Octet in E flat major Op.103 (1792-3)

Although the Octet was conceived a few years before the Sextet (but not published until after his death – hence the high Op.No.), it is much the more interesting work. The belief that it was at least started before Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna is based partly on the fact that it is scored for the wind ensemble (two each of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns) employed by the Archduke Maximilian Franz to entertain him with background music when he was residing in Bonn as Elector of Cologne. It seems that the composer took the score with him when he went to Vienna where he was to study with Haydn and, perhaps under his guidance, revised it there. Even then he wasn’t finished with it: a work that matured with him, it was comprehensively rewritten and enlarged as as the String Quintet in E flat Op.4 in 1795.

In these circumstances we cannot be sure when the various parts of the Octet were written. We know that the last movement came towards the end of the process since it replaced the piece now known as the Rondino in E flat WoO25. As for the rest, it is difficult to accept that parts of it or even whole movements were written as early as 1792. It is not inconceivable that the present first movement is much as it was when first written. At the same time it is remarkable that the thematic tag, a little wriggling motif introduced by oboe and heard four times in the first four four bars, recurs on so many occasions and on all instruments except the horns (which make up for it with a spectacular passage of arpeggios at one point). It recurs far more often then the equivalent tag in the first movement of the later Sextet but far less often than in the String Quintet Op.4: the progression (between 1792 and 1795) suggests that the search for motivic unity even in a cheerful sonata-form construction like this was a mature impulse.

The Andante is precisely the sort of music the Archduke Maximilian Franz would have enjoyed at the table. It is based on a pretty siciliano-like melody introduced in B flat major by oboe and passed throughout the ensemble (except, again,the horns). Nothing, not even an episode in the relative minor, seriously disturbs its poise, which is easily restored by a little oboe cadenza.

If the Archduke was expecting a comfortably paced minuet at this point in his dinner and heard what is, in effect, a quick scherzo he would surely have suffered indigestion. It’s true that Haydn had included scherzos in his String Quartets Op.33 but a Menuetto scherzo similar to this did not appear in his music until the Op.76 Quartets on which he started work in 1796. Surely, Beethoven in Bonn in 1792 could not have foreseen this development in Viennese chamber music. He could, on the other hand, have learned something of it when he was working with Haydn – and, extraordinarily, to the extend that this movement foreshadows the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony.

A late addition to the work, the Presto last movement, with its effectively varied material and its virtuoso scoring (not least for the horns), is an appropriately light-hearted ending to the work.