, with its conjoined third and fourth movements, the remaining the same. The episodes feature some marvelous latter being a powerful fugue. The introduction to the first textures. Trills announce the coda, which becomes a kind movement is an intriguing harmonic movement, seeking to of Rossini spin – a gradual gathering of momentum – here establish the central tonality – it begins on a diminished chord! heightened by a dramatic pause. In this last quartet of Opus 59, there is no question but that the emphasis has shifted, movement. The third movement is a very energetic scherzo, dramatically, so that the work as a whole takes on the dramatic with a repeated trio, giving an overall ABABA design, with shape of a large arch, directed towards a specific goal. neither the second B nor third A section shortened. The coda to this third movement serves as an introduction to the fourth movement, which follows immediately, in a structure akin to Quartet No. 10, Opus 74 Opus 59, No. 1. The last movement is a theme and variations with coda; the variations are easily followed. Although they maintain The QUARTET, Opus 74, dates from 1809 and is dedicated to the structural outlines, the textures of these variations vary Prince von Lobkowitz. It is called the “Harp” Quartet, owing to considerably. The coda ends on an interesting unison passage, the pizzicato passages in the first movement. This movement is played very loudly, then a few quiet chords, as if to compensate rather unique in that the pizzicato becomes a textural element for the attempt at overall design which the conjoining of third which is developed, rather than melodic, motivic or harmonic; and fourth movements portends, but doesn’t fulfill in the this type of developmental practice does not become prevalent fourth movement’s relative lack of weight, perhaps a result of until the twentieth century. The unison writing is also some- the sectionalized nature of theme and variations treatment. what of a textural conception, although less so than the pizzicato. The movement is in the ABA design, with an introduction and coda. The second movement is a rondo with a lyrical theme, which is differently ornamented at each return; the pizzicato, in the next to last return, in the viola, is reminiscent of the first Quartet No. 11, Opus 95 immediately follows the second. The fourth movement, after a slow, lyrical introduction, gradually moves to the quartet’s The QUARTET, Opus 95, dates from 1810, and is dedicated to main key, F minor. The main body of the movement is a rondo, Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanowecz, to whom Haydn had formally key oriented, but the coda moves into F major, where dedicated his “Sun” Quartets, Opus 20. This Quartet is called the quartet closes. Closing a piece in the parallel major was “Serioso” because of the melancholy atmosphere which common practice, but this coda seems to once again throw the pervades the first three movements. The first movement, in perceptive listener into conjectures regarding the overall – or ABA Coda design, is characterized by abrupt harmonic changes possible overall – design of the quartet – conjectures which, and the rugged rhythm of the first theme; it seems incomplete, in their ensuing dialogue, perhaps help in understanding the since it ends quietly and is quite short in duration. The second dynamic change in musical history that occurred during the movement is also in the ABA design, and also quiet, as if period when Beethoven was writing his middle quartets. continuing in mood where the first movement left off. The key areas are more systematically exploited in the development section than they were in the first movement, perhaps owing to the more lyrical character of the theme which is developed – as opposed to the motif which was developed in file first movement. The third movement is a scherzo with repeated trio, but in the quartet the repeated trio and third repeat of the scherzo are somewhat abbreviated; this movement THE LATE QUARTETS Zeuner, the violist in his private quartet, persuaded him to turn to Beethoven instead. Thus Galitzin became the dedicatee of the Quartets Opus 127, 130, and 132, as well as of the Consecration Quartet No. 12, Opus 127 of the House Overture. He was also able to render Beethoven a notable service by arranging for the first performance of the When, early in 1822, Beethoven’s mind turned to the string Missa Solemnis, which took place in St. Petersburg, April, 1824. quartet, he had done nothing in that genre in a dozen years. Twice in the early summer of that year, he offered the By then, however, Galitzin had not yet received any of his publisher, Peters, a quartet for 50 ducats. After Peters turned quartets. Beethoven had taken up his sketches again early the offer down in July, the composer seems to have laid in 1823, but he soon interrupted himself in order to complete aside his sketches for the time being. In November, however, the Ninth Symphony. It was not until the summer of 1824 that there arrived a commission for “un deux ou trois nouveaux he returned to the E flat Quartet – the intervening period Quatours,” to be written for a Russian visitor to Vienna, Prince had seen the completion of the Diabelli Variations and of the Nicolas Galitzin. The Prince, the composer’s junior by a quarter Missa Solemnis as well – and he finished it in February 1825. century, was a good cellist, he was married to an accomplished The Schuppanzigh Quartet played it on March 6, and not well, pianist, and he was enough of an enthusiast to have made but an ensemble led by Joseph Böhm gave a more successful quartet and quintet transcriptions of a good many Beethoven reading later that month. Beethoven meanwhile offered the piano sonatas. Having been much excited by Der Freischütz, piece to the publisher Schott as part of a package with the Missa his first thought had been to offer a commission to Weber, but Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony, and shortly afterwards Schott advertised “the loftiest summit of instrumental music, and in any case marked ff for the first time. The recapitulation the much admired new quartet by the master of our time.” slips in without its majestic preface, and the movement, so full of quiet sophistications of rhythm and of rhetoric, ends with an For Beethoven, E flat major was always a key of broad epigram. gestures, and the majestic declamation of the first six bars of Opus 127 is one of his typical E flat openings in the tradition The second movement is marked Adagio (“but not too much of the Eroica and the “Emperor” Piano Concerto. The passage so, and very cantabile,” adds the composer), and its theme is is not exactly an introduction. It is on a far smaller scale than varied six times. Late in life, Beethoven turned to the variation Beethoven’s real introductions, and the way it dissolves with form more and more frequently, often using it in contemplative a trill into the Allegro brings to mind rather those Beethoven breadth, as here, in striking contrast to the terseness of his themes or thematic groups that embody two distinct tempi. sonata form movements. Beginning from the cello’s low E The Piano Sonatas Opus 31, No. 2 and Opus 109 are examples for flat – heard as part of the previous movement’s last sound – that, and the next Quartet, Opus 130, was to provide another. Beethoven builds up a chord by adding the viola’s low D flat, a The Allegro is to be played “tenderly” at the beginning, and B flat in the second violin, another D flat in the first. Beethoven the wistful mood is perhaps illuminated by the knowledge has a way of impressing a most personal sense of signature that some of the early sketches for this music are entitled “La on an ordinary chord by a virtue of its voicing, and here is a gaieté.” Twice the Maestoso returns, first in the brilliant G major remarkable example. His so-called common chords are never to begin the development, and then again two thirds through ordinary: one would know the “Emperor” Concerto’s opening that section in an immensely sonorous C major, made so by anywhere, and no D major chord in the world sounds like the spacings that use the greatest number of ringing open strings, one that begins the Missa Solemnis. The violin’s continued upward climb expands into soaring melody whose first strain The sound of plucked strings, so prominent in the Adagio but is then echoed by the cello. The theme’s second half is a similar hereafter not to be heard in this quartet, starts the Scherzo with dialogue (a feature that is quite precisely reproduced in the first four chords that in the neatest possible way define rhythm, and third variations), and there are two measures of conclusion. speed, and key. The movement is dominated by the hopping A characteristic touch is the subtlety of Beethoven’s harmonic figure heard immediately in the cello. The large rhythmic rhythm: for example, at the beginning, the melody’s arrival on picture here, as throughout this work, is fascinatingly varied, the keynote is not, as expected, backed by the tonic chord in its thanks to the cross rhythms, the silences, and the interruptions strongest position, but rather the sense of downbeat is diffused of meter and speed by the occasional intrusions of 2/4 Allegro. by the less emphatic E flat in the bass. The theme’s final These always occur in bare octaves and serve to emphasize cadence is likewise idiosyncratic in its deployment of dominant Beethoven’s use of texture and timbre to define and clarify and tonic chords. Subtle and densely inventive as they are, the thematic content. The trio introduces new contrasts of mode, variations are nonetheless quite easy to follow. An expressive motion, and scoring. At the end there is just a suggestion of climax is reached with the third variation, which with a sense Beethoven’s occasional habit of a double voyage around the of profound mystery is placed in distant E major, arriving in that scherzo-trio-scherzo cycle, but the impending expansion is remote region, characteristically enough, not by modulation choked off (cf. the corresponding spot in the Ninth Symphony), but by a gesture of god-like ease with which Beethoven simply and like the first movement, the third ends epigrammatically. lifts a C to C sharp, and rises from there to the new keynote. There is a sublime reminder of all this in the coda which, in Schubert must have had studied the Adagio of Opus 127 very the midst of its silences and soft pizzicatos, again touches for a carefully, and the finale, too, left its mark on the younger man’s fleeting and shattering moment in E major. Cello Quintet. Beethoven’s robust rhythms, almost gypsy- like, are offset by a generally gentle dynamic level, and – as He was even prepared to offer an extra 15 ducats for such a always in his late music – by a choice of chords that are not movement. Accordingly, in September 1826 Beethoven sketched the most emphatic. As the Finale seems to be drawing toward the present Allegro finale, and he composed it out in October its close, the motion relaxes, an E natural make its unexpected and November while staying with his brother Johann in the appearances, and then the tempo dissolves into a long trill on village of Gneixendorff, whose name, Beethoven always said, a C major chord. Scales move mysteriously about an altogether sounded like the breaking of an axletree. The alternate finale unearthly translation of the main theme, first in C, then in A was actually the last music Beethoven completed. The original flat, then back to the Adagio’s heavenly regions of E, and at last version with fugal finale was played by the Schuppanzigh home to E flat. And with a marvelous breadth, wholly purified Quartet on 21 March 1826; the revised edition was heard for the of rhetorical pretensions, the quartet moves to its conclusion, to first time on 22 April 1827, twenty-seven days after Beethoven’s the last miracle of rhythmic and harmonic delicacy. death. The now displaced fugue was published separately as Opus 133. Opus 127 was finished in February, 1825, Opus 132 in July of that year, while work on Opus 130 occupied Beethoven from August Quartet No. 13, Opus 130 until November. The opus numbers refer to publication rather than composition; therefore, they do not quite correspond to The history of Opus 130 is complicated by there being two finales. the works’ chronological order. Originally it ended in an immense fugue, which was so difficult The choice between the fugue and the other finale is not just a musically and technically, for players and for listeners, that the matter of playing one piece or playing another. The fugue is a publisher Artaria suggested a new finale might be in order. composition so extraordinary, not only in itself but in its effect upon its musical surroundings, that Opus 130 is actually two Opus 109). The relation of the two contrasting tempi is most pieces all according to how it ends, so different are its balances conspicuously exploited at the start of the development, where and foci, its distribution of light and shade. For that reason, this half a dozen shifts are made in less than twice that many bars, record offers both finales, and the listener may choose which and again in the coda. Opus 130 he wants to hear. The second movement, Presto, goes by with almost incredible Like all the late quartets, Opus 130 is a deeply integrated work, swiftness. However miniature, it is a complete scherzo with a and it is integrated not only within itself but with Opp. 132 and contrasting trio, and with leisure even for a rather elaborate 131 as well. All three quartets use pairs of semitones as source retransition to the scherzo, a passage that features those material, Opus 132 starts with contrary motion pairs (G#-A, F-E), mysterious eruptions of unison writing and the suggestions of Opus 131 uses a more complex pattern (G#-A brackets B#-C#), recitative that one meets so often in the late Beethoven. and the present work starts with a straight chromatic descent The third movement is marked Andante con moto, ma non (Bb-A, Ab-G). The opening Adagio, ma non tanto, from which troppo, and it is neither slow nor fast: the pulse is leisurely, but the Allegro violin-run emerges so suddenly (cf. the opening of the surface is active. Just as the scherzo with semitones (F-Gb), Opus 132) is more than an introduction. After only five measures so does this movement begin with a preliminary sigh (Bb-Bbb) of Allegro we are back in the slow tempo again. The Adagio does before the viola, in its deepest register, intones one of those not „introduce“ the movement; rather, it is part of it, and the naive tunes that come up so astoundingly in late Beethoven. juxtaposition of two tempi within one larger idea is essential This is perhaps the most sensuously beautiful movement in here (cf. Opus 127, and also Piano Sonatas, Opus 31, No. 2 and the Beethoven quartets: certainly no other is as complex in its handling of the medium or has its sonorities so precisely worked how methodical that madness is!) – in all these things we find out. It is far easier to imagine a deaf man’s planning Opus 130 an inventiveness that, with its sheer life, thrills one to deepest in its totality than to think of his conceiving as sheer sound, joy. say, the effect of the pizzicatos in this movement, or the weight of the slow trills first heard in the viola in the 15th measure. It is over but we hear the G again, two of them, in second violin Beethoven has no time for purely rhetorical repetitions of final and viola, but profoundly solemnized by the E flat the cello cadences as in his earlier music: his movements end with their provides as bass. Only Stravinsky is as idosyncratic as Beethoven last phase, this one almost with sense of epigram. about the spacing and doubling of the notes in common chords. This is the famous Cavatina, about which we cite the testimony So far Beethoven has exploited the flat side of the harmonic of Karl Holz, a string player, friend of Beethoven’s, and the spectrum in his choice of keys (B flat major and minor, and D middleman between the composer and his publisher, Artaria: flat major) and in the direction of the modulations. Now we “For [Beethoven] the crown of all quartet-movements, and his are suddenly in brightest G major for a German country dance, favorite piece was the Cavatina ... He truly composed it in tears Allegro assai, a movement first planned for Opus 132. It seems to of melancholy, and he confessed to me that never had any piece be of utmost simplicity, but careful listening to its rhythms, the of his own affected him so, and that even the recollection of its register shifts within its tunes, and most of all that moment near emotions [Zurückempfinden] always cost him fresh tears.” The the end when the theme becomes completely disintegrated – brief section of stammering, broken recitation by the first violin single bars are played solo by the instruments in succession, is marked “Beklemmt,” for which Tovey, with beautiful insight, but they seem to come in a completely mad order (but again, suggests the translation, ‘‘straitened,” in its biblical sense. And then follows the fugue! Its opening alone is startling relations with Haydn, the man whom Beethoven’s patrons enough: those powerfully characterized fragments that seem conceived only as the intermediary from whose hands he was to lead nowhere, but only to break off into silences and new “to receive the spirit of Mozart,” the man whom Beethoven beginnings. Puzzling as it seems, it is actually a table of contents found so unsatisfactory as a teacher and from whom perhaps that Beethoven has provided, and these bare suggestions of he really believed he learned nothing, the Haydn who was – for musical thought are successively and fully developed as the all that – the artist whose heir he was uniquely qualified to fugue unfolds. Inevitably, all this becomes the focal point for become. the whole Quartet. The function of the substitute finale is less commanding. When the 1826 Allegro is played, we do not have Beethoven was once asked which of his own late quartets he the impression of five movements functioning as a collective thought was the best, and his judicious answer was “Each in its upbeat to something greater not only than any single one own way.” But about the B flat major he went on to say, “You of them, but greater even than their sum. Rather, the center will find a new manner of voice-treatment, and, thank God, of gravity is thrown back to the first movement and into there is less lack of fancy than ever before.” the Cavatina. Beethoven took great pains to match the 1826 Allegro to the Quartet. Like the Fugue it starts from G (those G’s so prominent in the Cavatina’s G-heavy E flat major), and Quartet No. 14, Opus 131 its opening was carefully studied by Schubert as we can hear the finale of the posthumous B flat Piano Sonata. Altogether, Beethoven’s nephew Karl is one of the most tiresome bits of the finale is a touching and an ironic comment on Beethoven’s musico-biographical apparatus to plague the writer and the reader of program notes, and he has not failed to find his way Regiment, stationed at Iglau, in Moravia. Von Stutterheim into the history of his loving uncle’s String Quartet in C sharp was the Commanding Officer who, upon the persuasion minor, Opus 131. He is hidden behind the dedication to Baron of Beethoven’s friend, Stephan von Breuning, took on this von Stutterheim, a personage who does not otherwise appear thankless responsibility, and immortality on the title page of in the Beethoven biography. On March 10, 1827, less than three Opus 131 was his reward. The person to whom Beethoven had weeks before his death, Beethoven wrote to his publisher, originally intended to dedicate the quartet was the cloth- Schott: “According to my letter, the Quartet was to be dedicated merchant, Johann Nepomuk Wolfmayer, a kindly soul of whom to one whose name I have already sent to you. Since then, there it is said that from time to time he would secretly remove some has been an occurrence which has led me to make a change of the shabbier of Beethoven’s garments from their place, in this. It must be dedicated to Lieutenant-Field-Marshall von substituting new wares for them. He became the dedicatee of Stutterheim, to whom I am deeply indebted. If you have already Beethoven’s last Quartet, Opus 135 in F. engraved the first dedication, I beg of you, by everything in this world, to change it, and I will gladly pay the cost. Do not accept Opera 132, 130, and 131, are linked by the importance of the half- this as an empty promise; I attach so much importance to it that step motive they share. The semitone is twice present in the I am ready to make any compensation for it.” first four notes of the fugue, Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo, with which Opus 131 opens. The connection of the The occurrence to which Beethoven referred was that, following second and third notes, B#-C#, is at once clear, but at the same Karl’s suicide attempt in July 1826, a cadetship had been found time everything about the dynamics and phrasing throws a for the difficult and unfortunate boy in the Archduke Ludwig spotlight on the fourth note, A, making it the destination of the whole idea from its initial G#. Thus a double relationship designed to keep the connection with the first movement ever becomes audible; the semitone B#-C# in the middle is in the listener’s ears. bracketed by the semitone G#-A. For Beethoven to begin an instrumental work with a slow movement is rare indeed, one The third section, marked first Allegro moderato, than Adagio, has to go back 25 years to the piano sonata in the same key, is not really a movement at all, but rather an 11-measure bridge the so-called Moonlight, for a precedent. Toward the end of of recitative formulas (the first violin’s last four notes are the the fugue, powerful dynamic and harmonic impulses propel cadential recitative cliché par excellence!). The key signature is the music toward a great climax with a strong coloring of the already that of the subsequent movement, A major, and the subdominant minor, F sharp, thence to subside onto chords music from chords of B minor to A majors dominant, E, to prepare of C sharp major which softly throb into almost silence. All the variations, Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile. The disappears from the final chord except the C sharps themselves: theme here is of that utter simplicity, melodic and harmonic, an octave rise of C sharps in the cello is echoed by a similar skip that we find more in the late Beethoven than at any other in the viola and first violin, and then echoed again by all three time in his life. Again, semitones are of central importance: in instruments a half step higher, D to D#. The second movement, skeleton form, the tune reads A-G#, D-C# – the elements of Allegro molto vivace, has begun. Growing thus organically out the fugue subject shuffled! What is far from simple, however, is of the Adagio, it does not at once find its proper pace, and its first the scoring, and that is a point worth dwelling upon. The very immediate destination is a ritardando in the seventh bar. The naive person wonders how a deaf man composes music at all; manner is that of a rather gentle scherzo, the structure that of the more sophisticated one feels superior in his knowledge that a sonata form of remarkable subtlety in the harmonic leanings, “the inner ear” is what really matters, and perhaps he has even been told that Beethoven’s physical isolation is the very cause two lines of the accompaniment have become four. There are of his great originality. One of the most astounding facets of six complete variations in all: they are very regular, easy to Beethoven’s late quartets is the beauty and uncanny precision of follow and an extremely diverse and profound exploration of their actual sounds, colorings, voicings, textures, and balances. the theme. What seems to be a seventh variation is approached It is easier to imagine a deaf man’s conceiving the ground plan by way of a deceptive cadence (the one Wagner liked so of the whole Quartet, than it is to understand how, with the well in Meistersinger), but, at what should be the end of its most recent memory of physical sound two decades in the first paragraph, it dissolves into chains of trills, and by other past, he arrived at those subtle deployments of doublings and curiosities more amusing to hear than to read about, the music spacings that make this movement, with the Andante con moto establishes clearly its character as one of Beethoven’s most of Opus 130, one of the great acoustic miracles of all music. elaborate codas. There are in fact, 58 measures before the music finally stops. It is a wryly comic equivalent of the gropings The theme to be varied consists of two sections of eight bars Beethoven had previously worked out in tragic-dramatic style apiece, each repeated. Excepting only the second half of at the beginning of the Hammerklavier Sonata’s finale. Variation V, the repeats are written out, or rather recomposed. The trend is always from simplicity to complexity, and in this, Here occurs the closest thing to a full stop in the whole work. the variations might be read as a microcosm of the whole work. The cello rumbles noisily and starts a Presto in E major, a wild Hear how in the repeat of the theme’s first eight measures, the scherzo that twice makes the voyage to Trio and da capo before melody’s phrases now succeed each other an octave apart it winds up in a coda where the scherzo proper and the trio instead of in the same register, as before, and hear how the suffer violent collision, and in which Beethoven uses the “rats’ feet on broken glass” effect of having the players play with the growing emphasis on the key of D – remember that the the bow virtually on the bridge. The link of this movement to whole work’s first large harmonic move was from the first to the next parallels that of the first two movements: the final the second movement, C sharp to D – and at the end, as in the cadence is simply repeated at another pitch. G sharp is the note fugue, much is made of the subdominant, F sharp, leading once so dramatically introduced, and its implication is that it will be more to a close in C sharp major. The major close is far from a preparatory for a return to the quartet’s main key, C sharp. So conventionally triumphant one – it comes far too late and too indeed it turns out, but the cadence, G#-C#, is much larger than quickly for that, and it seems that the last of Beethoven’s great we expect, for Beethoven stops to turn G sharp (minor) into a tragedies ends on a note of the most terrible agony. key in which we hear a brief song-like movement, Adagio quasi un poco andante. It is transitional in character; after a while, G sharp does become a true dominant and thus paves the way for Quartet No. 15, Opus 132 the finale, Allegro. The sketches for Opus 132 really go back to 1823 when what is For the first time since the fugue we are in C sharp minor, in a now the last movement’s principal theme was what Beethoven stormy sonata-form movement whose first idea, in outline C#- had in mind for the Ninth Symphony’s finale before the idea G#“-A-B#, is yet another reshuffling of the quartet’s first notes. came to him of making that a choral piece. The bulk of the A little later we hear much of this in the order C#-B#-A-G#“, sketches for the Quartet date to late 1824, right after the first and the sense of a great circle closing becomes more and more serious work on Opus 127. Concentrated work began in February vivid as the music goes on. More links are established with 1825. Then came a serious illness in early spring, the recovery being commemorated in the Holy Song of Thanksgiving, the high register and then stated more expansively by the violin. Molto Adagio in this work. By May, Beethoven was again well Here, too, we find the four-note motto, but now varied so as enough to compose, and he finished Opus 132 in late July. to reverse the order of its first two notes. The movement is Schlesinger of Berlin undertook to publish it by September, extraordinarily unified in its material, which makes the more but there were so many delays that it became a posthumous miraculous its many changes of mood, pace, and texture. It publication. The Schuppanzigh Quartet played the music on ends with a tough trumpet-like outburst of energy. November 6, 1825, and again on the 20th. The second movement, Allegro ma non tanto, establishes In the first two notes – G#-A in the cello – we meet the idea a lilting triple meter. Once again we hear pairs of semitones that is to dominate not only this quartet but the two succeeding the first four notes are G#-A, C#-D – and the figure of the first ones as well. In fact, in Beethoven’s notebooks the ideas for three notes is constantly kept before us as part of the fabric. the introduction of this work are completely intermingled with Beethoven can sometimes make miracles from the most those for the opening of what we now know as the Great Fugue, ordinary things, and he has done it nowhere more touchingly Opus 133, but which was originally the finale of Opus 130. The than in the trio, where a country dance tune, with pedal drone cello’s phrase actually consists of two pairs of semitones, one and all, becomes transfigured at a great height into something up (G#-A), and one down (F-E), and for eight measures all the distant and mysterious. The retransition combines the shock instruments gravely discourse this idea. Then the first violin of a completely new texture, that of deep octaves, with the breaks loose in a brief flight of sixteenths, and the Allegro is shock of our recognition of yet another variant of the work’s under way with a phrase sung by the cello in an unexpectedly fundamental motive. Then comes the most famous movement in the Beethoven continues serenely on a chord so airy that even the cello is in quartets, the Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent the treble register. to the Deity. Sometimes in his later music’s more solemn moments, Beethoven leaves our familiar major and minor There is a special kind of Beethoven march, terse, full of keys and explores the mystic realms of the church modes. The unexpected twists and witticisms, and apt to be quite fierce. Hammerklavier Sonata’s gravest cadences are modal, and in the There is a fine theatrical example in the first act of Fidelio, and Missa Solemnis, the Dorian Et Incarnatus Est is of an unearthly quite a mad one in the A major Piano Sonata, Opus 101. Here exaltation. Here in Opus 132, Beethoven uses the Lydian mode, in Opus 132 is its shortest and perhaps saddest incarnation. It as phrases of a hymnal cast are framed by more rapid figuration is over almost as soon as begun. Without break it leads into in the manner of a chorale-prelude. The quietly searching an impassioned vocal recitative by the first violin. The most figuration is based on a modal variant C-A-G of the previous famous of Beethoven’s instrumental recitatives is of course movement’s main idea (G#-A-C#), and so from its first notes the one for cellos and basses in the Ninth Symphony, but they the hymn is an organic continuation of what comes before. The occur more than once in the late quartets. This one bursts into a hymn itself is twice restated, or rather, varied, and between its great swoop not unlike the one that set the first Allegro of this appearance there is the piercing contrast of brilliant D major, a quartet into motion, and it ends on the exclamation, F-G#-A-E, faster tempo (Andante), and a triple meter. Beethoven marks still another reshuffling of the quartet’s four germinal notes. this “feeling new strength”. In its last and rhythmically most For that matter, to the final E there is added a sigh of F-E. That intense statement, the hymn rises to a radiant climax, but was still in free recitative, but those two notes are taken up this Adagio, the last of Beethoven’s long slow movements, in rhythm by the second violin, accompanying the first violin in a new melody which at once gives us the other pair, A-G#, He was even prepared to offer an extra 15 ducats for such a to produce still another view of an old idea. The first violin’s movement. Accordingly, Beethoven worked out a new finale melody is that once destined to finish the Ninth Symphony. The from September to November 1826, and the fugue was exiled. whole movement is of almost febrile urgency, which seems It had first been heard as part of the whole quartet played by intensified when, toward the end, A minor becomes A major, the Schuppanzigh Quartet on 21 March 1826, and it was later especially with all the very high cello writing. As almost always published separately as Opus 133, and with a dedication to the in late Beethoven, there are no merely formal conclusions, but Archduke Rudolph. In this context, Opus 134 should also be all remains involved and thematic to the last sound. mentioned: it is Beethoven’s own piano duet arrangement of the fugue, difficult to find, impossible to play, but a fascinating and illuminating document in the life of the Great Fugue. Grosse Fugue, Opus 133 Opus 133 stands well separately, but certain of its features Opus 133 is always known as The Great Fugue. Beethoven become clear only in the light of its origins. The opening is an himself had referred to it as “Grosse Fuge, tantôt libre, tantôt example: why should a fugue in B flat begin with so emphatic recherché.” Originally, it had stood as the finale of the B flat an insistence on G? Its place as the sixth movement of Opus 130 major Quartet, Opus 130, for which work it had been center provides the answer: there the fourth movement had stood in of gravity and climactic focus. It had proved so difficult G major, and the fifth, the famous Cavatina in E flat, but with musically and technically, for players and for listeners, that the strong and unusual emphasis on the third of its home chord, publisher Artaria suggested a new finale might be in order. in other words, on G. The opening of the Fugue continues the thought, and Beethoven took care to make the substitute finale the first violin to a quiet chordal accompaniment, in another of 1826 match it in at least this respect. The opening motto of the key, quite calmly, and it is immediately repeated by the cello, Fugue is also not a self-standing concept. In Beethoven’s sketch- to which the upper instruments one at a time add a flowing books, this opening is inextricably intermingled with sketches counterpoint in sixteenth notes. Then it is played again, solo, for the opening of the A minor Quartet, Opus 132. No wonder, very quietly, but with curious hesitations. Each one of these for they are almost identical. Opus 132 begins G#-A, F-E; the events is separated from the next by an unmeasured pause. Fugue begins G-G#, F-E, which is close anyway, as a pattern and And then follows the Fuga. in actual pitch content, and then it continues with G#-A, which are the first notes of Opus 132. The interdependence of the late Now, the Overture is something quite extraordinary, with its way quartets goes further: Opus 132, Opus 130 (including Opus 133), of proceeding from one event to the next, not by achieving a and Opus 131 – to list them in their proper chronological order – series of organic continuities of key, timbre, register, mood, but all are based on patterns of paired semi-tones. quite simply by abruption, by shock. The musical man-in-the- street when confused by a piece of “this modern music” is apt The Great Fugue opens with a passage of singular abruptions. to blame dissonance. If, however, one tries to locate the cause Beethoven calls it Overtura. First, in powerfully stressed octaves, of his dismay with greater accuracy, one will find that the most the whole quartet plays the motto idea outlined above, ending disturbing thing a piece of music can do is somehow to depart in a sharply bitten-off trill. It is repeated more rapidly, in a from the accustomed ordering of events, to tamper with the different rhythm and minus trill; the last phase is repated a normal time-continuum in some way. If everything that follows minor sixth lower. The motto phrase is played again, but by in the Great Fugue were apple-pie-academic-normal, its 30-bar Overture alone would, with its violent discontinuities, account theme, though the more prominently heard part is its leaping for its rejections. It should be added, that given the whole of the counter-subject. This section itself is a series of variations, and parent-work, Opus 130, it is evident that Beethoven prepares the varied element is the increasingly complex rhythm; these discontinuities quite carefully. c) a slower section in G flat that corresponds to the slower part of the Overture, flowing counterpoint included, something as But we must understand the Overture as the key to the Great lyric as anything to be found in Beethoven; Fugue, for it is in effect nothing less than a table of contents d) Allegro molto e con brio, in a galloping 6/8, with very of the musical stages or events to follow. The Fugue is not a rapid and quite slow versions of the theme combined. The fugue in the familiar Bachian sense: rather, it is best heard as characteristic trills are prominent here. This is interrupted by a series of fugal variations upon its motto theme. In this series a reappearance of the slower episode (the retransition to the of variations, the characteristic rhythms heard in the Overture, Allegro is one of all music’s deepest mysteries); much later it is the rhythmic hesitations and syncopations, the more tranquil interrupted by a fragmentary episode much in the manner of tempo, the sixteenth-note flowing counterpoint associated the Overture. That leads to with it, the various harmonic areas suggested, all these play e) the coda, which continues the 6/8 Allegro molto e con brio, their part. but in quite a different style, and with the most sublime effects, achieved by the superimposition of very slow notes over a rapid The Fugue is subdivided as though into movements: pulse. a) the Overture, already described; b) a double fugue, one of whose components is the motto Quartet No. 16, Opus 135 then needlessly neglected chill not carried him off early in 1827. Is Opus 131, for example, the ultimate point of his third period, Opus 135 seems to come as though from a different world. In a after which something new had to be tackled? And if so, are period whose music is marked not only by awesome density, there hints of what that “something new” would have been but by an imposing expansion of dimensions, it stands as a in those late works of unpretentious exteriors and of elegantly quartet about as short as any Beethoven ever wrote. And in a small dimensions, for example, the late piano Bagatelles, period marked by constant departures from the formal norm the alternate finale for Opus 130 (actually Beethoven’s last – every piece of late Beethoven is a “special case” – Opus 135 completed piece)? Is Opus 135, then, really “fourth period” returns to something very like a “normal” four-movement Beethoven? One thing seems clear: we must get away from the scheme. All this raises questions too complicated to be dealt critical obtuseness for which Opus 135 is slight in conception, as with in a liner note. The prolegomena to an answer would one widely-read Beethoven biography would have us believe. certainly include observing that from time to time it pleases Just a few musical pointers might be given. In the scherzo we Beethoven to return to music of outwardly smaller dimensions, can hear a characteristic integration of all elements: the opening physical or spiritual (of the Eighth Symphony; the Trio, Opus 70, melody, in F major, shuttles back and forth A-G-F-G-A, and No. 2; the Sonata, Opus 90, among others); and that the second F-G-A is also the key sequence for the trio. It is, furthermore, series of Quartets, having begun with the vast works dedicated a key sequence so unusual, so jarring almost, that such an to Prince Rasumovsky, concludes with Opus 95, a masterpiece “explanation” virtually seems necessary. In the slow movement, of unprecedented compression. There is the question of where Beethoven returns for the last time to his beloved variation Beethoven would have gone next, had a needlessly caught and form. It is a piece almost too simple to be misunderstood, and too deep ever to be exhausted. Beethoven meant it as a “sweet song of rest, a song of peace”. The finale starts with a slow introduction, whose first idea then enters inverted as the first motive of the Allegro. Beethoven, in a kind of epigraph, singles these ideas out and marks them “Must it be?” “It must be”. To his publisher, Moritz Schlesinger, Beethoven wrote: “You see what an unhappy man I am, not only that it [Opus 135] was difficult to write, but because I had promised it to you and needed money, and that it came hard you can gather from the ‘it must be’.” And when he was through copying the parts, he wrote “Uff, es ist geschehen [it’s done]. Amen.” And so Beethoven’s quartets end where humor and the deepest seriousness meet. He, whose most accustomed face to the world is one of defiance, ends his musical life with the laughter of Opus 135 and the new finale for Opus 130. Perhaps Nietzsche can help us to understand. He once wrote, “Whosoever has built a new Heaven has found the strength for it only in his own Hell.”

The Fine Arts Quartet Digital Reissue Series

CS-201 Spohr: Nonette in F Major, Op. 31 CS-210 Beethoven: Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3 & Members of the Fine Arts Quartet & Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4 the New York Woodwind Quintet Fine Arts Quartet CS-203 Mozart: Quintet for Clarinet and Strings CS-211 Beethoven: Quartet No. 14 in A Major, K. 581 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 Fine Arts Quartet / Reginald Kell, Clarinet Fine Arts Quartet CS-204 Mozart: Quintet for Horn and Strings, CS-212 Schubert: Quartet in D Minor K. 407 & “Death and the Maiden” Quartet for Oboe and Strings, K. 370 Fine Arts Quartet Fine Arts Quartet / John Barrows, CS-214 Beethoven: Septet for Strings and Winds French Horn / Ray Still, Oboe in E-flat Major, Op. 20 CS-206 Schubert: The “Trout Quintet” Members of the Fine Arts Quartet & in A Major, Op. 114 the New York Woodwind Quintet Fine Arts Quartet CS-215 Mozart: The Four Flute Quartets CS-207 Bartók: String Quartets No. 1 & No. 2 Fine Arts Quartet / Samuel Baron, Flute Fine Arts Quartet CS-218 Hindemith: Octet & Sonata CS-208 Bartók: String Quartets No. 3 & No. 4 for Viola Alone, Op. 25, No. 1 Fine Arts Quartet Members of the Fine Arts Quartet / CS-209 Bartók: String Quartets No. 5 & No. 6 New York Woodwind Quintet Fine Arts Quartet CS-220 Schubert: Octet in F Major, Op. 166 CS-256 Beethoven: Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, Fine Arts Quartet/ No. 2 & Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 Members of the New York Fine Arts Quartet Woodwind Quintet CS-257 Beethoven: Quartet in E-flat Major, CS-233 Beethoven: Quartet No. 12 Op. 74 & in E-flat Major, Op. 127 Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95 Fine Arts Quartet Fine Arts Quartet CS-240 Beethoven: Quartet in B-flat Major, SDBR-3255 Beethoven: Complete String Quartets Op. 130 including the Grosse Fugue Fine Arts Quartet Fine Arts Quartet CS-241 Beethoven: Quartet in B-flat Major, SP-501 Bartók: The Complete Cycle of Op. 132 Six String Quartets Fine Arts Quartet Fine Arts Quartet CS-249 Beethoven: Quartet in B-flat Major, SP-502 Beethoven: The Late Quartets Op. 135 and the “Grosse Fugue”, Op. 133 Fine Arts Quartet Fine Arts Quartet SP-506 Beethoven: The Middle Quartets CS-255 Beethoven: Quartet in F Major, Fine Arts Quartet Op. 59, No. 1 SP-507 Beethoven: Early Quartets Fine Arts Quartet Fine Arts Quartet Reissue Project Management: Helge Jürgens Digital Transfer and Remastering: Lutz Rippe using the original master tapes Digital Artwork Reproduction: Eckhard Volk Digital Booklet: Agnes von Beöczy Recording Year: 1959-1966, originally released on the Everest Records label (SDBR-3255) P & C 2016 Countdown Media GmbH