Classical Music | Music for Quartet

Recorded on 04/26/2017, uploaded on 01/25/2018

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The sixteen string quartets of Beethoven’s monumental canon span thirty-six of his fifty-seven years and represent, perhaps better than any other of his works, the revered Early, Middle, and Late periods of his compositional life. These so-called “periods” are not mere academic divisions but rather a glorious arc of Beethoven’s work. 

The Late Quartets so stretched the early 19^th century imagination that it would be years before they came into their own. Even with that, the French critic Pierre Scudo in 1862 called them “the polluted source from which have sprung the evil musicians of modern Germany—the Liszts, Wagners, Schumanns—not to mention Mendelssohn in certain equivocal details of his style.” Fortunately, the accused composers, along with others such as Schoenberg, Bartók, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich, felt otherwise. As importantly, listeners have come to terms with the Late Quartets as the most complex and inspiring music ever written. That they culminate Classicism but move beyond it, that they are inherently Romantic in their deeply personal expression, and that they define Modernism is only a statement of their transcendence and timelessness.  

By the time Beethoven began Op. 131 in 1825, his compositions had become deeply personal. No better example of this exists than Op. 131. The arguable seven movements of the work form an organic whole, not simply because they are played without interruption but because of their rhythmic, harmonic, and conceptual integration. While some of this unity depends on the performers, Beethoven seems to prepare the listener for a next movement by predicting it in the previous one. In another sense, however, we are never prepared for what happens in Op. 131.

The somber introductory statement of the Adagio, ma non troppo e molto espressivo takes the form of a melancholy fugue, but we soon sail forth into the happier waters of the Allegro molto vivace. Two soft chords at the end of the second movement beckon the two loud ones that bring the brief Allegro moderato which, in turn, serves as an introduction to the lengthy Andante. This movement, the centerpiece of the Quartet, takes the shape of a theme with six variations. There is a suggestion of a clean break, but the last two notes of the Andante really serve as stepping stones into the playful but treacherously difficult Presto. In the final statement of this scherzo-like movement, Beethoven calls for the melody to be played sul ponticello (close to the bridge), which produces a strange, glassy sound almost suggesting the frustrations of his own hearing loss. So it is with the dramatic gesture leading to the sixth movement Adagio. The viola introduces the meditative melody of the brief Adagio. Then, with two angry statements, we are thrust into the final Allegro on which Richard Wagner lavishly commented: “This is the fury of the world’s dance—fierce pleasure, agony, ecstasy of love, joy, anger, passion, and suffering; lightning flashes and thunder rolls; and above the tumult the indomitable fiddler whirls us on to the abyss. Amid the clamor he smiles, for to him it is nothing but a mocking fantasy; at the end, the darkness beckons him away, and his task is done.”

Beethoven confided to his friend Karl Holz that, among the Late Quartets, Op. 131 was his favorite. Many share Beethoven’s opinion.                               Notes by Lucy Miller Murray 

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.