THE CRITICAL AND ARTISTIC RECEPTION OF BEETHOVEN’S STRING QUARTET IN C♯ MINOR, OP. 131 Megan Ross A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Mark Evan Bonds Tim Carter Annegret Fauser Aaron Harcus Mark Katz ©2019 Megan Ross ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Megan Ross: The Critical and Artistic Reception of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C♯-Minor, Op. 131 (Under the direction of Mark Evan Bonds) Long viewed as the unfortunate products of a deaf composer, Ludwig van Beethoven’s “late” works are now widely regarded as the pinnacle of his oeuvre. While the reception of this music is often studied from the perspective of multiple works, my dissertation offers a different perspective by examining in detail the critical and artistic reception of a single late work, the String Quartet in C♯ minor, Op. 131. Critics have generally agreed that the string quartets best exemplify the composer’s late style, and that of these, Op. 131 stands out as the paradigmatic late quartet. I argue that this is because Op. 131 exhibits the greatest concentration of features typically associated with the late style. It is formally unconventional, with seven movements of grotesquely different proportions, to be played continuously, without a pause, as if to insist on the unity of the whole. It conspicuously avoids a sonata-form movement until its finale, opening instead with an extended fugue; the sonata-form finale, in turn, quotes from the fugue, again reinforcing the notion of formal wholeness. These features have consistently challenged commentators to search for coherence in this work. Questions of coherence are central to the reception of the late works, and nowhere more so than in the case of Op. 131. My study traces this quartet’s reception history through explanations of coherence that rest on both internal and external evidence, that is, on analysis of the music itself and on the composer’s biographical circumstances. Later artists working in music, painting, film, literature and works for the stage have also responded to the various features of the quartet’s perceived iii logic. The sources I examine include reviews, biographies, analyses, sketch studies, diaries, letters, and new works of art inspired by this quartet. My account of the reception of Op. 131 concludes by encouraging scholars to reflect on their current approaches to understanding Beethoven’s late style, many of which can now be traced back to the nineteenth century, and to consider alternatives for the future. iv For Grace and Kodelia v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am truly grateful for all of the support of my advisor, Mark Evan Bonds. Thank you, Evan, for your patience, encouragement, advice on becoming a better writer, and generous and timely feedback on all of my work. My entire committee also deserves recognition for their support and helpful feedback on this project including Tim Carter, Annegret Fauser, Aaron Harcus, and Mark Katz. Past advisors Jessica Waldoff and Lewis Lockwood also provided helped along the way as well. I would like to extend thanks to the staff of the libraries I utilized while writing this dissertation, particularly Carrie Monette, Diane Steinhaus, and Philip Vandermeer (UNC-Chapel Hill), Holly Mockovak (Boston University), Patricia Stroh (Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University), and those at the Harvard Loeb Music library. I received insightful advice on this dissertation was provided by many colleagues, including Molly Barnes, Andrea Bohlman, Gina Bombola, Dan DiCenso, Mark Ferraguto, David Levy, Alex Marsden, Severine Neff, Julia Ronge, Douglas Shadle, Christine Siegert, Sarah Tomlinson, David Vanderhamm, Oren Vinogradov, Robin Wallace, Jennifer Walker, and Jeremy Yudkin. Thanks also to David Garcia and all of my colleagues in MUSC 991 for their valuable suggestions. And thank you Kate Stringer for the unending moral and editorial support, Lucy Turner for being my “Beethoven” friend, Matthew Cain for help with the music examples, and my writing buddy Julia Hamilton. I would also like to thank Joanna Helms for just about everything on this six-year long journey, especially the opportunity to call someone a good colleague and also a dear friend. vi I can’t thank my family and close friends enough – their love is the reason I made it to graduation. My husband, Joseph Nett, deserves special recognition for his constant love, support, and humor, throughout this process made difficult by a series of medical problems. You’re the simply the best. And last but not least, I would like to thank my dog Moki for keeping me grounded. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………………..x LIST OF IMAGES………………………………………………………………………………xii LIST OF MUSIC EXAMPLES………………...……………………………………………….xiii LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………xvi INTRODUCTION: THE PARADIGMATIC LATE QUARTET……………………………..….1 CHAPTER 1: THE SEARCH FOR COHERENCE: AN OVERVIEW………………………....19 CHAPTER 2: INTERNAL COHERENCE: ANALYTICAL INTERPRETATIONS…………..46 The Finished Work……………………………………………………………………....48 Cyclic Form……………………………………………………………………...47 Continuity Between Movements …….…………………………………………..59 Novel Harmonies……………………………………………………………..….64 The Fugue………………………………………………………………………..70 Traditional Forms……………………………………………………………..….76 Musical Memories……………………….…………………………………...….81 Sketches………………………………………………………………………………….84 Cyclic Form……………………………...………………………………………84 Continuity Between Movements………..………………………………………..91 The Fugue………………………………………………………………………..97 CHAPTER 3: EXTERNAL COHERENCE: BIOGRAPHICAL INTERPRETATIONS……...100 Analogies of Isolation…….…………………………………………………………….101 viii The Narrative of Struggle……………………………………………………………....114 CHAPTER 4: RESONANCES: THE AFTERLIFE OF OP. 131…………………………...….128 Cyclic Form………………………………………………………………………….....129 The Fugue Opening……………………………………………………………………..146 The Narrative of Struggle……………………………………………………………....155 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………....169 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………..……172 ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 19CM 19th-Century Music AmZ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung BAmZ Berliner Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung BEK5 Lenz, Wilhelm von. Beethoven: Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. 5. Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1860. BGQ Seyfried, Ignaz von. “L. van Beethoven: Grand Quatuor, in ut-dièze mineur, (cis- moll).” Cäcilia 9, no. 36 (1828), 241–43. BML Lockwood, Lewis. Beethoven: The Music and the Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. BS Riemann, Hugo. Beethoven’s Streichquartette. Berlin: Schlesigner’sche Buch- und Musik-Handlung, 1910. BSA Helm, Theodore. Beethovens Streichquartette: Versuch einer technischen Analyse. Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch, 1885. BPM Adorno, Theodor W. Beethoven. The Philosophy of Music: Fragments and Texts. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998; Originally published as Adorno, Theodor W. Beethoven: Philosophie der Musik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1933. BSD Sullivan, J. W. N. Beethoven: His Spiritual Development. London: Jonathan Cape, 1927. CRBC Wallace, Robin. The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, Op.126 to WoO 140. Boston: Center for Beethoven Research Boston University, 2018, http://www.bu.edu/beethovencenter/files/2018/08/crit_recep_beethoven_op73_to _85.pdf. GQ1 Rochlitz, Friedrich. “Grand Quatuor…par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvr. 131.” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 30, no. 30 (July 23, 1828), 485–95. GQ2 Rochlitz, Friedrich. “Grand Quatuor…par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvr. 131.” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 30, no. 31 (July 30, 1828), 501–9. JAMS Journal of the American Musicological Society SAB Tovey, Donald Francis. “Some Aspects of Beethoven’s Art Forms.” Music and x Letters 8, no. 2 (April 1, 1927), 131–55. TBQ Kerman, Joseph. The Beethoven Quartets. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. W70 Wagner, Richard. Richard Wagner’s Beethoven 1870. Translated by Roger Allen. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014; Originally published as Wagner, Richard. Beethoven. Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1870. xi LIST OF IMAGES Image 3.1: Rembrandt’s Night Watch (1642)…………………………………………………..103 Image 3.2: Rembrandt’s Tobias Healing His Father (1836)…………………………………...104 Image 3.3: Rembrandt’s Philosopher in Meditation (1632)……………………………………106 Image 3.4: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ The Apotheosis of Homer (1827)……………….108 Image 4.1: Rembrandt, Self-Portrait (1658)……………………………………………………164 xii LIST OF MUSIC EXAMPLES Music Example 1.1: Op. 131 Fugue Theme, Movement 1, Violin 1, mm. 1–4 ………………...37 Music Example 1.2: Op. 131 Fugue Theme, Movement 7, mm. 21–25………………………....37 Music Example 2.1a–e: Fétis’s Examples of the Opening Fugal Motif in Op. 131……………..50 2.1a: Movement 1, Violin 1, mm. 1–5…………………………………………………...50 2.1b: Movement 2, Violin 1, mm. 1–4…………………………………………………...50 2.1c: Movement 4, mm. 1–8…………………………….……………………………….50 2.1d: Movement 5: Violin 1, mm. 1–8…………………………………………………...51 2.1e: Movement 7: Violin 1, mm. 2–5…………………………………………………...51 Music Example 2.2: Augmented Fugue Theme, Op. 131, Movement 7, Violin 1, mm. 94–96…51 Music Example 2.3a–b: Recurrences of the Fugue Theme in Op. 131 According to Lenz……..52 2.3a: Movement 7, Violins 1 & 2, mm. 30–31……………………………………......…52 2.3b: Movement 7, Violins 1 & 2, mm. 34–35………………………………...………...52 Music Examples 2.4a–b: Fugue Theme in the Finale According