String Quartet in A major Op.18 No.5 (1799-1800)

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. But even this was done as a progressive experiment, an experiment in the manipulation of proportions, in an attempt 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, 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 agrees with Mozart that a lightly scored alla breve Allegro makes the best finale in the circumstances.

For the first six or seven years of his career in Vienna Beethoven applied himself to just about every major instrumental and chamber-music form except the string quartet. It is as though was respectfully waiting for Haydn to retire from the field before risking comparison with him, let alone challenging his supremacy. Written for the most part in 1799, at much the same time as Haydn was working on the last two quartets he would be able to complete, Beethoven’s Op.18 is an extraordinary mixture of deference to recent Viennese tradition and fresh thinking.

The model Beethoven took for his for Op.18 No.5 was not, as it happened, a score by Haydn but one by Mozart. In fact, he copied out the String Quartet in A major K464 before starting his own work, which would be in the same key and would have several other factors in comon with it. There is no parallel in K464 for Beethoven’s opening Allegro, which is in a dancing 6/8 metre of the kind usually reserved for high-spirited finales. This does not make it an unduly light-weight first movement - it is harmonically too eventful for that - but it does leave the composer with the opportunity to shift the centre of gravity to another part of the construction. Still withholding the main substance of the work, he turns next to the Menuetto - as Mozart does in K464, although the rustic character of the central trio section is very much Beethoven’s own invention. Only then does he introduce the Andante cantabile which, like the third movement of Mozart’s K464, is a set of variations in D major.

One of the outstanding features of the Andante cantabile is its scoring - not so much in the presentation of the theme itself, in spite of the interesting viola part, as in the variations. The canonic treatment of the theme in the first variation, rising through the texture from cello to first violin, the decorative writing for violin in the second, the veiled sound of cello and viola under rustling violin figuration in the third, all these are highly attractive. The great inspiration, however, following the quietly withdrawn fourth variation, is the fifth, which springs into joyfully extrovert life in a manner clearly anticipating (by 26 years) a similarly exuberant variation in the Quartet in C sharp minor Op.131. Having remained in the same key through five variations, Beethoven adds a harmonically inquisitive development and a last, lingering reminder of the the theme that started it all.

After that, Beethoven clearly agreed with Mozart in similar circumstances that a lightly scored, contrapuntally entertaining Allegro in sonata form would be the best kind of finale. Exactly the same length as the first movement, it balances it to perfection..