Statue of Mozart outside the house of J C Bach in Orange Square, Pimlico Road.

1. String Quartet No 14 in G K.387 (The Spring)

2. String Quartet No 15 in D minor K.421

3. String Quartet No 16 in E flat K.428                              

4. String Quartet No 17 in B flat K.458 (The Hunt)

5. String Quartet No 18 in A K.464

6. String Quartet No 19 in C K.465 (The Dissonance)

 Matthew Taylor will be continuing his history on string quartets with an examination of Mozart’s Haydn Quartets and particularly illustrating Nos 4 and 6, the Hunt and the Dissonance respectively. This note is intended to give some background to Mozart as a composer and to these quartets without attempting to dissect them.

 Mozart was born in Salzburg, then a sovereign part of the Holy Roman Empire. Leopold, his father was a kappelmeister and composer to the Archbishop of Salzburg and first gave lessons to Mozart’s older sister, Nanerl when she was seven and Mozart who was then three picked up as he watched. His only teacher was his father and it was clear that not only was Mozart a freakish prodigy in playing but in composition as well.

 The talent of the two children was exploited by Leopold in several years of European travel involving various trips between 1762 and 1773 displaying their talent before royalty and other courts as well as meeting other composers. Nearest to home is the visit by Mozart aged 8 visiting Johann Christian Bach (the London Bach) at his home in Pimlico. More recently there is outside the house in Orange Square by Pimlico Road a statue of Mozart. (see above). These journeys over an eleven year period were arduous and despite his renown as a wunderkind no work came his way at the end of it.

 At 18 he was offered work with the Archbishop at Salzburg where he wrote his five violin concerti. It was not well paid and Mozart became restless and looked for work elsewhere. In August 1777 he resigned his position with the Archbishop and planned to look for an appointment in Mannheim or Paris. This time his father was not released and Mozart was accompanied by his mother. At Mannheim he met members of the Mannheim school and also met and fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters from a musical family – the composer, Weber, not yet born, would be their cousin. Nothing materialised and Mozart and his mother continued to Paris. There he hinted at having been offered a position of organist at Versailles but turned it down. He also received commissions for which he was not paid. Worst of all, his mother was taken ill and died there.

 Mozart resumed employment with the archbishop in Salzburg but was never content. After the success of the production of Idomeneo in Munich he was invited to Vienna in 1781 where he opted to stay. He resigned again his position with the Archbishop who refused to accept and instead sacked Mozart with a “kick in the ass” administered by a steward. It also strained relations between Mozart and his father who clearly felt embarrassed by his son’s behaviour to his esteemed employer.

 The years 1781 to 1785 were extremely productive period for Mozart – all periods were – and it was in that time that he met Haydn and wrote the quartets dedicated to him . It was an enlightened time, following the death of Joseph II in 1780 , and set against the backdrop of the liberating reign until his death in 1790 of Leopold II, a period more or less contemporaneous with Mozart’s remaining years of life. It was there in Vienna that Mozart again met the Weber family who had moved from Mannheim. Mozart became interested in Aloysia’s younger sister, Constanza whom he married in August 1782

 Some commentators describe Mozart’s Vienna years as a struggle for recognition and suffering from poverty. In fact his Vienna career began well. He performed often as a pianist, including the celebrated competition before the Emperor with Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna. He also prospered as a composer, and in 1782, just before getting married he completed the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved a huge success. The work was soon being performed throughout German-speaking Europe, and fully established Mozart’s reputation as a composer.

From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. As he could not always obtain a theatre, he booked unconventional venues, a large room in an apartment building and the ballroom of a restaurant. The concerts were very popular ensuring recognition. With substantial returns from these, he and Constanze adopted a rather plush lifestyle. They moved to an expensive flat; Mozart began to live it up and bought a fine fortepiano for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. They were able to send their son, Karl Thomas, to an expensive boarding school, and they kept servants. Saving was therefore impossible, and the short period of financial success did nothing to soften the hardship the Mozarts were later to experience.

On 14 December 1784, just when finishing the Haydn Quartets, Mozart became a freemason. This played an important role in the remainder of his life. He attended meetings, a number of his friends were masons, and on various occasions he composed masonic music.

Haydn and Mozart are thought likely to have first met late in 1782. There is written record of their playing together, Haydn, first violin; Dittersdorf, second violin; Vanhal, cello and Mozart, viola. Perhaps it should have been called the Composers Quartet! Haydn was then 51 and Mozart 27. We do not know what prompted Mozart to write the six quartets and dedicate them to Haydn. Dedication customarily followed a commission, usually from an aristocrat who himself would have been a dab hand at playing. Mozart was not an inexperienced writer for the string quartet although his early works, like those of Haydn, were more in the line of divertimenti than the sonata string quartet. Looking down a list of them one can observe Koechel numbers 136-138 which are known as fun divertimenti and usually played by an enlarged chamber group. The difference between them and the Haydn quartets could be compared to the Simple Symphony of Benjamin Britten with that of his second string quartet. 1781 was the year of Haydn’s opus 33 quartets which Mozart would have known and likely to have played with their composer.

 One wonders also whether Mozart might originally have intended three quartets and not six. The first of the quartets was finished on 31^st December 1782. The second two were completed in June/July 1783. Then a gap. The Hunt was not completed until November 1784 and the last two on 10^th and 14^th January 1785.   What we do know is that Haydn first heard them on 15^th January which indicates a last minute dot com rush by Mozart to finish them off in time for their meeting again.

 But why the long gap between the third and fourth? It is often said that Mozart had some difficulty with string quartets but this gap was no equivalent of writer’s block like William Walton taking a year to ponder whether to add a fourth movement to his first symphony. First, Mozart could not have afforded that luxury. Secondly difficulty was not a noun in Mozart’s vocabulary and you only have to listen to the Haydn quartets from beginning to end to realize that. For Mozart the difficulty may have simply meant the limitations posed by the instrumental combination when he might possibly have liked to have had another instrument available. Thirdly, composer block is out of the question. A research of 1784 shows the six piano concerti, numbers 14 to 19 on top of one horn concerto, a piano sonata, a violin sonata, several contre-danses and various arias! The answer is probably that the two, Haydn and Mozart, if not all four, had difficulty in getting together. Haydn, as we have seen earlier, was busy enough with his Esterharzy duties. Most of that time was spent at Esterharza, the summer palace in Hungary and if his symphony No 45 (the Farewell) is anything to go by the summers tended to be longer than the winters. In winter the Esterhazy palace was at Eisenstadt, not far away according to one programme note, a mere 40 kilometres, from Vienna. This would have been more than a mere bus ride had they had buses at the time. The chances were that fixing a time to meet from one year to the next was not easy, apart from also getting Vanhal and Baron Dittersdorf to check their diaries. Then suddenly it was on and Mozart dropping whichever piano concerto he was then writing in order to finish off the compilation for Haydn.

 How did Haydn re-act to these quartets? The evidence is contained in the famous letter he wrote to Leopold Mozart

 “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition.”

 Was it an exaggeration? Perhaps a little. After all Haydn was the greatest composer alive. His own quartets are perhaps a little more inventive or improvisatory but then Mozart’s plumb some spiritual depths. Haydn would not have heard anything from anyone else to match his own or Mozart’s creations. His own quartets would not have come as a surprise to his own ears as did those of Mozart which clearly bowled him over. And one must also bear in mind that Mozart was much the same age then as Haydn had been when he joined Esterhazy in 1760. Imagine if Haydn had died aged 35, as did Mozart, Haydn would not have been the great master he was to become. He would not be played today any more than, say, Vanhal or Dittersdorf. Yet Mozart at age 29 was already a veteran genius.

 Matthew is also planning on playing something from the string quintets, all but two of which come from the last five years. Here you may find Mozart at greater ease. With the use of the second viola it perhaps enabled one of them to give support to the two violins and the other to lead or support the cello. If Matthew gives us quintet no 6, K.614 then we are in for a treat with more hunting tunes to kick us off.

 I do not propose to analyze the Haydn quartets but do get hold of a set of CD’s and the best way to hear them is to listen to them right through, about three hours plus a little break between each one. Don’t read a book or get into a conversation or sit at your computer even to write programme notes. Just listen. However for those members of our group who sit in the back two rows every Monday morning struggling to complete the Observer crossword a special exemption can be made in recognition of their assiduity to the English language and their long time loyalty to Matthew Taylor.

Biographical Note prepared by Lionel J Lewis for the Matthew Taylor Lectures on the History of the String Quartet ©

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

 BACKGROUND TO THE OPUS 18 STRING QUARTETS

 Matthew Taylor has in three flying visits remarkably covered the quartets of Haydn and the quartets Mozart dedicated to him. The first of five lectures on Beethoven’s quartets is devoted to his opus 18’s. Opus numbers may leave some in a numerical no man’s land. So to begin with here is a résumé of the sixteen quartets (and the grosse fugue) which Beethoven produced between 1800 and 1826

————

Early period – Opus 18 No. 1 in F · No. 2 in G · No. 3 in D  · No. 4 in C minor · No 5 in A · No. 6 in B♭

 Middle period – No. 7 in F major · No. 8 in E minor · No. 9 in C major – Opus 59 (Rasumovsky) No. 10 in E♭ major, Op. 74 (Harp) · No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 (Serioso)

Late quartets – No. 12 in E♭, Op. 127 · No. 13 in B♭, Op. 130 · No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131 · No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132 · Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 · No. 16 in F, Op. 135

 Beethoven’s early period is considered to be from 1792 when he finally left Bonn for Vienna to 1802 ending with his second symphony and the writing of his will, the Heilingenstadt testament written in a near suicidal state in having to cope with his deafness. This is the period when his music still shows the influence of Haydn and Mozart. He did not however wake up one morning and declare that he was then in his second period. The distinctions become blurred and a perfect example is the third piano concerto which is the most perfectly classical of concerti which might (just) have been written by Haydn or Mozart but wasn’t and yet it looks forward to the big boned Beethoven. Is it a more mature early work or is it the middle period under way?

This middle period runs to about 1814 with the 7^th and 8^th symphonies, the Archduke trio as well as the Serioso quartet. From then he became very much embroiled in litigation with his deceased’s brother’s widow over the adoption of his nephew – very good for the solicitor – and there was a fallow period before he cranked up again round about 1817. His last period, by then in total deafness, encompasses the hammerklavier sonata, the Missa Solemnis, the ninth symphony and those last quartets.

It is incredible that in those early years Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven virtually over-lapped, breathing the same Vienna air, and that all three actually met each of the others. They all differed. Mozart largely composed in his head. Music pretty well came out of his pores and the score was just the print out; Haydn appeared to compose with an improvisatory facility as he went along. Beethoven was quite different to the other two. For him composition was a struggle to perfection. He recorded his ideas in sketchbooks to which he reverted, often many years later. He sculpted and chiselled his themes until he was satisfied with the finished product. Yet never is there any sense of there having been any obstacle or compositional difficulty and one feels one is hearing the finished product as fresh as the day it was first conceived .

Beethoven was born in Bonn, the son of the kappelmeister of the Court orchestra of the Elector of Cologne and of which Beethoven became a member at the age of 12 at which time he wrote three sonatas dedicated to the Elector. His teaching by his father, who was himself no Leopold Mozart, was rigorous. He did not encourage Beethoven’s emerging compositional ability but his instrumental skills. As a young adolescent he took lessons from the court organist, Neefe and his compositional skills were sufficiently recognized by the Elector who allowed Beethoven, then 18, to travel to Vienna in1788 where he met Mozart and played to him. The stay was short as Beethoven’s mother became ill and died soon after his return. His father went to pieces with drunkenness. The young Beethoven found himself having to look after his younger siblings and needed to take his father to court to have his salary attached. Beethoven’s early compositions come from this period and in particular two cantatas, one on the death in 1790 of the Joseph II and the other for the coronation of Leopold II They were not in the event played and only became discovered nearly a hundred years on. These works and some from the early Vienna years were always not therefore accorded an opus number. However there is a catalogue number for these with the letters WoO., (werke ohne opus) (work without opus)

In December 1790 Haydn, then approaching 60, accompanied by Salomon, passed through Bonn on their way to London for the first Haydn visit. Haydn was feted by the Elector but it is not known if Beethoven, being one of the very junior members of the orchestra, would have been introduced. The following year Mozart died aged 35.

Another important influence on events was Count Waldstein who encouraged the Elector to finance Beethoven for a second trip to Vienna where previously he had hoped to take lessons in composition from Mozart. By 1792 the west bank of the Rhine was occupied by the French and Bonn was in turmoil and overrun by refugees. Beethoven left for Vienna in November with a letter from Waldstein stating “Through your diligence receive Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn”; Beethoven’s father died a month later and Beethoven was never to return to Bonn.

Beethoven’s principal object was to learn more of the basics of those areas of composition where he knew himself to be lacking, and in this respect Haydn was just too easy going as a teacher. Beethoven revered Haydn but later admitted to his own pupil, Ries, that though he had received instruction from Haydn he had never learned anything from him. The fact was that Beethoven was a self disciplinarian who knew what he needed and Haydn was not the teacher he needed for the purpose. Some commentators say the two men did not get on but that does not appear to be the case. However, whilst they may have breathed the same Vienna air, they inhabited different universes. Haydn was a man of the ancien régime and for instance wore a perruque all his life. Mozart, although younger than Haydn, had shared the same social world and values. Beethoven was making his entrance against the background of revolution in France and spreading republican values. If one had to accept patronage he was not prepared to be someone else’s skivvy.

Beethoven therefore decided to take lessons elsewhere without telling Haydn. First he went to one Johann Schenk for guidance in counterpoint and theory; then his notebooks show him taking lessons from Ignaz Schuppanzigh, famed for the string quartet which gave the first performances of the great string quartets of the day. More assiduously Beethoven took lessons in counterpoint from Albrechstsberger, the “most famous teacher of that science”. He may be long forgotten but every time we hear the Grosse Fuge or the Hammerklavier sonata we owe Albrechtsberger a vote of thanks.   One other teacher to whom Beethoven turned was none other than Antonio Salieri, known to give free instructions to musicians of small means and who went on giving lessons to Beethoven till as late as 1802 by which time Beethoven had his own pupil. Salieri also gave lessons to Schubert and deserves more meritorious recognition than the libel perpetuated by the likes of Peter Schaffer.

During these years Beethoven should not be seen as just a composer awaiting the opportunity. He did not sit there composing whatever took his fancy until someone decided to play it. He needed commissions and wrote for the combination which was required. Doubtless he had ideas and these would get saved to his sketchbooks. He did have a modest annuity to help him pro tem from Count Lichnowsky but he he needed to earn his living. He did possess one great skill which had all the appearances of being a better money earner, playing the piano. His reputation grew as one of the great pianists of his day. The growing attraction of an audience for the piano, which had emerged from the more restrictive capabilities of the harpsichord, gave rise to the virtuoso and the appetite of the listener was fed not simply by concert performance but also by rivalries and concourses as to who could give the best or the fastest of displays and who was number one in extemporising.. There was a virtual Vienna Has Talent competition going on and Beethoven became a star much in demand.

However the commissions began to come from the odd count or prince that one tends to meet from time to time. This was going to be in the field of chamber music as a look down the early opus numbers shows. In fact Beethoven did not rush to publication until he felt the occasion was right to do so. To begin with his Opus 1 was a set of three piano trios, one of which Haydn advised against publication; various piano sonatas, ten before the opus 18 quartets; string trios worth more outings than we hear; a string quintet, two cello sonatas, the first of his violin sonatas, a horn sonata and a wind quintet. Orchestral music on the other hand would have to be mounted in a suitable venue and needed an audience. The only possibility there was for Beethoven to write his own piano concertos and to play them himself. He began composition of the first two piano concertos as early as 1795 and the second which was the earlier was opus 17 with the premier of the first taking place in 1800. All was beginning to go well but?

As early as 1796 Beethoven first encountered the tinnitus which would have frustrated his playing and composition. He noticed his hearing gradually deteriorating but kept it to himself as best he could. It was to drive him to anguish and despair. Over the years he would visit Harley Strasse and spend a fortune on ear trumpets to little effect. It is against this background that the six opus 18 quartets were written between 1798 and 1800.

Some commentaries suggest that Beethoven had held back from writing quartets until being more sure of himself and had contented himself with string trios. I question the rationale of this. Beethoven had copied out quartets of Haydn and Mozart and knew the medium. The opus 18 quartets themselves were dedicated to and, it must be assumed, commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz. Had he asked for a quintet, a sextet or a septet Beethoven would undoubtedly have delivered whenever on the basis of he who pays the piper. One writer, Bernard Jacobson, in an EMI booklet mentions that the true order was 3, 1, 2, 5, 4 and 6 and suggests that one should listen to them in that order to obtain a much clearer and exciting view. He points out that re-arranging the sequence would have been decided on commercial, and not musicological, considerations. What tosh! The practice of dedicating a compilation of quartets reflected first the generosity of the composer; secondly the opportunity for the dedicatee to play the whole shebang to an audience whose musical appetite was voracious and who had no chance of going out to buy the compact disc. As to the order, the compositional process can start and finish anywhere. On this spurious argument it would mean that if a composer started with the third movement and then wrote the first one, one should listen in that order. I think that Mr Jacobson should at least accept Beethoven’s artistic integrity in knowing the best order to present them as a set.

If one comes to this set after having made acquaintance with later Beethoven they would leave the impression of belonging to the sound world of Haydn who himself was still then actively composing. Mr Jacobson mentions the advances made by thematic links between movements and the different key relationships which not many of us, not even Prince Lobkowitz if he were with us, would notice. One does hear an undoubted Beethoven melodic line. The last movement of the first quartet for instance could have been out of the fourth symphony. Slow movements usually maintain their tempo but, in the second quartet Beethoven without apparent precedent switches almost inexplicably to a scherzo in the middle section. Rachmaninoff did this in his third symphony over a hundred years later but that was because it contained no separate scherzo movement. For the most part the quartets are cheerful and one would not imagine the composer being assailed by turbulent and stressful problems such as one would hear in Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique symphony or Mahler’s ninth. And yet in the slow movement of the first quartet there is the most beautiful and melancholy of tunes in which Beethoven adds what can only be called stabs of pain. Was this an unconscious musicological coded message?

Soon afterwards there were to follow the first two symphonies before this early period comes to an end. The Heilingenstadt testament, which was not discovered until after Beethoven died, was the testimony of a courageous man. Beethoven was then facing the likelihood that his affliction would end all he had so far achieved. He had reached the point of contemplating ending it all. He had confronted his own demise and the world can only be thankful that Heilingenstadt was the turning point. All wills have a beneficiary. That of the Heilingenstadt Testament was Posterity itself. To follow very soon there was the Eroica, originally to be dedicated to Napoleon, but the real hero was Beethoven himself who had confronted his demons…. and won.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-127)

BACKGROUND TO THE MIDDLE PERIOD STRING QUARTETS

Beethoven returned from writing his Heilingenstadt testament in 1892 resolved to face the future. His second symphony was in the making at the time but it gives no evidence of the mental torment he had been through. This brought to the end a period in his life which had not been some early apprenticeship but one of a Beethoven already accomplished as a musician, both as composer and performer.

Post Heilingenstadt was to bring about a completely new phase of a Beethoven who was an even more assured composer and whose revolutionary output was to bring about a complete change in musical sound. Mozart had died ten years before. Haydn was near the end of his creative career and died in 1809. He was still the revered master, the model for others still to emulate but it was now Beethoven who bestrode the world. Within five years he would make the eighteenth century drawing room as obsolete in much the same way as effect of the steam locomotive on the horse and carriage.

Beethoven was not to write any more string quartets between 1800 with the completion of the Opus 18’s and1806 with the three Opus 59’s, the Rasumovskys . Two further quartets follow in this middle period, the Harp, Opus 74 in 1809 and the Serioso, Opus 95.

To follow Beethoven’s development in the early part of the middle period would be better understood by listing some of his principal works, particularly the better known orchestral ones. They are not in exact chronological order of composition as opus numbers reflect the date of publication and not that of composition. and therefore I have omitted such opuses or opi (or, to satisfy our didactic crossword addicts), opera, as the two lovely violin romances which were written in the 1790’s

What is immediately apparent is not just that this list contains between 1803 and 1808 four symphonies, two piano concertos, the violin and triple concertos, an opera (which under its original title of Leonora turned out to be a failure and was rewritten as Fidelio in 1814) and several of the mighty classic sonatas but that it contains simply great iconic (and I rarely use that word) masterpieces, one after another. Bearing in mind Beethoven’s compositional methods of subjecting each idea to minute exploratory dissection – Matthew has already illustrated the numerous ways Beethoven recorded in his sketchbooks just the opening phrase of the first Opus 18 quartet – and bearing in mind the length of these works compared to those of Haydn or Mozart, Beethoven would have in fact written four or five times as much as the final product in an outpouring of unstoppable creativity.

Another aspect is the change in character of these works from those of his earlier period. They are longer, more powerful, more dramatic, more fortissimo more monumental. The orchestra has grown, extra horn in the Eroica; trombones, contra bassoon and piccolo in the fifth symphony, with extra strings to balance, and it is interesting to pursue the reason for this. Is it simply because Beethoven had the sound locked up within his system and it simply was waiting to emerge? A composer has to have a suitable venue for performance of his compositions. Haydn’s London symphonies were far more powerful than their predecessors because they were played at the Hanover Square Rooms, far larger than any salon that Prince Esterhazy could provide, and with a larger orchestra recruited by Salomon. Haydn revelled in the sound it made and he continued to compose music to reflect the ambiance. Beethoven’s first two symphonies were commenced in the late 1790’s and performed in 1801 at the Theater an der Wien.  This theatre was built first in 1791 and housed the first performance of The Magic Flute. It was rebuilt in 1801 and my own theory is that Beethoven must have realized that here was somewhere to mount the performance of an orchestral style he could only have dreamed about earlier.

Beethoven had become not just a mover and shaker but an earthquake maker. The Eroica was a statement of monumental heroism with its links to the earlier ballet, Prometheus, as well as to its intended dedicatee, Napoleon, whose name Beethoven angrily erased from the title page on hearing he had declared himself emperor. The fifth symphony was a statement of personal triumph against the fate which had knocked at Beethoven’s door. It was too much for most, the work of a madman firing off his Big Bertha. Heard on period instruments it evidences its classical origins. By the way the Beethoven orchestra never contained 70 or so players. This became a later practice on which we have been all been weaned. We have learned to listen to Bach Handel and Mozart with size appropriate orchestras but with Beethoven for some reason we are forever stuck with a tradition created by the Weingartners and the Furtwanglers. On this basis why not have quartets for eight players!

Of course the world did not change overnight. There were those who, like today’s audiences, would not go in for all this modern music and were happier to stay with the likes of Dussek and Dittersdorf. Berlioz in his memoires relates taking his teacher, Le Sueur, to the first performance in Paris of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, suitably edited by Fétis, in 1823. Le Sueur’s response was that people should not write music like that and that he had to hold his hat to make sure his head was still there. To the world at large, including many other composers, Haydn was still the man at the top of the pedestal.

Another important background consideration was the changing world. Austria was largely unaffected by the French revolution but these works were written to the backdrop not only of Napoleon’s coronation but of war spreading throughout Europe. Austria had already been invaded and large parts were under French occupation. In 1806 an uneasy truce was signed and the French occupied Vienna. Maybe there is something of the blitz spirit about some of the music or conversely, as in the slow movement of the second Rasumovsky quartet, a sense of intense sorrow, of keeping the home fires burning.

In 1806 Beethoven, being in a depressed state following the failure of Leonora was invited by Count Lichnowsky to accompany him to Tropau near Gratz. When Beethoven first settled in Vienna in 1792 he had brought with him a letter from Waldstein with an introduction to Lichnowsky. The latter gave Beethoven his first accommodation and was a faithful patron. It was he who gave Beethoven an annuity which ended in 1806 after a quarrel which was never repaired. At Gratz there were French officers anxious to meet Beethoven, although Beethoven was not anxious to meet them, and when one of them asked Beethoven if he could also play the violin he got an answer back such as Nigel Kennedy might have delivered. Lichnowsky tried to repair the damage but Beethoven wrote to him, before leaving, “Prince, what you are, you are by circumstance and birth. What I am, I am through myself. Of princes there have been and will be thousands. Of Beethovens, there is only one”. Proof, if ever it were needed, that nobody was too mighty for him. The result of all this was that Beethoven who had taken with him his newly written appassionata sonata (opus 57) left in a storm, both literal and metaphorical, his manuscript smudged by the rain, and having to make his way back to Vienna.

One introduction by Lichnowsky was Count Rasumovsky who was the Tsar’s ambassador in Vienna. He was what one describes as stinking rich. He had built the most extravagant palace at Vienna, later burnt down, an example of money to burn. I was informed from a spurious source that he had taken Catherine the Great to bed. As every one else seems to have done so, it is of more exceptional interest that he had not taken Catherine the Great to bed. One tome states that his diplomacy did not match up to his love affairs with the ladies of society who were said to include the Queen of Naples. He was accomplished enough to play with the Schuppanzigh quartet and Schuppanzigh himself described him as “an enemy of the revolution but a friend of the fair sex”. The spirit of Rasumovsky lives on (for the time being) in Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Rasumovsky commissioned a set of three quartets from Beethoven with a request that each include a Russian or a Russian sounding tune. Thus for the first time since the Opus 18’s we have in 1806 the first of Beethoven’s middle period quartets. I do not intend to analyze them but one thing is certain. The three quartets taken together are about as long as the six opus eighteens. Like their orchestral fellows they sound bigger and louder. This raises a question I cannot answer, one I hope Matthew will deal with. An orchestra becomes bigger and louder by adding more instruments. Simple. With a quartet you cannot add an extra instrument without it ceasing to be a quartet. So how does he manage this effect?   This music has qualities of being attentively silent; more serious; more spiritual; more reverential. Whatever, this is Beethoven big time and sublime.

You sense a new world for the string quartet from the opening of No 1 which has a repetitive accompaniment , somewhat reminiscent of the opening of the Waldstein sonata. No 1 has been described by Robert Simpson as chamber music’s equivalent to the Eroica and he went on to describe its second movement as a dark Adagio, a kind of private funeral march as opposed to the public one in the “Eroica”.

The Russian themes are found in the last movement of No 1, not a particularly well known Russian tune as is that in the middle section of the double decker scherzo in No 2 which was used by Mussorgsky in the coronation scene in Boris Godunov.

Number three is particularly notable for its mysterious introduction which seems to owe something to the strange tonalities at the beginning of Mozart’s K465, “the Dissonance”. The lugubrious pizzicato of the slow movement is totally original.

The remaining two quartets (about which Matthew will speak a week on) are the Harp, opus 74 and the Serioso, opus 95. From those opus numbers they appear to be like distant planets out on their own. In fact they could be coming out of the same stable. Beethoven’s output did slow down from 1808 but there came the Emperor piano concerto Opus 73 in 1809, the year of Haydn’s death. The emperor by the way was not the emperor but a name said to have been given by the English piano maker, J B Cramer, to the concerto which he perceived as an emperor of concertos.  The Harp quartet immediately followed. The Serioso’s opus number is misleading. Beethoven’s seventh and eighth symphonies were composed in 1812 and first performed in 1814. Their opus numbers were respectively 92 and 93. Little wonder therefore that one would assume the Serioso, opus 95, being even later. In fact it was written in early 1810 and only published later and it makes a natural partner to the Harp but they are by no means identical twins.

The Harp commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz obtains its name from the pizzicato playing in the first movement which gave its baptiser the impression of that instrument. Its use was quite unusual for its time and, in the more popular repertory of the string quartet , we have to wait till Debussy and Ravel for pizzicato to be more greatly exploited. Its main point of interest is Beethoven’s re-employment of motifs from his 5^th symphony. The morse V abounds in the first movement and again in the scherzo. The middle section of the third movement of the fifth symphony, a rumbustious double bass and cello theme is clearly used again in the scherzo of the Harp. One feels that Beethoven must have had other ideas for these themes and could not resist using them again.

The Harp harks back to fifth symphony. The Serioso seems to look forward to a distant world not yet arrived. Beethoven’s quartets of this period could all be described as serious but the opening of this one is particularly bewildering, sounding like a firework going off in circles. It sounds like music to play in the waiting room of a psychoanalyst. It certainly could not have been played in any 18^th century surround. The serioso is the shortest of the quartets and looks towards the last quartets to be written more than ten years ahead. More of them anon.