BEETHOVEN! - Chamber Music New Zealand

Kaleidoscopes 2012
12.
Beethoven’s String Quartets
in Context
by Dr Nancy November
Beethoven’s seventeen string quartets
are now considered as cornerstones of
chamber music, indeed of Western classical
music altogether. For early listeners and
performers, though, these strikingly novel,
avant-garde works presented considerable
challenges. The fi ve late quartets, in
particular, were castigated as the musical
ravings of a deaf madman, before being
hailed as the purest and most profound
utterances of a genius. These works both
refl ected the changing times and were
themselves instruments of change. At fi rst
they were mainly performed in private
settings, but they also heralded the new
‘public’ life of chamber music. The Beethoven
quartets were championed and premiered
by the fi rst professional string quartet, led
by Beethoven’s close acquaintance Ignaz
Schuppanzigh.
Bold innovations appear straight away, in
the fi rst six string quartets that make up
Opus 18 (1798-1800). These works do not fi t
neatly with received ideas of Beethoven’s socalled
‘fi rst period’ (1782-c.1802), when he
supposedly continued the traditions set by
Mozart and Haydn. In the String Quartet in A
major, Opus 18 No 5, for example, the slow
movement bears resemblances to Mozart’s
slow movement in his ‘Haydn’ String Quartet
in A major, K. 464. Yet as early as the fi rst
variation, Beethoven introduces a cheeky spin
on contrapuntal working (a hallmark of the
traditional string quartet), fl aunting the fi rst
violin’s high register and underlining how far
he had moved from his forebears in terms
of movement models and style. The cryptic
tonal labyrinths at the beginning of the fi nale
in Opus 18 No 6 (‘La Malinconia’) attest to his
bold challenging of conventions—challenges
that were all the more daring given the
elevated status of the string quartet.
The fi ve ‘middle-’ or ‘second-period’ quartets,
completed in 1806 (Opus 59), 1809 (Opus
74), and 1810 (Opus 95), are newly ‘public’ in
terms of intended venue and style, including
intense dramatic contrasts, new textures,
virtuoso passages for all players, and works of
unprecedented length. The expansiveness and
exuberant dramatics of these works fi t with
Beethoven’s emphasis on the large-scale and
theatrical works at this time: one thinks of the
Third to Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth and Fifth
Piano Concertos, Egmont, Fidelio. The advent
of Schuppanzigh’s chamber music concert
series in 1805-6 was very likely an inspiration,
a prompt to reach out to his public with
musical gestures ‘writ large’. Yet there are also
moments of striking intimacy and poignancy.
In a sketch note to Opus 59 No 3, Beethoven