Beethoven’s String Quartets: an introduction

When Beethoven settled in Vienna in 1792 - “to receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn,” as Count Waldstein put it at the time - he no doubt had a good look round the musical scene to take stock of the most likely opportunities. Certainly, he was aware that, though some parts of the chamber repertoire were ripe for development by an ambitious young composer, the string quartet would be best left alone. He was not yet able to compete with Haydn and Mozart in an area where they had both excelled themselves. He wrote piano sonatas, piano trios, string trios, even a string quintet of sorts but, in spite of an early and tempting invitation from Count Apponyi, he completed no string quartet until 1799 and he published none until the six quartets of Op.18 appeared in 1801 - by which time he had written such remarkable works as the Pathétique Sonata, the First Symphony and the first two Piano Concertos.

After the Op.18 set -where, encouraged perhaps by the remarkable (though now almost forgotten) string quartets of Emanuel Aloys Förster, he had unmistakably proved his maturity and had asserted his individuality in a highly competetive field - Beethoven wrote no more string quartets until 1806, when he was commissioned by the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Rasumovsky, to provide a set of three. If the “Rasumovsky” Quartets bewildered his contemporaries, who simply couldn’t keep pace with the enormous progress the composer had made in structural and harmonic terms since Op.18, they had to wait three more years for the lyrical and wonderfully euphonious consolation of the Quartet in E flat, Op.74 (“The Harp”). After that, the uncomprising toughness and stringent economy of the Quartetto Serioso in F minor, Op.95, which was written only a year after “The Harp” but which anticipates so much of what Beethoven was to do in the late quartets fifteen or sixteen years later, must have been a devastating experience.

String Quartet in A major, Op.18, No.5

Allegro

Menuetto

Andante cantabile

Allegro

If Beethoven did consciously imitate his predecessors in his string quartets it was in his Op.18, No.5, which has more than a little in common with Mozart’s quartet in the same key, K.464: “Now that I call a work,” Beethoven is quoted as saying. But even this was done as a progressive experiment, in the manipulation of proportions and in attempting to shift the weight of the quartet away from the first two movements. His A major Allegro is the only Op.18 first movement in a compound metre (6/8) of a kind conventionally reserved for high-spirited finales. For the first time he puts his minuet second (where Mozart put it in his K.464) and only then, when we are quite ready for it, does he offer the main substance of the work. Like the third movement of Mozart’s K.464, it is a theme and variations in D major - and so inspired that it quite clearly anticipates the variations in Op.131. Beethoven and Mozart agreed that a lightly scored alla breve Allegro makes the best finale in the circumstances.

String Quartet in F minor, Op.95 (“Serioso”)

Allegro con brio

Allegretto ma non troppo

Allegro assai vivace ma serioso - più allegro

Larghetto espressivo - allegretto agitato - allegro

One of Beethoven great gifts to the string quartet was an all-thorugh dramatic continuuity. The secret, as he was obviously aware when he wrote the tense and sadly misunderstood Op.18, No.4, in C minor, is in the middle movements. The Quartetto Serioso in F minor, Op.95, which he completed ten years later, follows the pattern of that quartet but intensifies its effect to an almost frightening extent. There is nothing playful here. As well as keeping the tempo moving after the closely concentrated first movement, Beethoven sustains the mood in the Allegro ma non troppo which so uneasily stands in the place of the conventional slow movement. The Allegro assai vivace is no scherzo either, as the ma serioso qualification indicates. Then there is the persecuted finale, which so unexpectedly and so miraculously finds refuge in the radiant F major coda.

String Quartet in C major, Op.59, No.3 (“Rasumovsky”)

Introduzione: andante con moto - allegro vivace

Andante con moto quasi allegretto

Menuetto: grazioso

Allegro molto

The beginning of the Quartet in C major, provocative even now, was a remarkably bold gesture in its day. The slow Introduzione - with no definite key, metre, or theme - would have left the listener of the day quite unorientated. When, at the start of the Allegro vivace, the harmonies do alight on C major it is only briefly - on the first unaccented chord of the two leading into the capricious, also tonally ambiguous violin solo. The next unequivocally C major event is the great outburst of joy for all four instruments, the second theme of the first subject. The long withholding of the tonic key gives these C major events a special memorability, a quality Beethoven puts to good use not only in this movement but, masterfully, in the finale too.

The slow movement is comparatively subdued, not melancholy (in spite of its minor key) but reflective in a quiet and even leisurely way. There is anxiety in the viola melody but this is balanced by the passages where the even tread of quavers, emphasised by the cello’s persistent pizzicato, gives way to a more radiant major.

The Menuetto is even less demonstrative in its classical grazioso equability. Both central movements are, in fact, a necessary repose before the precipitous fugal finale. The approximation to sonata form here, with little more than a gesture as second subject, is less important than the miraculously sustained expression of joy. The magnificent C major outburst when the first violin joins the fugue corresponds to the similar great event in the first movement. The energy for the rest of the Allegro molto is found in the exhilaration of that moment of recognition.

Gerald Larner copyright