During some eighteen months in 1825 and 1826, following a serious illness that nearly killed him, Beethoven wrote his final musical compositions in a last burst of creative energy. He turned to the string quartet, a form he had not worked with since 1811. Written in near total silence, these final works continue to generate an air of mystery, profundity, and power. Opus 131, the next-to-last in order of composition, was a personal favorite of the composer. One of its many notable features is that it contains seven movements, played through without the traditional pause between movements. For this work, the composer canceled the brief moments of repose when the musicians re-establish their tuning and the audience delivers the coughs that have been, or should have been, suppressed while the music was playing.
Josef Haydn popularized, some say he invented, the string quartet in the 1760s. The quartet’s components – two violins, a viola, and a cello – have remained stable over more than 250 years. One appeal of the string quartet to listeners over that long span of time is the similarity of the instruments to human voices. They both use a vibrating cord to produce a sound with a transparent quality unlike any other instrument, one by passing air over vocal cords, the other by passing a bow over strings.
The ranges of the instruments match familiar voice types: the violin with the soprano, the viola with the tenor, and the cello with the baritone. However, the human voice has a range of about two octaves, while the string instruments can manage a range in excess of four octaves. Each instrument in a string quartet can reach notes that are considerably higher, and in some cases a little lower, than the corresponding human voice.
The quartet’s limited forces present a challenge to the composer. In a symphony orchestra, the strings, woodwinds, and brass can toss a theme from section to section or can combine to produce moments of drama. The percussion instruments can underpin a line, add emphasis to big moments or mystery to quiet ones. The extra octave of depth afforded by bass violins can hit an audience right in the gut.
None of that is available to the composer for string quartet. Although the variation in tone that can be produced by these instruments is prodigious – the strings can be plucked, they can be bowed up or down, near the bridge, near the fingerboard, and with more or less pressure, while the left hand can use vibrato or the lack of it – the composer who writes for the string quartet accepts severe limitations that can be avoided with other platforms.
A couple of years ago, I listened to all of the string quartets that Haydn wrote in his maturity. I started with his Opus 20, leaving out a batch of early and in some cases spurious works. That still left 45 compositions. They are full of surprises. You think a melody is heading for a particular note and he pulls a fast one. Anticipated harmonies fail to appear and are replaced with the unexpected.
He almost never delivers surprises in the form of the compositions. All the string quartets are four movements long. (I am not counting his Opus 51, a transcription of a religious work for orchestra.) With one exception (that I can recall, working from fallible memory) all of the first movements are in traditional sonata-allegro form. The second movements are slow. The third movements are dances, either minuets or scherzos, although occasionally second and third movements are switched. The fourth and final movement may be in any of several forms, including sonata, rondo, and fugue, which was a Haydn specialty.
Haydn published most of his quartets in batches of six. Five of these would be in major keys and one, but only one, would be in a minor key. Mozart was so impressed by Haydn’s example that he dedicated a set of six quartets to his older friend. The published set included a heartfelt dedication to Haydn, which has produced the odd result that the nicknamed “Haydn” quartets were composed by Mozart. Mozart stayed with tradition. All of these quartets (as well as other, less notable, compositions for string quartet apart from some juvenile compositions) have four movements. He did innovate a bit. The finale of one quartet (D minor, the second of the Haydn quartets) and the (third) slow movement of another (A major, the fifth in the set) are composed as variations on a theme. But Mozart was not an iconoclast. He stayed with traditional forms, using them to waft a haze of grace and facility over the intellectual power and emotional depth of his music.
Beethoven composed sixteen pieces for string quartet, produced in three distinct periods of his creative career. In his youth, he was a student of Haydn’s. This was a relationship that neither found comfortable. Still, Beethoven’s early string quartets, his Opus 18, were published as a set of six with the requisite one in a minor key. They have a Haydnesque quality. I question whether they would still be performed as frequently if they had been written by someone else.
Five more quartets followed in Beethoven’s “middle” period. These were composed between 1806 and 1811 at a time when the composer was producing some of his most famous and monumental symphonies, piano concertos, and piano sonatas. They represent a dramatic leap forward from the first six compositions. The melodies are more intricate, the harmonies more complex, and the technical demands on the musicians more stringent. Beethoven sends the first violinist further up the fingerboard than did his predecessors. Even so, Beethoven kept the four-movement structure that had been handed down to him. The one feature that suggested he might experiment with form in the future is that in four of these five quartets there are two movements that are linked together without a pause. It was only a matter of time before the composer thought “Why not run all the movements together, and why stop at four?”
The first and last of the final five quartets (five with an asterisk[1]) are in the traditional four movement mode. These are Opus 127 in Eb major and Opus 135 in F major. Opus 127 was the first Beethoven string quartet I ever heard. It was performed in concert by the Borodin Quartet on an American tour during a thaw in the Cold War. At the end of the second movement, in which a slow wandering melody is put through a series of transformations, the musicians were visibly moved. They must have gone through it thousands of times in rehearsal and performance, but it still got to them.
After hearing Opus 127, I wanted to hear all of the others. The only way to do that was through recordings. Then as now I thought that Deutsche Gramophone has some of the best sound engineers going. DGG had recently produced recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets performed by the Amadeus Quartet. There is a certain irony in that connection. Three of the quartet’s members were Austrian Jews who in 1938 left for England when their country voted enthusiastically and overwhelmingly to unite with Germany, then governed by Hitler and his National Socialist party.
From my first hearing of Opus 131, it has been among my favorites, although my feelings for it, like other works by this composer, are born of reverence rather than affection. The first movement is a fugue built on a slow theme that announces in four notes the seriousness of the piece to follow. After seven minutes of intricate counterpoint, we move to a shorter dance-like movement with (to my ear) Gaelic overtones. The third movement, only some 45-50 seconds long, leads to the long fourth movement, the emotional heart of the piece. This movement, about twice as long as either of the two outside movements, is built on a serenade-like theme that is turned inside out as it is put through seven variations (the last of which is not completed). When the theme re-emerges at the end, the serenade has become a drunken march. The fifth movement is a rapid-fire scherzo, not labeled as such. It elides into the short, mournful sixth movement, whose principal theme sounds vaguely Hebraic to my ear. The seventh movement, about as long as the first, is the only segment of the composition written in traditional sonata form. Its first subject is a demonic march. The second, gentler, subject gurgles in the instruments’ lower registers before soaring skyward. At the end, the first subject leads to a coda that ends with an affirming, four-octave C# major chord.
All recorded performances that I have heard are flawless, so the choice depends on your taste in the recorded sound of string instruments and your preference for tempos. Sound styles vary tremendously. Some recordings give the impression that the listener is seated at the back of an ancient stone church where the sound bounces off the walls. Others put the listener’s ear inches away from the instruments. A middle course is best, and I give high marks to recordings that produce a certain transparent sound.
The Amadeus Quartet recorded the late Beethoven quartets in the mid-1960s. Their recordings remain my favorite and my reference set. Their tone, intonation, ensemble, and emotional commitment have never been surpassed in my opinion. On top of that, I don’t think you can beat the sound engineering that DG provides to these artists.
I mentioned that the group was formed by three Jewish violinists who each fled Austria for England in the late 1930s. They didn’t know each other at the time. When Britain went to war in September 1939, the government placed some “friendly aliens” in holding camps. The three ran into each other over time, became friends, and ultimately came to the notice of a distinguished teacher who took them on at no charge, once they were removed from detention. They decided that their talents were suited to the string quartet literature, but they were short a violist and had one violinist too many. Peter Schidlof converted to the viola – he had to learn how to read the tenor clef, where the middle line of the staff denotes C4, middle C. The group was joined by Martin Lovett, an English cello prodigy, a few years younger than the Austrians. After practicing for years, they gave their first performance in 1947. The group vowed that if any of them left or died, they would not attempt to continue but would disband. The promise was called in when in 1988 Schidlof, the converted violist, died at 65 suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. The youngest member of the group, the cellist Martin Lovett, died in April of this year at 93 from COVID-19.
Among quartets that are still performing, I like the Alexander Quartet, a mature group, and the Danish String Quartet, who are earlier in their career. The Alexanders produce a beautiful clear neutral sound. The instruments that they use in their Beethoven recordings – modern instruments on loan from a charitable trust – undoubtedly contribute to that impression. The violins and the cello were built using forms that come down from Stradivarius. (The artisan, Francis Kuttner, used his own form for the viola.) The wood used to produce the instruments comes from two trees. All of the horizontal pieces used for these instruments come from one tree, while all of the vertical pieces come from another. It’s impossible to know whether the common source of the physical components of the instruments adds to the sense of sonic unity. Their performance of Opus 131 is among the very best, in my opinion.
The Danish Quartet has adopted the nice practice of switching the two violins, depending on the piece. (The Emerson Quartet does this as well.) They can be seen and heard on YouTube. I was interested to see that when Frederik Øland is second violin (see, e.g., Opus 59, No. 1) he is the clear leader of the group, using eye contact and body motion (limited to be sure) to enhance the group’s already impressive focus. In Opus 131, he is first violin and plays most of the piece drawn inward, with eyes closed, taking inspiration from his compadres but not engaging with them. One other comment about the DSQ. I don’t know how many other quartets are named for countries (I can think of Quartetto Italiano and the Hungarian String Quartet), but I would be willing to wager that none of them is more stereotypical in appearance of the natives of the country for which they are named than the DSQ is of Denmark. (The cellist is Norwegian as it happens.)
Opus 131 plays a supporting role in the movie “A Late Quartet,” which explores the lives and loves of the members of a string quartet as they maneuver through a number of crises. The second violin and the viola are husband and wife. Their marriage is strained by the husband’s wandering eye (among other body parts). Their daughter, a conservatory student and a gifted violinist, is having a secret affair with the first violinist, an obsessive who focuses on the perfection of his technique rather than the music.
The cellist, the most interesting character of the four, is coming to grips with the end of his performing career due to a medical condition that will cause his left hand to deteriorate. He solves the problem, Hollywood style, during a concert performance of Opus 131. At the end of the sixth movement, he stops the music, announces his retirement and introduces his replacement. She is a young woman who arrives on stage carrying a cello. She takes the seat that has just been vacated and the newly formed quartet resumes the performance at the start of the seventh movement. Plug and play. Simple. Throughout the movie, we have heard snippets of Opus 131 performed by the Brentano String Quartet. In a nice self-referential twist, the musician who joins the quartet at the end is the Brentano’s cellist.
Franz Schubert first heard the quartet performed in November 1828. He is reported to have said that he would like to hear the piece performed on his deathbed. His timing was close. He died five days later. While I make no medical claims, I have listened to the piece many times with no ill effects and can enthusiastically recommend it to readers who may not be familiar with it.
[1] The asterisk comes in because a movement was withdrawn from the original design of Opus 130 in Bb major. This work, in six movements, is reminiscent of a Bach dance suite, translated into Beethoven’s idiom. The similarity ends when you get to the original sixth and final movement, a gigantic dissonant fugue that erases all memories of the dance motifs that have preceded it. Beethoven’s publisher persuaded him to pull the fugue out of the quartet. It was published as a separate stand-alone movement under the title “Grosse Fugue” and given Opus No. 133. Beethoven arranged the piece for two pianos, four hands and gave it Opus No. 134. Then he composed a new final movement for Opus 130. The sixth movement of Opus 130 is Beethoven’s last composition. Some modern quartets think that Beethoven should never have pulled the fugue and perform Opus 130 with the original sixth movement. The Grosse Fugue is a magnificent work. This listener thinks it belongs on its own.
The Passing Scene 