LUDWING VAN BEETHOVEN Mortality & Meaning of Beethovens Late Quartet, Op. 132 At the end of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven composed a haunting treasure. After more than ten years and several hundred performances, Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, remains fresh and hauntingly beautiful to me. I am still fascinated by its construction and still get choked up in the timeless, prayerful third movement. From the anxiously searching and manic first theme to the heroically possessed final coda, it is a piece that only becomes more intriguing with time. Beethoven was at the end of his life when he wrote the A minor quartet, also known as the Heiliger Dankgesang quartet, one of his several late quartets. It was composed in 1825, just two years before Beethoven’s death. By then, he had finished with his concertos, symphonies, and piano sonatas and chose to focus solely on writing for a string quartet. With his 16 string quartets, Beethoven forged the backbone of the repertoire. At the beginning of his career, he composed with classical unity in the ensemble; in the middle period he exploded the quartet form to symphonic diversity and scope. In his final works, he had both extremes at his command and seemed free to just work out his musical ideas in their purest form. I think of these last quartets as not necessarily being for performance. In fact, in 1810 he wrote (in English) to a friend and said about the String Quartet No. 11 in F minor (“Serioso”), Op. 95, “The quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public.” He hadn’t heard a sound for years; Beethoven started losing his hearing in 1796. You have to wonder what a score might have meant to the master composer. Music was his only true constant companion throughout his life. The conversations are streamlined and he is able to simply speak from the heart without fear of public offense or failure. The score by itself had become a complete work of art. One of the inspirations for Beethoven during this late period was his constantly deepening admiration for the music of J.S. Bach. And like a Bach fugue, Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor begins simply with a four-note statement in the cello part that the other voices immediately pick up and start developing. Nearly omnipresent, this simple set of two half-step intervals separated by a leap, G#–A–F–E, is the signature of the entire work. It’s probably obvious to the educated and sensitive listener, but for a little while, early on, I didn’t see the forest through the trees in spotting the pairs of half steps through nearly every motive in every movement. It seems so obvious when you think about it. Look for it everywhere. A Matter of Mortality. As the violist of the Pacifica Quartet, I can attest that balance of the four voices is one of the most important issues for us in general—regardless of repertoire. There are basics of quartet technique that constantly need to be addressed. If two voices play in unison separated by octaves, it sounds unblended and strident if the upper voice plays louder. If the lower voice carries the bulk of the sound, it sounds rich, blended, and more in tune. In texturally rich passages, independent voices should pare their parts to rhythmic profile and provide room for everyone else while still making their part heard. This kind of collegial sensitivity is crucial in the A-minor quartet, where there is so much going on that brings a richness and thematic and developmental clarity to the music—and that could easily become just chaotic noise. In the first movement, the four-pitch set is often present in the background as whole notes passed between voices while the 16th notes of the first theme fly past. In the final movement, the appassionato begins with a complex composite rhythmic accompaniment that needs to be clear while still supporting the melodic material above. But there is something to consider when contemplating the third movement. There was a period of several years when—with the plague of constant health issues, distracted by the battles of his familial struggles, and emotionally drawn from his social alienation magnified by his deafness—Beethoven did not write much music at all. He had contracted a painful stomach ailment that would paralyze him in bouts of agony and that interrupted the completion of the A-minor quartet. His mortality was a constant worry. In the summer of 1825, he seemed to have (at least temporarily) beaten his gastric malady and was physically and emotionally ready to compose again. That’s something to keep in mind, because that bout of grappling with his mortality is reflected in this work. Beethovens Late Quartets: Straight from the Heart A string player’s guide to Beethoven’s Late Quartets alk about a baptism by fire. The first piece the Artemis Quartet ever played, when they were still students at the Lübeck Academy of Music in Germany, was Beethoven’s most famous Late Quartet: Op. 131 in C# minor. It was an eye-opening experience. “We were overwhelmed by the sheer might of the music and the score,” cellist Eckart Runge recalls. “We didn’t really penetrate it with our spirits. Nevertheless, it opened the door for us to a new world. We couldn’t resist: it seemed so emotionally direct.” It’s almost two centuries since Beethoven, completely deaf and bedridden, began writing his Late Quartets: Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, and 135. Each has a unique architecture and message. Each, with the exception of Op. 127, begins softly and ends in a tremendous outpouring of energy. And each approaches the listener directly from the heart. These works are filled with innovations that confounded Beethoven’s contemporaries—the composer Louis Spohr dismissed the Late Quartets as “indecipherable, uncorrected horrors.” *****************************************************
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 07:11:55 +0000
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