Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
String Quartet in A
minor, Op. 132
String Quartet in F
major, H. 34
(transcription of
Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 14, No. 1)
In 1792 Beethoven left
his native city of Bonn to seek his fortune in the imperial capital, Vienna.
Five years before he had been sent to Vienna by his patron, the Archbishop of
Cologne, for lessons with Mozart, but the illness of his mother had forced his
immediate return home. Before long, after his mother's death, he had been
obliged to take charge of the welfare of his younger brothers, a task that his
father was not competent to discharge.
As a boy Beethoven had
had an erratic musical training through his father, a singer in the
archiepiscopal musical establishment, later continued on sounder lines. In 1792
he was to take lessons from Haydn, from whom he later claimed to have learned
nothing, followed by subsequent study of counterpoint with Albrechtsberger and
Italian word-setting with Salieri. Armed with introductions to members of the
nobility in Vienna, he soon established himself as a keyboard virtuoso, skilled
as a performer and equally adept in the necessary art of improvisation. In the
course of time he was to be widely recognised as a figure of remarkable genius
and originality. At the same time he became known as a social eccentric, no
respecter of persons, his eccentricity all the greater because of increasing
deafness, a failing that became evident by the turn of the century. With the
patient encouragement of patrons, he directed his attentions largely to
composition, developing the inherited classical tradition of Haydn and Mozart
and extending its bounds in a way that presented both an example and a
challenge to the composers who came after him.
In his sixteen string
quartets, the first set of six published in 1801 and the last published in the
year of his death, 1827, Beethoven was as innovative as ever, developing and
extending a form that seemed already to have reached a height of perfection.
The first quartets were followed in 1802 by an F major arrangement of the Piano
Sonata in E major, Opus 14, No. 1, for string quartet. The three quartets
for the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Razumovsky, followed in 1805 and
1806 and Beethoven returned to the form again in 1809 and 1810. It was not
until 1823, however, that he resumed his attention to the string quartet in a
remarkable final series of works, starting with the String Quartet in E
flat major, Opus 127, completed in 1824. This was the first of a group of three
quartets commissioned by Prince Nicolas Galitzin, an enthusiastic patron and
himself an amateur cellist, in a letter to Beethoven in November 1822. On 25th
January the following year Beethoven replied, accepting the commission and
asking for a fee of 50 ducats a quartet, pledging himself at the same time to
complete the first quartet by February or March at the latest. In the event
Galitzin had to wait until March 1825 before he received the first work, after
disguising any impatience he may have felt at a delay which he understood as
necessary for a genius.
Beethoven wrote the
second quartet, the String Quartet in A minor, Opus 132, in the same
year, but work on it was interrupted by illness that lasted from the middle of
April well into the following month, necessitating a strict diet and abstention
from alcohol and coffee, diagnosed as the cause of his discomfort. To
recuperate he moved to Baden, where his peace of mind was disturbed by anxiety
over his brother Carl Caspar's son Karl, of whom he had, after litigation against
the boy's widowed mother, become sole guardian. By August, however, the new
quartet was complete, to be rehearsed and given a first private performance in
September, not, as Beethoven had hoped, at his rooms in Baden, but at the
Vienna lodgings of the Paris publisher Moritz Schlesinger, who was anxious to
secure the work for his company. The first public performance was given in
Vienna on 6th November in a benefit concert for the cellist Joseph Linke. The
quartet was sent, together with the third of the commissioned works, the String
Quartet in B flat major, Opus 130, to Prince Galitzin, in Russia, but the
Prince's pecuniary embarrassment prevented any payment, at least in Beethoven's
lifetime.
The A minor Quartet
starts with a solemn four-note cello motif, the genesis of much else, as
the instruments enter in ascending order. This motif, divided between viola and
cello, provides the bass of the first violin melody that follows and serves,
after the warmer, lyrical second subject, to open the central development
section of the movement, the viola entering in canon with the cello. It also
marks the return of the material in the equivalent of a recapitulation. The A
major second movement scherzo is derived from two figures heard in the
opening bars, while the trio section is characterized by the similitude of a
bagpipe drone. The slow movement 'Song of Thanksgiving' is a set of
double variations, the first theme, in the Lydian mode, marked Molto adagio and
the D major second theme marked Andante, with the explanatory note Neue
Kraft fühlend (‘Feeling new strength’). Variations of each follow, leading
to a final variation of the first modal theme, now marked Mit innigster
Empfindung (‘With the sincerest feeling’). A brief A major March provides
immediate contrast, linked by a passage of quasi-recitative to the final Allegro
appassionato, with its sadly lilting principal theme, admixture of
counterpoint and rapid conclusion.
The Piano Sonata in
E major, Opus 14, No 1 was written in 1798 and published the following year
with a dedication to Baroness Josefine von Braun, wife of the future lessee of
the Theater-an-der-Wien, where Beethoven' s opera Fidelio was to be
staged in 1805. The string quartet transcription, published in 1802, is also
dedicated to her. In a letter to the publishers Breitkopf und Härtel in the
latter year Beethoven inveighs against the current fashion for arranging piano
music for strings, unless the task were to be undertaken by Mozart or Haydn,
or, in this case, himself. Nevertheless the textures of the sonata lent
themselves well enough to transcription, both in the accompanied melody of the
first subject of the opening Allegro moderato and the dialogue of the
second subject. The minor key Allegretto has a contrasting major trio
section and is capped by a final Rondo.
Keith Anderson