Beethoven's Theatrical Quartets - Opp. 59, 74, and 95

Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets
Beethoven’s middle-period quartets, Opp. 59, 74 and 95, are pieces

that engage deeply with the aesthetic ideas of their time. In the first full
contextual study of these works, Nancy November celebrates their
uniqueness, exploring their reception history and early performance.
In detailed analyses, she explores ways in which the quartets have both
reflected and shaped the very idea of chamber music and offers a new
historical understanding of the works’ physical, visual, social and
ideological aspects. In the process, November provides a fresh critique
of three key paradigms in current Beethoven studies: the focus on his
late period; the emphasis on ‘heroic’ style in discussions of the middle
period; and the idea of string quartets as ‘pure’, ‘autonomous’ art-
works, cut off from social moorings. Importantly, this study shows
that the quartets encompass a new lyric and theatrical impetus, which
is an essential part of their unique, explorative character.
nancy november lectures in musicology at the University of

Auckland. Her research and teaching interests centre on the music
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her recent
publications include essays on the early performance of Beethoven’s
string quartets, and their performance history in the recording age.
She has also published aesthetic and analytical studies of Haydn’s
music, considering contexts of musical melancholy (Eighteenth-
Century Music, 2007), the use of register in his string quartets
(Music Analysis, 2008) and conceptions of ‘voice’ in his early string
quartets (Music and Letters, 2008). Her edition of Adalbert Gyrowetz’s
String Quartets Op. 29 is forthcoming, and an edition of six sextets by
Paul Wranitzky was published in 2012. Her awards include an Edison
Fellowship from the British Library, an Alexander von Humboldt
Fellowship, and a Marsden grant from the New Zealand Royal
Society. She is currently editing a three-volume set of fifteen string
quartets by Beethoven’s contemporary Emmanuel Aloys Förster.
music in context
Series editors
J. P. E. Harper-Scott
Royal Holloway, University of London
Julian Rushton
University of Leeds
The aim of Music in Context is to illuminate specific musical works, repertoires or

practices in historical, critical, socio-economic or other contexts; or to illuminate
particular cultural and critical contexts in which music operates through the study of
specific musical works, repertoires or practices. A specific musical focus is essential,
while avoiding the decontextualisation of traditional aesthetics and music analysis. The
series title invites engagement with both its main terms; the aim is to challenge notions of
what contexts are appropriate or necessary in studies of music, and to extend the
conceptual framework of musicology into other disciplines or into new theoretical
directions.
books in the series

sim o n p. ke ef e , Mozart’s Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion
j . p . e . h a r p e r - s c o t t , The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism:
Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton
na nc y n o vem b er, Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74 and 95
Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets
Opp. 59, 74 and 95
n a n c y no v e m b e r
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Nancy November 2013
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accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of illustrations [page vi]

List of music examples [vii]
List of tables [xi]
Acknowledgements [xii]
Introduction [1]
1 Setting the scene: theories, practices and the early
nineteenth-century Viennese string quartet [8]
2 Curtain up: performing the middle-period quartets in
Beethoven’s time [39]
3 ‘Not generally comprehensible’: Op. 59 No. 1 and the drama
of becoming [50]
4 ‘With much feeling’: song, sensibility and rhapsody in Op. 59
No. 2 [91]
5 ‘Helden-Quartett’: genre, innovation and ‘heroic’ voices in
Op. 59 No. 3 [124]
6 ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’: songful impetus and dualistic voice
in the ‘Harp’ Quartet [167]
7 ‘The quick-witted brevity of the genuine dramatist’: Op. 95
and the idea of the fragment [202]
8 A tale of heroic emancipation? Reception narratives for the
middle-period quartets [235]
Select bibliography [255]

Index [271]
v
Illustrations
1.1 Johann Carl Arnold, Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim (1855),
watercolour (© Freies Deutsches Hochstift – Frankfurter
Goethe-Museum) [page 15]
1.2 Ferdinand Schmutzer, Das Joachim-Quartett beim Musizieren
(1904), etching (courtesy of Beethoven-Haus,
Bonn) [16]
1.3 First violin high register antics from Adalbert Gyrowetz’s String
Quartet in E flat major, Op. 29 No. 1, finale, bars 327–35 (Offenbach:
André, c. 1799–1800) (© Archiv Musikverlag Johann André,
Offenbach Germany) [19]
1.4 August Borckmann, Beethoven und das Rasumowsky’sche Quartett
(photographic reproduction from 1880–90 of the original painting
of 1872. Courtesy of Beethoven-Haus, Bonn) [28]
2.1 Beethoven, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, movement four,
bars 40–1, autograph score (courtesy of Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna) [45]
4.1a Beethoven, String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2, movement
one, bars 153–5 and 161–4 autograph score, showing crossed out draft
of bars 156–8 (courtesy of Staatsbibliothek, Berlin – Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mendelssohn-Archiv) [100]
4.1b Beethoven, String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2, movement
one, bars 156–60, autograph score (courtesy of Staatsbibliothek,
Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung,
Mendelssohn-Archiv) [100]
5.1a Beethoven, String Quartet in C major, Op. 59 No. 3, movement
three, bars 88–92, autograph score, with two crossed out drafts of
the movement’s conclusion (courtesy of Beethoven-Haus,
Bonn) [156]
5.1b Beethoven, String Quartet in C major, Op. 59 No. 3, movement
three, bars 93–4, autograph score (courtesy of Beethoven-Haus,
Bonn) [156]
8.1 Average metronome marking for twenty-six recordings of
vi Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 59 No. 1 [252]
Music examples
2.1 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1, movement four, bar 157
(first violin) [page 42]
2.2 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2, movement two, bar 32
(viola) [42]
2.3 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, movement four, bars 39–46
(first violin) [42]
2.4 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, movement four, bars 420–2
(first violin) [42]
2.5 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 95, movement four, bars 40–1 [45]
2.6 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement one, bars 189–91
(F. David edition, first violin) [48]
3.1 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1, movement one,
bars 1–19 [57]
bars 236–42 [61]
bars 252–4 [61]
3.4 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1, movement two,
bars 225–31 [67]
3.5 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1, movement three,
bars 1–10 [72]
bars 21–3 [73]
3.7 Beethoven, Fidelio, Op. 72, Act II No. 12/11, bars 11–14 [74]
3.8 Beethoven, Fidelio, Act II No. 12/11, bars 21–4 [76]
3.9 Beethoven, Fidelio (1805/6 version), Act II No. 12, bars 74–9 [80]
3.10 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1, movement four,
bars 1–22 [85]
bars 310–23 [87]
bars 1–7 [95]
vii
viii List of music examples

bars 70b–6 [96]
4.3a Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2, movement one, crossed out
draft of bars 156–8 [101]
4.3b Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2, movement one,
bars 153–60 [102]
bars 1–8 [106]
bars 63–4 [110]
bars 68–70 [110]
bars 138–45 [112]
bars 150–7 [113]
bars 110–22 [116]
bars 89–107 [120]
bars 232–5 [121]
bars 372–7 [122]
bars 1–29 [129]
bars 29–40 [132]
bars 40–3 [133]
bars 51–7 [134]
bars 42–8 [135]
bars 357–9 [135]
5.7 Anon. Lied, ‘Ty wospoi, wospoi, mlad Shaworontschek’ (Singe,
sing’ ein Lied/Sing, sing a song) [138]
5.8 Beethoven, Fidelio, Act II No. 13/12, bars 1–6 [139]
List of music examples ix

bars 1–6 [141]
bars 23–31 [142]
5.11 Beethoven, Fidelio, Act I No. 11/10, bars 296–300 [145]
5.12 J. Haydn, String Quartet in G major, Op. 54 No. 1, movement two,
bars 15–20 [147]
bars 49–51 [147]
5.14 Beethoven, Fidelio, Act II No. 12, bars 12–16 [149]
bars 197–204 [151]
5.16 Beethoven, Fidelio, Act II No. 12, bars 103–5 [152]
bars 71–3 [155]
5.18a Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, movement three, second
crossed out draft of the movement’s conclusion [157]
5.18b Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, movement three,
bars 88–94 [157]
bars 176–80 [159]
bars 206–10 [160]
6.1 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement one, bars 1–4 [178]
6.2 Beethoven, ‘Andenken’, WoO 136, bars 16–18 [178]
6.3 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement one,
bars 125–39 [182]
6.4 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement two, bars 1–9 [185]
6.6 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement two,
bars 106–11 [188]
6.8 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement three,
bars 78–95 [191]
6.9 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement four, bars 106–9
(Variation 5) [194]
6.10 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement four, bars 128–31
(Variation 6) [197]
6.11 Beethoven, Egmont, No. 8 (Melodrama), bars 21–2
(strings) [199]
x List of music examples
6.12 Beethoven, Egmont, No. 8 (Melodrama), bars 44–5 [200]

7.3 Beethoven, Egmont, No. 1 ‘Die Trommel gerühret!’, bars 79–82
(second violin) [213]
7.6 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 95, movement one,
bars 127–30 [217]
7.7 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 95, movement two,
bars 180–92 [222]
7.8 Beethoven, Egmont, Andante agitato in E flat from the fourth
Zwischenakt, bars 20–4 (strings) [227]
7.10 Beethoven, Egmont, Overture, bars 279–88 [229]
7.11 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 95, movement four,
bars 131–4 [231]
8.1 R. Schumann, Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, movement one,
bars 1–20 [237]
8.2 R. Schumann, Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, movement three,
bars 48–51 [239]
8.3 F. Mendelssohn, String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13, movement two,
bars 1–16 [241]
Tables
3.1 Six modern analysts’ views of the form of Beethoven’s String Quartet
Op. 59 No. 1, movement two [page 64]
4.1 Structure of the first group in Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2,
finale [119]
xi
Acknowledgements
The story of the writing of this book is marked by numerous arrivals

and departures. Generous grants from the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation and the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand
allowed me to make three research trips to Germany, spent primarily at
the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn. Colleagues at the Beethoven-Haus assisted greatly
during my visits. Special thanks to Bernhard Appel for astute comments on
chapter drafts, and to Jens Dufner, Dorothea Geffert, Friederike Grigat,
Beate Angelika Kraus, Stefanie Kuban, Emil Platen, Julia Ronge and Maria
Rößner-Richarz, who brought considerable expertise to bear on numerous
Beethoven and bibliographic questions. Stefanie Kuban even went so far as to
provide a trusty bicycle. Visiting scholars to the Beethoven-Haus, including
Joanna Cobb Biermann, Jonathan Del Mar and Federica Rovelli, provided
inspiration and stimulating conversation, as did fellow Humboldtians
Gemma Christian, Samantha Owens and Kirk Wetters.
The original point of departure for the book was an email exchange with
Julian Rushton, who gave generously of his time with guidance and perceptive
comments at all stages. Paul Harper-Scott likewise gave much useful advice
on drafts. I owe considerable thanks to James Webster for numerous insight-
ful and timely remarks on chapters in progress. His passion for multivalent
musical analysis informs my own approach to the middle-period quartets.
I am indebted to my colleagues at the University of Auckland for gen-
erously accommodating my periods of absence and for providing scholarly
support. Dean Sutcliffe’s comments and questions on chapter drafts were
formative and provocative. ‘What does a Haydn scholar bring to Beethoven
studies?’ he asked, encouraging me to answer this question from my own
point of view and thus helping me to formulate an important thesis of this
book: that Haydn functions as an ‘implied dedicatee’ behind the middle-
period quartets. Adam Blake offered useful feedback on early drafts, while
Aleisha Ward and Michael Weiss helped with final proofreading. Sarah
Thompson, Christopher Sommer and Aron Gohr advised expertly on my
German translations. And for their detailed, invaluable editorial comments,
I am extremely grateful to Janet November and Janet Hughes.
xii
Acknowledgements xiii
The Beethoven music examples are based on the relevant Henle editions
of Beethoven Werke. Thanks are due to Sean Scanlen for the typesetting of
all musical examples and to Henle for permissions. Editorial additions in
round brackets in the string quartet examples emanate from the editions by
Paul Mies (1968), while those in square brackets are my own. I have altered
several readings from the Henle editions to conform to the autograph scores
of the respective works, added clefs and key signatures in transcriptions of
Beethoven’s drafts, and specified the instrumentation only in examples that
are not drawn from Beethoven’s quartets.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Mary Haeri,
with whom I greatly enjoyed staying on visits to the British Library; to Aron
Gohr, who has added much to the joy of being in Bonn; and to my parents,
Janet and Peter November, for their love, support and enthusiasm
throughout.
Introduction
Three paradigms
‘So you are writing about Beethoven’s middle-period string quartets. Which
quartets will you include?’ This question was frequently asked of me as I
wrote this book. There is a well-established sense of what constitutes
Beethoven’s ‘early’ and ‘late’ quartets, but the grouping and indeed the
assessment of the ‘middle’ quartets is ambiguous. This has long been the
case: although Opp. 59, 74 and 95 have been central in the performance of
chamber music since the nineteenth century, scholars’ views of them since
this time have been ambivalent. These works warrant a fresh look, a new
approach. William Drabkin calls for a bird’s-eye view of these quartets, a
‘summing up of Beethoven’s achievements in Op. 59, or in the middle-
period Quartets as a group’.1 This wide-angle perspective can arguably best
be achieved by first ‘zooming in’, with a detailed contextual study of Opp.
59, 74 and 95, which this book offers. The book’s contextual approach
provides the foundation for comments on the works as a set; it also allows
a broader critique of three core paradigms in Beethoven studies, which,
because of Beethoven’s centrality, influence our views not only of the
middle-period quartets but also of Western music history in general.
The most dominant and persistent of these paradigms is the traditional
division of Beethoven’s career into three ‘style periods’, with the recent
emphasis on the last period. This teleological view of his career has been
strongly criticised, but remains a key reason for the comparative neglect of
the middle-period quartets today.2 The middle-period quartets were once
considered more a goal, less a way station, but since the mid-twentieth
century the late works have garnered by far the most scholarly praise and
attention. My analyses of Opp. 59, 74 and 95 – on their own aesthetic terms,
and with regard to their varied reception histories (Chapters 3–8) – leads me
1
W. Drabkin, ‘Brought to Book? New Essays on the Beethoven Quartets’, Beethoven Forum, 13
(2006), 92.
2
For a critical view, see T. DeNora, ‘Deconstructing Periodization: Sociological Methods and
Historical Ethnography in Late Eighteenth-Century Vienna’, Beethoven Forum, 4 (1995), 1–15;
and J. Webster, ‘The Concept of Beethoven’s “Early” Period in the Context of Periodizations
in General’, Beethoven Forum, 3 (1994), 1–27. 1
2 Introduction
to question this teleological view. A study of these works’ reception, in

particular, reinforces the fact that the canon of chamber music is a con-
struct, reflecting the changing ideas and ideals of writers with various vested
interests and social and cultural situations; it can serve to both open and
close our understanding of these works.
A second persistent paradigm is that of ‘heroic’ Beethoven. This para-
digm pertains especially to the middle-period works, and also threatens to
restrict our understanding. Scott Burnham has shown how ideas of
Beethoven’s personal heroism – of his triumphing over personal setbacks –
have been projected onto his career, as a whole and in part. They have also
been projected onto narratives supposedly embodied in selected symphonic
works.3 Like the goal-oriented periodisation of Beethoven’s career, the
‘heroic’ paradigm has been subject to critique.4 But it persists, and still
warrants specific attention from scholars of Beethoven’s quartets: notions of
compositional ‘heroism’ are pronounced in discourse about these works,
and some of the most influential scholars fault the middle-period quartets in
particular for not following the expected ‘heroic’ and ‘public’ styles.5
In general, there is a need to carve out some new aesthetic spaces for these
works – new in terms of today’s understandings of the string quartet c. 1800.
Such aesthetics can either move us away from or broaden the traditional
lenses or binaries through which these works have been viewed, which involve
paradigms of ‘heroic’, ‘symphonic’, ‘public’, ‘traditional’, ‘transitional’, ‘true’
or ‘emancipated’ quartets. Recent studies of ‘characteristic’, rhetorical and
traditional elements in Beethoven’s middle period have yielded alternative
conceptions, which can broaden our perspectives.6 Especially important are
3
S. Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton University Press, 1995), especially Chapter 3,
‘Institutional Values: Beethoven and the Theorists’, pp. 66–111. For a critical view, taking
account of who constructs these narratives, see T. S. Grey, ‘Everybody’s Hero’, Beethoven Forum,
8 (2000), pp. 207–23 (especially p. 220).
4
For general critique of this paradigm, see N. Cook, ‘The Other Beethoven: Heroism, the
Canon, and the Works of 1813–14’, 19th-Century Music, 27 (2003), 3–24; and N. Mathew,
‘Beethoven and His Others: Criticism, Difference, and the Composer’s Many Voices’, Beethoven
Forum, 13 (2006), 148–87.
5
See, for example, J. Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets (New York: Knopf, 1967), especially
p. 116 regarding quartets after Op. 59 No. 1; and M. Broyles, Beethoven: The Emergence and
Evolution of Beethoven’s Heroic Style (New York: Excelsior, 1987), especially p. 106.
6
See, especially, H. Danuser, ‘Streichquartett f-Moll Quartetto serioso op. 95’, in A. Riethmüller,
C. Dahlhaus and A. L. Ringer (eds.), Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke, 2 vols. (Laaber,
1994), vol. II, pp. 78–95; J. Daverio, ‘Manner, Tone, and Tendency in Beethoven’s Chamber
Music for Strings’, in G. Stanley (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), pp. 147–64; K. von Fischer, ‘“Never to be Performed in Public”. Zu
Beethovens Streichquartett op. 95’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 9 (1977), 87–96; E. Sisman, ‘After the
Three paradigms 3
studies of the various conceptions of ‘heroic’ that were current c. 1800, as

compared to the more restricted understanding of heroism that emerged
later in connection with Beethoven.7 All these aesthetic ideas can be elabor-
ated with specific regard to early nineteenth-century ideas about, and
cultures of, chamber music. The groundwork for this is laid in Chapter 1,
which discusses theories and practices pertinent to the culture of string
quartets in Beethoven’s Vienna; the individual analyses in Chapter 3–7 take
this exploration further.
Previous scholars of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets have focused on
score and sketch analysis, which bears witness to a third persistent para-
digm: the idea that these musical works are essentially embodied in musical
notation and are thus removed from physicality, visual codes and social
meanings.8 Chapter 2 considers some important early sources – autograph
manuscripts and early editions – that attest to Beethoven’s attention to
performance, and to meanings that arise from it. In the chapters that follow,
I develop analytical methods and hermeneutics to help us to access these
meanings, so that we can understand what Nicholas Mathew has called the
‘other voices’ of Beethoven – the lyric, melancholic, ironic, and so forth – as
they speak in these string quartets.9
Scholarship has tended to move away from the kinds of analyses and
‘work concepts’ that would seem to help most with this task, and ever closer
to the score-centred paradigm of ‘true’ quartets. This concept is discussed in
detail in Chapter 1. The overall trend in discussion of these works can be
encapsulated in the approaches of two representative and influential
Heroic Style: Fantasia and the “Characteristic” Sonatas of 1809’, Beethoven Forum, 6 (1998),
67–96; and J. Webster, ‘Traditional Elements in Beethoven’s Middle-Period String Quartets’, in
R. Winter and B. Carr (eds.), Beethoven, Performers, and Critics: The International Beethoven
Congress, Detroit 1977 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980), pp. 94–133.
7
M. Head, ‘Beethoven Heroine: A Female Allegory of Music and Authorship in Egmont’,
19th-Century Music, 30 (2006), 97–132; L. Lockwood, ‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of
Heroism’, in S. Burnham and M. P. Steinberg (eds.), Beethoven and His World (Princeton
University Press, 2000), pp. 27–47.
8
The two book-length studies of these works, for example, largely comprise analytical notes:
G. Abraham, Beethoven’s Second-Period Quartets (Oxford University Press, 1942); and L. Hübsch,
Ludwig van Beethoven, die Rasumowsky-Quartette Op. 59 Nr. 1 F-dur, Nr. 2 e-moll, Nr. 3 C-dur
(Munich: Fink, 1983). Useful comments on the performance of these works are found in:
L. Lockwood, Inside Beethoven’s Quartets: History, Performance, Interpretation (Harvard
University Press, 2008); P. Ryan, ‘Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op. 59 No. 1:
Performance Practice in the Twentieth Century’, DMA diss., University of Cincinnati (1990);
R. Martin, ‘The Quartets in Performance: A Player’s Perspective’, in R. Winter and R. Martin
(eds.), The Beethoven Quartet Companion (University of California Press, 1994), pp. 111–42; and
R. Winter, ‘Performing the Beethoven String Quartets in Their First Century’, in Winter and
Martin (eds.), The Beethoven Quartet Companion, pp. 29–57.
9
Mathew, ‘Beethoven and His Others’.
4 Introduction
commentators. Theodor Helm, in his seminal book on Beethoven’s quartets

(1885), seems to take a fairly open view of the string quartet as a musical
work; certainly he is among those who consider visual experience of per-
formance to be vital. He observes that the finale of Op. 59 No. 3, in
particular, requires a ‘genialer Führer’ (brilliant leader), someone like
Ferdinand Laub (1832–75) or Joseph Joachim (1831–1907). And he sug-
gests that ‘the listener would do well to seek a place close to the quartet
players in the performance of the C major quartet’.10 Being ‘up close and
personal’ with the string quartet in performance is essential, he finds, for
savouring the material effect of these works.
Fast-forwarding to Joseph Kerman’s magisterial book on the Beethoven
quartets of 1967, one finds a much more composition-centred view of
the string quartet. This is grounded in the strongly harmonic-motivic
orientation that predominates in twentieth-century analysis, post-Hugo
Riemann, and persists today. Kerman’s own analytical approach seems
more concerned with savouring the Beethoven quartets as masterly com-
positions than with their manifold performative or sensually affective
elements. This focus tends to belie the breadth of listener experience
suggested by the wonderfully rich choice of vocabulary he deploys. For
Kerman, the quartets of Op. 59 are revolutionary ‘explorers’ through
which Beethoven uncovers radically new ground in terms of string quartet
techniques and expression.11 The metaphors that he brings into play when
discussing this opus exude space, strength and movement: the works are
twitchy and nervy, have sinews, are aerated, explode symmetrically. How
can we understand this kinetic energy in analytical terms, and how, more
generally, are we to account for new kinds of musical ‘individuals’ or
personae in the quartets? The reader wants to hear much more about
the so-called secondary parameters – register and timbre in particular – to
understand more fully how this music might variously speak to us and
move us viscerally. These parameters, especially register, are foregrounded
in this book’s analyses, which aim to be multivalent and eclectic. This
approach can bring us, in our score-centric age, to a better sense of why
Helm would want to sit close to the string quartet in performance, rather
than study the score in silence.
10
T. Helm, Beethoven’s Streichquartette. Versuch einer technischen Analyse dieser Werke im
Zusammenhange mit ihrem geistigen Gehalt (Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1885), p. 117. Helm’s
comments on Beethoven’s string quartets, which were subsequently to be published in his
Beethoven’s Streichquartette, first appeared in the Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 3 Oct. 1873–21
Sept. 1882. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
11
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 119.
Beethoven’s ‘theatrical epoch’ 5
Beethoven’s ‘theatrical epoch’
Central to my approach is the idea of a ‘theatrical epoch’ in Beethoven’s career

around the time he was composing the middle-period quartets. This epoch
was much more than a passing phase. It can be defined as an extended period
during which he was particularly engaged with, and sought further involve-
ment with, theatrical works and theatrical concepts. It stretches from at least
Die Geschöpfe der Prometheus, Op. 43 (1800–1), to Leonore Prohaska, WoO
96 (1815), and intensifies in 1804–6 and 1809–10 with his work on Fidelio, Op.
72, and Egmont, Op. 84.12 Right in the middle of this period, and attesting to
its importance for Beethoven, comes a lengthy letter from the composer to the
directorate of the Hoftheater in Vienna. The letter dates from sometime
before 4 December 1807. In it Beethoven makes a case for the Imperial
Court Theatre to engage him as a salaried composer.13 The contract he
proposes entails the annual composition of one opera and one smaller theat-
rical work, in return for a fee, and a concert for his benefit to be held in the
theatre. The contract did not materialise, but not for lack of trying: the letter is
detailed, carefully argued, and written out in another hand, then signed by the
composer. Evidently he had spent much time on its conception; indeed, it can
be understood as the culmination of a concentrated period of career planning
and compositional action with respect to the theatre.
This career-planning process, along with the actual composition of large-
scale theatrical works, was carried out simultaneously with the planning and
execution of the middle-period quartets. By autumn 1804 at the latest, he was
contemplating writing more string quartets to follow Op. 18 (composed
1798–1800, published 1801).14 However, on 24 November Beethoven’s
brother Kaspar Karl informed the proposed publisher of these new quartets,
Breitkopf and Härtel, that the composer was very much taken up with work
on Fidelio.15 Work on the opera had occupied Beethoven since the begin-
ning of 1804; a first version was completed in the summer of 1805. Fidelio
finally reached the stage in November 1805, and was again revised for two
further performances on 29 March and 10 April 1806. It is likely that
Beethoven began work on the Op. 59 quartets shortly thereafter.
12
Early versions of the opera are often referred to as Leonore; however, the work was premiered
as Fidelio. Here I use Fidelio to refer to both the 1805/6 version and the 1814 revision, and
provide the version date where relevant.
13
S. Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, 1783–1807, Ludwig van Beethoven. Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe,
7 vols. (Munich: Henle, 1996), vol. I, pp. 333–5.
14
See ibid., vol. I, p. 225. This letter is written by Beethoven’s brother Kaspar Karl.
15
Ibid., vol. I, p. 230.
6 Introduction
In the case of Op. 74, Beethoven began working on the quartet before
Egmont, which was commissioned by the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1809.
Sketches for the quartet in the sketchbook Landsberg 5 provide fascinating
glimpses into Beethoven’s thinking, which changed radically in the course
of the compositional process. The final version, preceded by intensive
sketching, seems to have been crafted alongside and influenced by prelimin-
ary thoughts on Klärchen’s Lied ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’ from Egmont (see
Chapter 6). Beethoven then busied himself with the composition of key-
board works to fulfil a contract that he had arranged with Clementi in 1807,
and then with Egmont.16 It seems that he was free to return to focus on the
string quartet after this, completing the main work on Op. 95 in late 1810,
although the precise chronology of the sketches, and the timing and exact
nature of Beethoven’s completion of and revisions to the score, remain in
question.17 Several of the extant sketches for Op. 95 on loose-leaf manu-
script were once stitched together by Beethoven to form a single homemade
manuscript volume, which contained sketches for the ‘Archduke’ Trio, Op.
97, and two works for the theatre: the incidental music to König Stephan,
Op. 117, and the music for Die Ruinen von Athen, Op. 113. This suggests
that he was developing ideas for these chamber and theatrical works con-
currently, and perhaps considering them as related in terms of drama.
In this book I shall argue that this compositional context – of large-scale
theatrical works – proved highly significant for the middle-period quartets.
Angus Watson has suggested that these theatrical works provide an impor-
tant context for Beethoven’s chamber music in general for the period
1804–9; however, the connections that he makes are limited to brief dis-
cussion of thematic links.18 The theatrical impulse is felt on various levels,
and is especially pronounced in the string quartets of this period. There is
evidence of concrete inspiration from scenes, sentiments or gestures in
Fidelio and Egmont; more abstract but equally pertinent manipulations of
formal conventions; and heightened expressive modes, especially the lyric
and melancholic. I make the case that these middle-period quartets need not
be primarily considered ahead of their time, or behind the time in the sense
16
See C. Brenneis (ed.), Ludwig van Beethoven: ein Skizzenbuch aus dem Jahre 1809 (Landsberg 5),
2 vols. (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1992–3), vol. II, p. 24; and B. Cooper, ‘The Clementi-Beethoven
Contract of 1807: A Reinvestigation’, in R. Illiano (ed.), Muzio Clementi: Studies and Prospects
(Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2002), pp. 337–53.
17
S. Ong, ‘Aspects of the Genesis of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95’, in
W. Kinderman (ed.), The String Quartets of Beethoven (Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 2006), especially pp. 138–9 and 154–63.
18
A. Watson, Beethoven’s Chamber Music in Context (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2010),
pp. 140–216.
Beethoven’s ‘theatrical epoch’ 7
of ‘traditional’. Rather, they are precisely of their time in the sense that they
engage deeply with contemporary aesthetic and dramatic ideas c. 1800. The
works do not sit easily on one side of a binary opposition. Rather, they
encompass ‘public’ and ‘private’ aspects, feelings of joy and sorrow, and
dialogues with the past as well as ostensibly ‘modernist’ trends, such as
process-orientation and fragmentation. These engaging dualities are central
to the theatricality of the middle-period quartets, and are an essential part of
these works’ unique, explorative character.
1 Setting the scene: theories, practices and the early
nineteenth-century Viennese string quartet
Beethoven’s middle-period quartets were composed at a major turning

point in the history of chamber music. A fundamental shift entailed
among other developments an opening up of chamber music for public
and professional performance and reception, and the beginnings of review
culture. This shift happened gradually over an extended period, in which
the decade 1800–10 was especially crucial. The five middle-period quar-
tets, completed in 1806 (Op. 59; three works), 1809 (Op. 74) and 1810
(Op. 95), reflect the changing times and were themselves instruments of
change.
One index of this change is an increasing disjunction between theories
about the string quartet and the string quartet in practice. Ideals of
the string quartet as a musical genre were crystallising c. 1800, and a
distinct canon of string quartets was emerging; but these ideals did not
necessarily add up to a coherent, unified ‘theory’ of the genre. The
supposed models – the canonised string quartets – did not necessarily
relate well to the ideals espoused by theorists; and neither did the per-
formance practices of the time. In exploring the relationship between
theory and practice, I shall first consider ideas of the string quartet as a
musical work c. 1800, then turn to practices – the changing contexts,
performers, patrons and publishers that shaped the special culture of
string quartets in Beethoven’s Vienna. Performance practices are con-
sidered in Chapter 2.
Theories and ideals of the string quartet c. 1800
Ludwig Finscher concludes his history of the string quartet with a compel-
ling theory of the genre. Briefly, it runs as follows. In the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, there emerged a concept of the string
quartet, primarily in German lands, based on the fusing of two strands
of thought: the elevated tradition of four-part writing, and the topos of
conversation. The concept arose, he maintains, equally from the music
8 itself, particularly Haydn’s quartets from Op. 33 (1781) and later, and
Theories and ideals of the string quartet c. 1800 9
Mozart’s ‘ten great string quartets’.1 According to Finscher, this ‘theory of

string quartets’ is unique: no other genre has a comparably solid, binding,
far-reaching conceptual framework, which has served to regulate quartet
composition to the present day. Taken as a hypothesis or as speculation,
Finscher’s theory works well as a partial explanation of a complex phenom-
enon. But a unitary, binding concept for the string quartet c. 1800, and for
Beethoven’s works in particular, is both too simple and anachronistic.
Certainly a discourse on ‘true’ quartets, which had been established in the
mid-eighteenth century, continued to develop in Beethoven’s time.2 This is
found not only in the writings of German authors but also, for instance, in
those of several French theorists. In this discourse, Haydn’s string quartets
and Mozart’s (especially his ‘Haydn’ Quartets) were consistently held up as
touchstones; Beethoven’s quartets, too, were increasingly included in the
canon of chamber music, and were to become central. There existed at least
some regulative concept of the string quartet at this time, as Finscher notes;
this was a compositional model or ideal to which composers could refer.
Beethoven’s comment to his friend Karl Amenda in 1801 that he had only just
discovered the right way to write quartets attests to his awareness of this ideal:
Be sure not to pass your quartet [Op. 18 No. 1] on to anybody, because I have greatly
altered it, as only now have I learnt how to write quartets properly; and this you will
notice, I fancy, when you receive them.3
But the real hardening of theories and ideas about the string quartet into a
unified, regulative concept arguably post-dates the period of the exemplary
works’ composition and early reception (the time of Haydn, Mozart and
Beethoven). Conceptions of the string quartet at this time were multi-
faceted, dualistic and open to debate.
Eighteenth-century conceptions of the string quartet can be understood
in relation to the two strands of thought that Finscher has identified: the
perfection of four-part writing, and the idea of conversation between four
intelligent people. On the one hand, the ideal of perfect four-part writing
relates to a conception of the musical work as a ‘pure’ interplay of musical
tones. Implicitly in this understanding the string quartet is a learned,
1
See L. Finscher, Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1974),
pp. 279–301. The Mozart quartets to which he refers are his last ten quartets: the six
dedicated to Haydn, the ‘Hoffmeister’ K. 499 and the ‘Prussian’ Quartets.
2
On this subject, see also my ‘Theater Piece and Cabinetstück: Nineteenth-Century Visual
Ideologies of the String Quartet’, Music in Art, 29 (2004), 134–50. The following three sections
draw on this article.
3
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, vol. I, p. 86. (Italics original.)
10 The early nineteenth-century Viennese string quartet
elevated work, which resides essentially in the musical score. On the other
hand, the metaphor of conversation inclined towards a conception of the
string quartet as residing essentially in the act of performance, entailing
interaction between players and listeners. In this view, the string quartet is
implicitly social and entertaining, and visual and visceral in its meanings;
the musical experience is a product of the listener’s engagement with the
immediate, affective qualities of the music. In the former conception, how-
ever, the listener’s perception of compositional excellence – its equality,
‘purity’ and overall unity – is deemed paramount; the focus is on formal
qualities that can be abstracted from the work rather than experienced in it.
These two conceptions of the string quartet persisted in parallel in the
early nineteenth century, although metaphors of theatre rather than ‘con-
versation’ became prominent, especially in France. One can simplify the
situation and speak of ‘German’ and ‘French’ conceptions: the former more
score-centred and related to the ideal of perfect four-part writing, the latter
more focused on interaction and performance, and articulated in the meta-
phor of theatre. I shall separate these conceptions in what follows, for
argument’s sake. In practice, though, to understand the string quartet
c. 1800 in terms of any single, monolithic idea is to oversimplify. These
two conceptions are often present simultaneously in the discourse, and
indeed in the compositions themselves, which exhibit tensions between
the learned and the entertaining, the non-physical and the physical, and
the introspective and the social.4 An appreciation of the dualistic character
of the string quartet c. 1800 is central to the aesthetics of Beethoven’s
quartets, and to his contemporaries’ reception of them.
The ‘true’ string quartet as music’s Cabinetstück
In both theory and practice, the string quartet had become an elite genre by
1800. It was considered a touchstone for the budding composer; composing
a successful set of six quartets was a rite of passage for anyone aspiring to
inherit Mozart’s place, or to claim parity with Haydn in the European
musical world. Beethoven and his Viennese contemporaries would have
been well aware of the privileged status of the genre, and the ideals attached
to it, from publications, performances and salon conversations about the
celebrated works, and equally from the emerging critical and theoretical
discourse. New ideas of harmonic function, and the ‘completeness’ of four-
4
See also Daverio, ‘Manner, Tone, and Tendency’, p. 150.
The ‘true’ string quartet as music’s Cabinetstück 11
part harmony in particular, contributed to music theorists’ estimation of the

genre as the most demanding and the most perfect vehicle for composi-
tional cultivation.5 In his Introductory Essay on Composition (1793),
Heinrich Christoph Koch had emphasised the compositional demands of
the genre, observing that the quartet is ‘one of the most difficult of all kinds
of composition, which only the composer who is completely trained and
experienced through many compositions may attempt’.6 In an extended
article entitled ‘On Quartet Music’ for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
(1810), Johann Conrad Wilhelm Petiscus (signed ‘P.’) put harmonic com-
pleteness first among the three principal attributes of the quartet, and a
primary reason why he considered the genre to require highly skilled
composition.7
Significantly for Beethoven’s conception of his middle-period quartets,
four-part fugue of the kind discussed by Koch remained a textural ideal
for string quartets into the early nineteenth century.8 One sees this, for
example, from an 1808 review in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of sets
of eighteenth-century string quartets by Florian Leopold Gassmann and
Matthias Georg Monn, which had been printed in Vienna in 1804.9 The
reviewer praised Gassmann’s fugal Allegros, and noted in the slow move-
ments and minuets the thematic working that pervades all four voices and
often includes canon. The equality of voicing led him to observe: ‘these
compositions deserve the title Quatuor [Quartet] in the strictest sense of the
word’.10 The very fact that these fugal quartets by a composer who had died
thirty years previously had just been published attests to the aura of learned-
ness and growing historicism surrounding the genre.11
Reception of the string quartet was becoming score-centred, as one
might predict from the understanding of the genre as perfect four-part
5
J. J. de Momigny, for instance, assigned certain dissonances and enharmonic tones the status of
essential rather than ornamental sonorities, thus privileging four-part harmony. See his Cours
complet d’harmonie et de composition, 3 vols. (Paris: the author, 1803–6), especially vol. I,
pp. 179–261.
6
H. C. Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Böhme, 1793), vol. III,
p. 326; trans. N. Kovaleff Baker as Introductory Essay on Composition: The Mechanical Rules of
Melody, Sections 3 and 4 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 326.
7
J. C. W. Petiscus (‘P.’), ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 12 (1810),
513–23.
8
Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, vol. III, p. 326.
9
Anon., ‘Recension’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 10 (1808), 433–43.
10
Ibid., 435. (Italics original.)
11
On the archaic and learned in the string quartet around this time, see W. D. Sutcliffe, ‘Haydn,
Mozart and Their Contemporaries’, in R. Stowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the
String Quartet (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 188, 189, 200–1 and 208.
composition. In 1802, Ignaz Pleyel issued the first miniature scores; these
comprised four of Haydn’s symphonies and then ten volumes of his string
quartets, which, his biographer Georg August Griesinger reported, were read
by the dilettanti at concerts.12 However, Beethoven’s string quartets were not
issued in score until the 1830s; their publication was partly a product of early
listeners’ difficulty in comprehending the late quartets. At the same time his
quartets started to appear in composition textbooks as exemplars.13
This score- and composition-centrism had implications for perform-
ers, who were often instructed to leave their personalities aside and
perform in a ‘selfless’ manner. When Petiscus and like-minded writers
focused on the role of the performer in the string quartet, they did so
mainly to draw attention to an idealised, purely aural experience. Petiscus
cautioned that soloistic posturing is anathema to the quartet; the genre, in
his account, allows and demands the purest, most perfect performance.14
By this he meant that the players must refrain from the expression of
their own personalities: ‘thus’, he wrote, ‘each quartet player should
endeavour with self-denial only to belong to the whole’.15 He enlarged
on the quartet’s ‘purity’ in his praise of the ‘schönen Einklang der vier
Instrumente’ (beautiful harmony of the four voices); his locution
‘Viereinigkeit’ ((holy) four-fold unity) suggests a spiritual ideal, which
was related to the increasingly disembodied and lofty conception of the
string quartet.16
Petiscus and subsequent like-minded theorists narrowed the sphere of
‘true’ quartets considerably in other ways, too, allowing only string quartets
on account of their homogeneity of tone, and specifically excluding quatuors
brillants and concertants on account of a lack of equality between their parts
and the supposed vacuity of their musical discourse.17 These last two genres,
along with quartets for mixed winds and strings, were very popular, making
12
Reported in C. F. Pohl, Joseph Haydn, H. Botstiber (ed.), 3 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel,
1927), vol. III, p. 206. On the Pleyel scores, see R. Benton, s.v. ‘Pleyel (i), Ignace Joseph Pleyel, §1:
Life’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, 29 vols. (London:
Macmillan, 2001), vol. XIX, p. 920.
13
See, for example, the extended quotation from and discussion of Op. 18 No. 1 in J. C. Lobe,
Compositions-Lehre, oder umfassende Theorie von der thematischen Arbeit und den modernen
Instrumentalformen (Weimar: Voigt, 1844; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1988), pp. 136–47.
14
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 519. 15 Ibid., 521.
16
Ibid., 520; readers would have made an immediate connection with ‘Dreieinigkeit’ and thus ‘die
heilige Dreieinigkeit’ (the Holy Trinity).
17
Ibid., 516. Relevant here is the frequent use of the adjective ‘Grand’ in chamber music titles at this
time, which was supposed to designate music in which there was equality between the parts, but
did not necessarily do so. See the anonymous review of the ‘Grand Trios’ Op. 43 of A. Gyrowetz
in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 8 (1806), 751.
up a substantial proportion of the performed repertoire in Beethoven’s

Vienna – and, I shall argue, the distinctions were in any case breaking
down in practice. Nonetheless, the emerging discourse about the string
quartet increasingly functioned to exclude these works; the popular
French string quartets, larger groupings of mixed winds and strings, other
chamber genres such as trios, and indeed certain types of string quartet were
deemed in some quarters impure, imbalanced and certainly not spiritual.
The emerging canon of composers of ‘true’ quartets was narrow.
Petiscus’s list is typical in including only Austro-German composers,
Haydn and Mozart first and foremost; he also included the Romberg
brothers, Georg Abraham Schneider, Peter Hänsel and Beethoven.18 He
would have associated popular composers of the day, such as Giuseppe
Cambini, Pleyel (Austrian born, in fact), and members of the French Violin
School, with the generically excluded quatuors brillants and concertants.
Thus the attributes of texture and timbre that he and others associated with
the genre – the equality, purity and homogeneity of ‘true’ quartets – were
much more than generic ideals. As supposed hallmarks of a ‘true’ and
‘spiritual’ music from German lands, they were signifiers of ideal and
idealised national identity.
From the point of view of the listener, the emerging ideals of ‘true’ string
quartets, and the concomitant favouring of spiritual and cerebral meanings,
were leading to a disavowal of the visual, embodied aspect of string quartet
performance. In Kreisleriana (1814), Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
pointed to the kind of ‘non-visual’ listening that was typical of the German
reception of the string quartet. In ‘The Music-Hater’ from Kreisleriana, his
protagonist (who is, the reader learns, a highly sensitive and discerning listener)
describes the experience of eavesdropping on private quartet performances:
Across the street from me lives the concert master who has a string quartet at his
home every Thursday, from whence in the summertime I hear the gentlest tones,
since in the evening, when the street has become quiet, they play with windows
open. On such occasions I sit myself on the sofa, listen with closed eyes, and am quite
full of bliss.19
18
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 516. Petiscus either did not know or chose to ignore
Hyacinth Jadin, whose string quartets show inspiration from the four-movement Viennese
quartets of the late eighteenth century, and those of Haydn and Mozart in particular. See
P. Oboussier (ed.), Hyacinthe Jadin: Les Quatuors à cordes (Centre de musique baroque de
Versailles, 2010).
19
E. T. A. Hoffmann, Kreisleriana, in Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier. Blätter aus dem Tagebuch
eines reisenden Enthusiasten, 3rd edn, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1825), vol. II, p. 358. (My
italics.)
The actual sight of performance is irrelevant, in Hoffmann’s opinion, since

although ‘seeing’ might be part of the musical experience, it is a completely
internalised visualisation. In Kreisleriana, Kapellmeister Kreisler opines: ‘Just
as hearing, in the words of an ingenious physicist [Johann Wilhelm Ritter], is
seeing from within, so to the musician seeing is hearing from within.’20
Performers were to become ‘invisible’ to the listeners in a further sense:
the German reception of the string quartet was typified by a call for a certain
silence and stillness on their part. In Vienna in 1808, speaking with refer-
ence to Beethoven’s favoured quartet violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Johann
Friedrich Reichardt decried quartet-players’ habitual foot tapping.
Reichardt found that ‘Ruhe und Fassung’ (peace and self-control) on the
part of the performers were requisites for pure and perfect performance.21
Foot tapping, like performers’ preludes, might draw one’s attention to the
act of performance, to the self of the performer, and thus away from
contemplation of the quartet as ‘pure’ sonority.
This idea of the string quartet as a beautiful interplay of pure tones is
perpetuated in nineteenth-century string quartet iconography. In Johann Carl
Arnold’s Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim (1855; Fig. 1.1), for example,
our eyes are drawn to von Arnim (née Brentano, whose distinguished friends
included Beethoven) as listener, and to the act of absorbed, private listening.
The artist’s compositional decentring of the quartet suggests that the perform-
ers’ gestures and personalities are set aside: they are not central to the meaning
of this performance. Prominent busts on the wall, and an imposing plaster
sculpture of a seated figure on a stack of plinths just below these busts, further
impart an aura of absorbed and reverent contemplation, which was pervading
Berlin concert life more generally. In a letter from Wilhelm Heinrich
Wackenroder to Ludwig Tieck from 5 May 1792, Wackenroder describes
the kind of listening that is implied in the painting: ‘it consists in alert
observation of the notes and their progressions, in fully surrendering my
spirit to the welling torrent of sensations, in removing and disregarding every
disturbing thought and all irrelevant impressions of my senses’.22
These iconographic tropes are taken in a slightly different direction in
Ferdinand Schmutzer’s late nineteenth-century etching of the Joachim
20
Ibid., vol. II, p. 390.
21
J. F. Reichardt, Vertraute Briefe geschrieben auf einer Reise nach Wien und den Oesterreichischen
Staaten zu Ende des Jahres 1808 und zu Anfang 1809, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Kunst- und Industrie-
Com[p]toir, 1810), vol. I, pp. 207–8.
22
L. Tieck and W. H. Wackenroder, Briefwechsel mit Ludwig Tieck: Pfingstreise von 1793 (Jena:
Diederichs, 1910), p. 11; trans. J. Bradford Robinson in C. Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music
(University of California Press, 1989), p. 95.
1.1 Johann Carl Arnold, Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim (1855), watercolour
quartet playing Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 3 (1904; Fig. 1.2). Although no

listeners are depicted here, ‘serious listening’ of the kind that Wackenroder
would have approved of is implied. The etching depicts the quartet as a
musical work embodied in the score: one sees in particular detail
heads intently contemplating the musical parts, which are illuminated
and central. Indeed, the first violin score is partly legible by the viewer.
The head of Joachim, too, is illuminated, as if he were a primary purveyor
of the spirit of the composer.23 The players use specially constructed
double-facing music stands, which, like the Quartet-Tisch (quartet
table), reinforces the inward and intimate nature of quartet performance:
the outsider’s view is restricted; the viewer must move close to ‘take part’.
23
For further discussion of this etching, see B. Borchard, Stimme und Geige: Amalie und Joseph
Joachim, Biographie und Interpretationsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), p. 549.
1.2 Ferdinand Schmutzer, Das Joachim-Quartett beim Musizieren (1904), etching
Looking directly outwards, the cellist seems to invite the viewer of this
etching into this private realm of serious music study, to ‘listen’ and
contemplate the string quartet as cerebral, ‘spiritual’, score-based music.24
Seeking to locate the string quartet as a genre, Petiscus placed it musically
between orchestral and solo works, and metaphorically between panorama
painting and the miniature:
If one can liken the products of the large orchestra to theatre- and panorama-painting,
in which the thickly applied blobs of colour must be apprehended at a distance in order
to make out something beautiful; if the solo player, on the other hand, is the miniaturist
of music, called to represent the most charming qualities of art through closest intimacy
with the object: then the quartet is the cabinet piece [Cabinetstück] of music, in that it
unites both riches of composition and the greatest delicacy of performance.25
In this view, the quartet might seem to be represented as synthetic and

mediating, as a genre that is open and reconciliatory, at least so far as its
musical elements are concerned. But once again, covertly, Petiscus is actually
24
In an apt and contemporaneous use of metaphor, the string quartet as a genre was likened to an
etching: see Chapter 7, n. 74.
25
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 519–20. (My italics.)
The blending of string quartet subgenres c. 1800 17
narrowing the sphere of the quartet. His metaphor depicts the genre as
socially restricted to an elite class of listeners. Cabinetstücke were originally
viewed by invitation only, in the homes of princes or noblemen; they belonged
in a choice, secluded collection, the Kunstkammer, removed from the public’s
gaze.26 As Cabinetstück, the quartet is an exemplary artwork, small in scale
and fine in detail, reserved for the private contemplation of a connoisseur.
The German writers’ demands for equality, homogeneity, purity and unity
in the ‘true’ quartet can be understood as part of an effort to establish a stable
national musical identity at a time of political uncertainty and embarrassment.
Meanwhile, the call for a certain spirituality – the quartet’s Viereinigkeit –
suggests attempts to preserve spiritual selfhood through music, in the face of
secularisation and territorial invasion.27 Such issues and meanings would have
been readily apparent to a north German Protestant theologian such as
Petiscus, but they would also have resonated in French-occupied Vienna.
The string quartet seemed to Petiscus the ideal medium for achieving social
reform and Bildung (personal development and well-rounded education) at a
national level.28 ‘The string quartet table’, he predicted hopefully in 1810, ‘will
soon replace the bar’; more generally, he hoped that the ‘finer intellectual
pleasures’, promoted by the increasing taste for playing quartets, might start to
drive out ‘roughness and coarseness’ in the nation.29
The blending of string quartet subgenres c. 1800
Petiscus was one of the first writers to clearly distinguish three types
of string quartet – the quatuor concertant, quatuor brillant and ‘true’
quartet.30 This typology still largely remains in use, although modern
writers replace ‘true’ quartet by some permutation of the phrase
‘Viennese Classical string quartet’.31 The typology remains useful, too,
26
For a nineteenth-century discussion of the evolution of this term, see I. E. Wessely, s.v. ‘Kabinet’,
in J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber (eds.), Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste,
167 vols. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1882), vol. XXXII, p. 18.
27
On German national identity and early nineteenth-century musical ideology, see in particular
C. Applegate, ‘How German Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early
Nineteenth Century’, 19th-Century Music, 21 (1998), 274–96.
28
On the string quintet in this connection, see W. Thormählen, ‘Art, Education and
Entertainment: The String Quintet in Late Eighteenth-Century Vienna’, unpublished PhD thesis,
Cornell University (2008); and Thormählen, ‘Playing with Art: Musical Arrangements as
Educational Tools in Van Swieten’s Vienna’, Journal of Musicology, 27 (2010), 342–76.
29
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 514–15. 30 Ibid., 515–17.
31
See, for example, R. Hickman’s application of these terms: ‘The Flowering of the Viennese String
Quartet in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Music Review, 50 (1989), especially 168–72.
since in many respects the repertoire does fall into three types, especially
the eighteenth-century repertoire. However, this classification system is
problematic in two main ways. First, it serves to perpetuate a cultural and
national exclusivity, privileging ‘true’ (or equivalently ‘Viennese
Classical’) string quartets at the expense of other varieties. Also, by 1800
the tripartite typology was outdated: the subgenres were more often
blended than not.
Two further paradigms move beyond this typology and help to build an
understanding of the richness of the string quartet repertoire in
Beethoven’s Vienna. First, classifying the string quartet c. 1800 by orien-
tation – the group of people to whom the music was most directly
addressed – helps to illuminate the style. Quartet composers in
Beethoven’s Vienna wrote works predominantly intended for amateur
performers, who would also be the primary listeners; virtuoso performers
and their audiences; or connoisseurs and other composers, who might
study, perform and listen to their works. The composition of works
primarily for amateur performers tailed off c. 1800, expanding again in
the nineteenth century. Prime Viennese examples in this category are
quartets from the 1780s by Paul Wranitzky, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Franz
Anton Hoffmeister, Franz Krommer and Mozart.32 Some of these com-
posers contributed to more than one category.
The more virtuosic works could be visually exciting. The viewer could
watch the first violinist execute rapid runs, complex bowings and high
register antics (Fig. 1.3); thus they gained in popularity as concert life
began and quartet performance became more professional. In Vienna the
composition of such works peaked in the 1790s and early 1800s with the
quartets of Wranitzky, Gyrowetz and Krommer. A growing category of
works was directed towards intellectual stimulation, including quartets by
Haydn, Gyrowetz, Förster and later quartets by Krommer. Passages creating
harmonic mystification in Gyrowetz’s later quartets are an example of
connoisseur-directed ‘high style’.33 Importantly, though, these quartet
types were not mutually exclusive. Many quartets composed in early
nineteenth-century Vienna, and particularly Beethoven’s middle-period
quartets, combined features of all three categories. With respect to the string
quartet c. 1800, then, ‘Viennese’ should be reserved mainly for use as a
location designator, rather than an index of subgenre.
32
See ibid. for further discussion of these composers’ works.
33
On this topic, see n. 11; and W. D. Sutcliffe (ed.), Adalbert Gyrowetz, Three String Quartets Opus
44, vol. III: The Early String Quartet (Ann Arbor: Steglein Publishing, 2004), p. ix.
The string quartet and the figure of theatre 19
1.3 First violin high register antics from Adalbert Gyrowetz’s String Quartet in E flat
major, Op. 29 No. 1, finale, bars 327–35 (Offenbach: André, c. 1799–1800)
The string quartet and the figure of theatre
A second crucial concept regarding this musical context and the blending of
quartet subgenres is that of theatricality. By 1800, the string quartet had
become well established as a synthetic genre, which quotes, fuses and reuses
elements from various other genres. As Petiscus put it, the string quartet
‘fuses the beauties of both’ solo and orchestral music.34 String quartets did
not only borrow from instrumental genres. Opera and other theatrical
genres were significant sources of initial inspiration, musical materials and
musical procedure for Viennese quartets of Beethoven’s time.35 The slow
movement from Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 1, Adagio affettuoso ed appassio-
nato, is a prime example. Beethoven’s friend Carl Amenda allegedly told the
composer that the movement ‘pictured for me the parting of two lovers’, to
which Beethoven is supposed to have replied, ‘Good! I thought of the scene
in the burial vault in Romeo and Juliet.’36 The composer even went so far as
to note on sketches for the movement: ‘il prend le tombeau’, ‘dese[s]poir’, ‘il
se tue’ and ‘les derniers soupirs’, suggesting Romeo’s arrival at Juliet’s tomb,
his despair, suicide and final breaths.37
The borrowing also worked in reverse. In 1802, Koch observed that modern
composers of operatic works tended to deploy the ‘starke Ausarbeitung’
(strong development) and ‘Schwierigkeiten für die Instrumente’ (difficulties
for the instruments) that were germane to chamber music; thus, he observed,
‘these days it is a difficult task to delineate between the theatre and chamber
34
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 519.
35
See L. Botstein on the inspiration of and allusion to Viennese theatre in Beethoven’s quartets in
‘The Patrons and Publics of the Quartets: Music, Culture, and Society in Beethoven’s Vienna’, in
Winter and Martin (eds.), The Beethoven Quartet Companion, pp. 99–100; and Sutcliffe’s
comments on theatricality in the string quartet c. 1800, ‘Haydn, Mozart and Their
Contemporaries’, especially pp. 190–1 and 208–9.
36
Reported in E. Forbes (ed.), Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, 3rd edn (Princeton University Press,
1973), p. 261.
37
See W. Virneisel (ed.), Ein Skizzenbuch zu Streichquartetten aus op. 18, 2 vols. (Bonn: Beethoven-
Haus, 1972–4), vol. I, pp. 46–7 (this is a transcription of pp. 8–9 of the original, which is
reproduced in vol. II).
styles or to specify a precise difference in character between them’.38 This

breaking down of the long-standing musical style categories (chamber, church
and theatre) was unsurprising in Viennese string quartet composition: several
prominent composers of these works were heavily involved in the theatre, as
performers, composers and directors. Praising Paul Wranitzky’s string quar-
tets, Ernst Ludwig Gerber described the career of a composer ‘whose morn-
ings must be spent with opera rehearsals and likewise the afternoons with the
performances themselves, so that his nights alone remain for composition’.39
Beethoven, too, was substantially involved in composing theatrical music in
the period during which he worked on the middle-period quartets.
In Hickman’s account of the development of the Viennese string quartet,
the three subgenres (in his terms quatuor concertant, quatuor brillant and
Viennese Classical string quartet) tend to give way in the late eighteenth
century to what he terms the ‘theatrical’ quartet: ‘Dazzling displays of
virtuosity, orchestral-like gestures and bold harmonic progressions began
to replace the intimate chamber qualities that had characterized the genre
since its inception.’40 These compositional practices seem to fit well with the
theatrical metaphors for the string quartet that prevailed c. 1800, and with
the overlap that Koch observed between the chamber and theatre styles.
However, the situation was not straightforward. First, the theatricality of
early nineteenth-century string quartets is not simply a matter of inspiration
for specific musical gestures, or more generally of compositional style. Leon
Botstein mentions the influence on compositional technique in Beethoven’s
late quartets of the theatrical conventions that flourished in Vienna.41 The
influence of theatre on these works, he suggests, extends to indirect modes
of representation, crafting of subtexts, hiding of ideas beneath a ‘simple’
surface, and in general the affective use of remembrance and fragmentation.
These techniques also pertain to the middle-period quartets, as the chapters
that follow demonstrate. In these earlier works, the theatricality is arguably
more overt – more readily comprehensible to contemporary listeners as
‘theatre’ – than that in Beethoven’s late quartets.
More broadly, the theatrical metaphors used for the string quartet c. 1800
suggest an understanding of the genre that is in many respects contrary to
the Cabinetstück conception, with its emphasis on compositional products.
38
Koch, s. v. ‘Kammermusik’, Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt am Main: Hermann, 1802; repr.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1964), pp. 821–2.
39
E. L. Gerber, s. v. ‘Wranitzky (Paul)’, Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler, 4
vols. (Leipzig: Kühnel, 1814), vol. IV, p. 612.
40
Hickmann, ‘The Flowering of the Viennese String Quartet’, 172. (Italics original.)
41
Botstein, ‘The Patrons and Publics of the Quartets’, pp. 96–7.
These metaphors suggest an expressive mode that encompasses rather than

excludes the works’ visual and visceral aspects, taking account of the
performers’ agency in constructing the works’ meanings. French writers
of the time, for example, used metaphors of theatre to account for the
experience of quartet music in particular. Momigny described the quartet
as a work involving one ‘principal actor’.42 He also referred to his favoured
quartet players, Alexandre-Jean Boucher and Pierre Baillot, as ‘acteur par-
fait’ (perfect actor) and ‘acteur consommé’ (consummate actor) respec-
tively.43 This figure of the actor allowed Momigny to describe a broad
variety of quartets in terms that fit with the late eighteenth-century concept
of the instrumental quartet as a sonata for four voices, exhibiting melodic
intelligibility and variety of affect. Works where the first violin part contains
most of the melodic material, or where the melody is taken in turn by each
player – the quatuors brillants and concertants respectively – were equally
encompassed by this metaphor.
The figure of theatre also allowed these French theorists to explain how
this music was expressive, how the performer was to ‘move’ the listener. The
idea of theatre suggested for them an ideal relationship between audience
and performers in which the listener or viewer identifies so strongly with the
passions expressed in the work as to experience a transcendence of theat-
rical distance, a transference of parts and transfusion of passions.44 This
ideal is set out from the performer’s perspective in Giuseppe Cambini’s
recommendations regarding the performance of Boccherini’s C minor
String Quartet, Op. 2 No. 1, in his violin treatise of 1803. He advocates a
process of translating verbal text (here a wronged lover’s complaints) into
‘declaimed’ sonic gestures, created primarily through expressive bowing.
Then he urges the performer: ‘strongly moved yourself by the energy of this
expressive interpellation, declaim the phrase as I have written it for you. You
will then have the pleasure of seeing the spectator moved, immobile, and
ready to forget everything in order to hear you.’45
Baillot, an early champion of Beethoven’s string quartets in France, made
it clear that the listener’s experience of chamber music is greatly enhanced
42
Momigny, s.v. ‘Quatuor’, in N. É. Framery, P.-L. Ginguené and J. J. de Momigny (eds.),
Encyclopédie méthodique. Musique, 2 vols. (Paris: Agasse, 1791–1818; repr. New York: Da Capo
Press, 1971), vol. II, p. 299.
43
Momigny, s.v. ‘Quatuor’, and s.v. ‘Soirées ou séances musicales’, Encyclopédie méthodique, vol. II,
pp. 299 and 374.
44
On the eighteenth-century idea of sympathy, see D. Marshall, The Surprising Effects of Sympathy:
Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mary Shelley (University of Chicago Press, 1988).
45
G. Cambini, Nouvelle Méthode théorique et pratique pour le violon (Paris: Naderman, c. 1803;
repr. Geneva: Minkoff, 1974), p. 20.
by the sight of the performance, and the first violinist in particular.

Ultimately, though, the aim is to lose track of one’s role as spectator.
Discussing the physical disposition of performers in the instrumental quar-
tet, he says that clear sight lines to the first violinist are vital for the audience.
Occasionally one might wish to shield one’s eyes in listening to avoid
distraction; but only as an exception. For Baillot, an awareness of bodily
gesture is mutually valuable for players and listeners. He speaks of a ‘con-
tinuous exchange of feelings’, a feedback loop between artist and audience:
inspired by the audience’s demeanour and applause, the performer comes to
know new feelings; this self-knowledge, in turn, equips the performer to
communicate these feelings effectively to the audience.46
The metaphor of conversation, prominent in the eighteenth-century
discourse about the string quartet, was becoming less prevalent.47
However, the newer, theatrical conceptions of the string quartet do not
entirely negate the older conception of quartet conversation. The experience
Baillot described is ‘conversational’ in the broad sense that it depends on
subtle interpersonal interactions, both visual and auditory, between artists
(primarily the first violinist) and audience (he is not concerned with the
interactions between players here). And, like conversation, this quartet
music would apparently foster sociability by inspiring and refining such
interactions.
‘Conversational’ interactions are still readily apparent in the music of the
time, as they are in many eighteenth-century string quartets – in the
exchanging of musical material and other discursive interactions between
parts/voices of the quartet (rude interruptions, polite silence, bombastic
dominance and so forth). But now these interactions were more readily
understood as ‘staged’ – the implicit role playing and ritual character of late
eighteenth-century conceptions of conversation became more manifest, and
the artifice of ‘private’ discourse was, as it were, ‘publicised’. In sum, the
metaphor of theatre in this discourse can above all be understood as a way
that contemporaries found for negotiating between the old ‘private’ realm of
quartet performance and reception and the newer, semi-public realms being
claimed in this time of shifting paradigms.
46
See P. Baillot, L’Art du violon. Nouvelle Méthode (Paris: Dépôt Central de la Musique, [1834]),
pp. 255–6.
47
On this topic, see H.-J. Bracht, ‘Überlegungen Quartett-“Gespräch”’, Archiv für
Musikwissenschaft, 51 (1994), 169–89; L. Finscher, Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts,
especially pp. 287–90; M. Parker, The String Quartet, 1750–1797: Four Types of Musical
Conversation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); D. Schroeder, ‘The Art of Conversation: From Haydn
to Beethoven’s Early String Quartets’, Studies in Music from University of Western Ontario,
19–20 (2000–1), 377–99; there are also many other briefer discussions of this metaphor usage.
Tellingly, when Baillot talks about the role of the quartet violinist, he
deploys a further visual metaphor – that of gallery viewing. This suggests
less intimate interactions and contexts than the conversation metaphor. The
performers of quartets should serve to draw in a large public to experience
music: ‘As an interpreter of the masterpieces that can serve as models for all
types of instrumental compositions . . . [the quartet violinist] opens an
immense gallery into which anyone can come to draw from the source the
real beauty to be found in this new museum.’48 The notion of gallery into
which anyone can come implies a work that is more open, more universal in
its appeal than the elite Cabinetstück, but the museum metaphor suggests
nevertheless a comparable process of canonisation.49 The audiences that
Baillot drew together in the early nineteenth century grew sizeable, if not so
very diverse, and his concerts certainly helped with the formation of a
canon.50 At his ‘Soirées ou séances musicales’, established in 1814 on the
model of Schuppanzigh’s Viennese chamber music concerts, members of
the aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie could hear and view chamber music
old and new, the former including works by Boccherini, Haydn, Mozart and
Beethoven among others.
The kind of listening and viewing that Baillot and his colleagues
espoused raised numerous issues that these early nineteenth-century
French theorists left largely unaddressed. Who was capable of such refined
audition and observation as Baillot demanded, and would it have
been possible in the increasingly popular French concerts of chamber
music? Neither Diderot’s problematisation of the actor who feigns senti-
ments nor Rousseau’s fears about the possible consequences of ‘forgetting
oneself’ while contemplating art seem to have much troubled the
later French writers.51 Cambini did hint, however, at potential problems
48
Baillot, L’Art du violon, p. 260. (My italics.)
49
L. Goehr places the origin of the ‘imaginary museum’ of musical works – a crucial point in the
history of canon formation – right around this time. See The Imaginary Museum of Musical
Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, rev. edn (Oxford University Press, 2007).
50
Initially Baillot’s concerts were held in a hall that seated up to 150 spectators, but they were to
expand. In 1830, he moved the series to the great hall of the Hôtel de Ville, which held 700
listeners. Of course, one’s view of the quartet in performance might be very restricted at such
performances. For further details of these concerts, see J. H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A
Cultural History (University of California Press, 1995), pp. 204 and 264; J.-M. Fauquet, ‘La
Musique de chambre à Paris dans les années 1830’, in P. Bloom (ed.), Music in Paris in the
Eighteen-Thirties, H. Robert Cohen (series ed.), Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century France, 6
vols. (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987), vol. IV, pp. 299–311; and Fauquet, Les Sociétés de
musique de chambre à Paris de la restauration à 1870 (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1986).
51
On this subject, see especially Marshall, ‘Forgetting Theater’ and ‘Rousseau and the State of
Theater’, Chapters 4 and 5 in The Surprising Effects of Sympathy.
in his article ‘Performance of Instrumental Quartets’ (1804) for the

Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. The theatrical metaphor he deploys
here suggests a tricky mediating role for performers in the instrumental
quartet in the more ‘public’ contexts that were emerging. He argued that
music will be vague and meaningless to an audience unless the performers
work together in careful rehearsal:
The best actor would not dare to give a scene from a significant play without having
gone through it: it causes me grief and I must shrug my shoulders involuntarily,
when I hear musicians say: Come on, let’s play quartets! – just as lightly as one says
in society: Come on, let’s play a game of Reversis! Then must music indeed remain
vague and without meaning.52
In this conception of string quartet performance, the crucial conversa-

tions are those between the performers as they work together to
produce ‘vollkommene Ausführung’ (perfect performance). Such per-
formance might ultimately have little to do with the kind of spontaneous,
‘conversational’ give-and-take between artist and audience that
Baillot hoped to promote. Rather, all details of the work, including
every nuance and accent of performance, were to be carefully learnt
in advance. The performers, according to Cambini, ought to rehearse
together and frequently; only such thorough study of the score would
result in a unified work, ‘ein schönes Gemälde’ (a beautiful painting) as
he termed it.53
This conception of the quartet as a musical work privileges the
final, polished product as the locus of meaning. To use contemporary
visual metaphors, the quartet is more the musical equivalent of a
Cabinetstück than a tableau vivant or lebendes Bild (picture brought
to life). This conception runs contrary to the thrust of the (mainly
French) emphasis on performance as an embodied process – which none-
theless informed compositional and performance practices c. 1800,
including those of Beethoven. However, the Cabinetstück conception
emerged particularly strongly in the German writings about string quar-
tets. This view was to dominate discourse about the genre in general –
including the quartets of Beethoven – during the nineteenth century (see
Chapter 8).
52
G. Cambini, ‘Ausführung der Instrumentalquartetten’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 6
(1804), 783.
53
Ibid., 782.
Performance and publication in Beethoven’s Vienna 25
Contexts of string quartet performance and publication

in Beethoven’s Vienna
The emerging ideals regarding the genre relate to contemporary composi-

tional, listening and performance practices in Beethoven’s day, and specifi-
cally in Vienna, his most immediate milieu. Turn-of-the-nineteenth-century
Vienna was a renowned centre for musical life, alongside Paris and London,
and a special case, musically speaking, particularly with respect to theatre and
chamber music. Although it lacked their size and their more developed public
concert life and concert infrastructure, Vienna was remarkable for the variety
and sheer volume of concerts. A populace of around 270,000 could support
no less than five theatres in the city and suburbs. The theatre, and especially
French and German opera, was a vital site for contemporary social interaction
and political commentary, as well as entertainment. The Viennese rage for
Schaulust (visual stimulation), which produced such theatrical delights as
poetic declamations and prodigies’ displays, influenced every aspect of music
making. In the 1806 concert where Franz Clement premiered Beethoven’s
Violin Concerto, Op. 61, for instance, the violinist indulged the audience by
playing a piece with his violin turned upside down.
In the Viennese private sphere, Joseph II’s quartet parties of the 1780s,
featuring serious works in learned style, had set a rather different tone for
chamber music making. Retrospection and canon formation were an inte-
gral part of this culture into the nineteenth century. Nikolaus Zmeskall von
Domanovetz (Beethoven’s aristocratic friend, fellow composer and the
dedicatee of Op. 95), for example, fostered enthusiasm for Haydn.
Introspection and contemplation had their place this culture. Insofar as
repertoire and performance produced Viereinigkeit (fourfold unity), quartet
playing in private may even have offered a new secular analogue to
religious ritual and spiritual experience. Nonetheless, socio-political com-
mentary, theatricality and the satisfaction of Schaulust inhabited this same
sphere. The inveterate Viennese theatre-goer Count Karl Zinsendorf
reported that numerous comédies de société (private entertainments
where the nobility re-enacted works that had been staged at the National
Theatre) were performed in the late eighteenth-century Viennese cham-
ber.54 Other salon-based theatrical entertainments entailing active intellec-
tual and physical participation included Geschichten spielen (pantomiming
54
Discussed in D. Link, ‘Vienna’s Private Theatrical and Musical Life, 1783–92, as Reported by
Count Karl Zinzendorf’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 122 (1997), 205–57.
of scenes from famous plays); tableaux vivants or lebende Bilder (posing like
characters from famous historical paintings); and Attitüden (acting out
emotions depicted in paintings).55
Performers and patrons
String quartets were a favoured medium in private music making at this

time, Eduard Hanslick confirms.56 Only later, as the nineteenth century
progressed, would the focus shift to the keyboard, in connection with
fundamental changes in music education and literacy.57 Around 1800,
stringed instrument performance in general flourished particularly strongly
in Beethoven’s Vienna. In an 1808 report on music making in the Imperial
city, Ignaz von Mosel lists Joseph Mayseder, Schuppanzigh, Clement, Paul
and Anton Wranitzky, and eight other ‘outstanding violinists’ among the
most talented Viennese musicians.58 The violinists Johann Tost (the ded-
icatee of quartets by Haydn) and Count Andrey Kirillovich Rasumovsky are
listed as Dilettanten. Outstanding cellists of the day included the Krafts,
father and son, and the elder Joseph Weigl. The amateurs listed are nobles:
Count Franz von Brunsvik and Zmeskall. All these performers were known,
most of them well known, to Beethoven. As for string quartet composition,
one can point in particular to an influx of skilled Bohemian musicians who
made Vienna their home in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies, among them excellent quartet composers such as Gyrowetz and the
Wranitzky brothers. These composers were also fine string players.
An 1801 Viennese correspondent for the Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung noted that Privatakademien (private academies) in which music
was performed were common in Vienna, as they were elsewhere in German-
speaking lands.59 In early nineteenth-century Vienna, the aristocracy played
a major role in the formation and modelling of these private-sphere musical
activities, and the hosts as well as the invitees were often very talented
55
These private entertainments are discussed further in Thormählen, ‘Playing with Art’, 369–70,
where relevant literature is cited.
56
E. Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens (Vienna: Braumüller, 1869), p. 202.
57
On this subject see L. Botstein, ‘Listening through Reading: Musical Literacy and the Concert
Audience’, 19th-Century Music, 16 (1992), 129–45.
58
Ignaz von Mosel, ‘Uebersicht des gegenwärtigen Zustandes der Tonkunst in Wien’,
Vaterländische Blätter für den österreichischen Kaiserstaat, 1 (1808), 53.
59
Anon., ‘Neuer Versuch einer Darstellung des gesammten Musikwesens in Wien’, Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1801), 639.
Performers and patrons 27
musicians.60 High economic inflation resulting from political upheaval

meant that members of the upper crust who were still seeking to promote
musical culture and show off their wealth and power would now have to
scale down their musical establishments. So chamber music making flour-
ished in the hands of such musical aristocrats as Prince Karl Lichnowsky,
who sponsored a string quartet led by Schuppanzigh from c. 1794, and
Count Rasumovsky, who set up the Rasumovsky String Quartet (1808–16),
also led by Schuppanzigh.61 Both patrons supported Beethoven, as did
Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz, who played violin and
cello. From 1796, Lobkowitz employed excellent musicians for a string
quartet. Before 1808, Schuppanzigh’s quartet included second violinists
Louis Sina and Joseph Mayseder, violists Franz Weiss and Anton
Schreiber, and cellists Nikolaus and Anton Kraft; after 1808, Joseph Linke
played cello, and when the ensemble re-formed between 1823 and 1828,
Karl Holz was the second violinist.62
Beethoven’s conception of his quartets depended crucially on the ready
availability of a performing ensemble, and a highly talented one at that, to
try out his ideas. He was especially privileged in this respect during the years
in which he composed the middle-period quartets, when he had his so-
called Leib-quartett (personal quartet), the Rasumovsky Quartet, at his
disposal.63 The Viennese director and theatre composer Ignaz Ritter von
Seyfried described Beethoven’s interactions with this ensemble thus:
Beethoven was, as it were, the cock of the walk in the princely establishment; every-
thing that he composed was rehearsed hot from the griddle and performed to the
nicety of a hair, according to his ideas, just as he wanted it and not otherwise, with
affectionate interest, obedience and devotion such as could spring only from such
ardent admirers of his lofty genius, and with penetration into the most secret
intentions of the composer and the most perfect comprehension of his intellectual
tendencies.64
60
See A. Hanson, ‘Vienna, City of Music’, in R. Erickson (ed.), Schubert’s Vienna (New Haven: Yale
61
For further information on the personnel and pre-1816 activities of Schuppanzigh’s quartets, see
C. Hellsberg, ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh (Wien 1776–1830): Leben und Wirken’, unpublished PhD
thesis, University of Vienna (1979), pp. 10–31.
62
See K. M. Knittel, s.v. ‘Schuppanzigh, Ignaz’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, vol. XXII, p. 818.
63
The phrase ‘Leib-quartett’ is from Karl Holz, March 1826. See G. Herre and K.-H. Köhler (eds.),
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, 11 vols. (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1988),
vol. IX, p. 111. The word ‘Leib’ in this connection has both the positive connotation of a
‘personal’ and ‘trusted’ ensemble for Beethoven and the negative suggestion of a ‘bond-slave’
group, at his beck and call.
64
Forbes (ed.), Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, p. 444.
1.4 August Borckmann, Beethoven und das Rasumowsky’sche Quartett (photographic reproduction
from 1880–90 of the original painting of 1872)
Seyfried emphasised Beethoven’s direction of the ensemble, and the

performers’ commitment, as did August Borckmann in his imagined
scene Beethoven und das Rasumovsky’sche Quartett, which dates from
1872 (Fig. 1.4). Their highlighting of the composer’s directing role on
these occasions is doubtless one-sided. In reality the process would have
been mutually beneficial: while Beethoven directed the players’ progress
and stipulated his own preferences, he could also obtain feedback on how
a given effect or affect would be rendered in performance, and make
amendments accordingly. This would have been especially helpful in
choreographing the works’ theatrical elements, in shaping highly expres-
sive, songful passages, and in assessing structural matters. Beethoven
worked closely with Schuppanzigh, and seems not to have been offended
when Schuppanzigh proposed to him in April 1823 that they compose a
Social function and performance ideology 29
new quartet together.65 It is likely that Beethoven ‘learnt how to write

quartets properly’, as he put it to Amenda, through interactions with this
violinist and his quartet, and making related revisions to Op. 18.66
Although string quartets had been heard in concerts in Paris and London
in the late eighteenth century, they were not the first or most typical destina-
tion for these works. In the case of Op. 59, for example, Razumovsky, as
dedicatee, held the sole rights to each work for one year from the time of its
completion; and the works were probably first performed at his residence,
although there is no evidence to confirm this.67 Op. 59 was probably per-
formed in Schuppanzigh’s semi-public concerts in 1807, and it has been
assumed that his quartet also premiered Op. 74 and Op. 95, although on little
evidence.68 The primary audiences for these quartets remained small circles
of ‘insiders’ – skilled performers, composers, and often musically talented
upper- and middle-class Viennese of Beethoven’s acquaintance, the likes of
whom would have assembled, for example, at the house of Zmeskall for trials
and first performances of new chamber music.
Social function and performance ideology
The idea that music ‘makes everyone equal’ was prevalent at this time.
Petiscus demonstrates that the string quartet had come to be considered a
particularly apt vehicle for this kind of levelling. Mosel waxed poetic: ‘Every
day the art of music effects the miracle that one otherwise attributed only to
love: it makes all classes equal.’69 For him such music making was part of the
private education of the family, and a crucial factor in promoting sociability
65
J. M. Gingerich, ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh and Beethoven’s Late Quartets’, Musical Quarterly, 93
(2010), 450.
66
On these revisions, see J. Levy, Beethoven’s Compositional Choices: The Two Versions of Op. 18,
No. 1, First Movement (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); and L. Lockwood, Inside
Beethoven’s Quartets, pp. 35–41.
67
The existence of an Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung review of these quartets from 27 February
1807 suggests that a performance of the quartets had already taken place, which the reporter had
attended. See Chapter 3, n. 2.
68
The first performance of Op. 95 is mentioned by A. Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van
Beethoven, 3rd edn (Münster: Aschendorff, 1860), part I, p. 197; Schindler’s comment is
disseminated in G. Kinsky and H. Halm, Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-bibliographisches
Verzeichnis seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen (Munich and Duisburg: Henle, 1955),
p. 267. For a detailed discussion of the circumstances of the first performances of Op. 59, see
T. Albrecht, ‘“First Name Unknown”: Violist Anton Schreiber, the Schuppanzigh Quartet, and
Early Performances of Beethoven’s String Quartets, Opus 59’, Beethoven Journal, 19 (2004), 10–18.
69
Mosel, ‘Uebersicht des gegenwärtigen Zustandes der Tonkunst in Wien’, 39. See also Petiscus,
‘Ueber Quartettmusick’, 514.
and Bildung. He declares that ‘only through [music] does one believe oneself
able to honour and delight one’s friends and relatives’.70 At chamber music
parties such as those that Beethoven attended, lower-born composers and
performers such as Wranitzky or Schuppanzigh played alongside aristocrats
such as Brunsvik and Zmeskall. Old aristocracy and a new intellectual
bourgeoisie mixed relatively freely, for example, in the salon of Fanny
von Arnstein, whose guests included distinguished intellectuals such
as Wilhelm von Humboldt, August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel.
However, social levelling was much more an ideal than a reality in the
Viennese chamber c. 1800. While the salons of Vienna were modelled on
those of the French, there was less mobility between classes, especially after
1815.71 Beethoven was somewhat insulated against the realities of the social
divide with which other composers had to contend. His close association
with a particularly privileged and especially musical subset of musical
Vienna was partly due to his well-connected friends from Bonn, especially
Count Ferdinand von Waldstein.72 This was one factor in the high level of
technical and musical challenge in his string quartets.
To be sure, middle-class access to chamber music making and semi-
public concerts was increasing. The burgeoning Viennese salon culture in
general, and chamber music in particular, could be understood as an outlet
for the Bürgertum, who were otherwise politically almost powerless and
subject to stringent censorship in all kinds of interactions. The social and
political functions of contemporary theatre – representation and enactment
of imagined, desired, or forbidden roles – could also be served by chamber
music. Indeed, the performance of instrumental chamber music in the
home, or in a semi-public setting, might have appealed as the ideal setting
for subtle and subversive role play.73
Beethoven and other quartet composers of his time were actively seeking
wider audiences, if not necessarily public venues, for their works. Beethoven
sought to publish his quartets simultaneously in multiple cities, partly to
secure maximum profit in an era before copyright laws. Meanwhile, the
70
Mosel, ‘Uebersicht des gegenwärtigen Zustandes der Tonkunst in Wien’, 39.
71
W. Heindl, ‘People, Class, Structure, and Society’, in R. Erickson (ed.), Schubert’s Vienna, p. 49;
for a further critical view of this topic, see M. S. Morrow, Concert Life in Haydn’s Vienna:
Aspects of a Developing Musical and Social Institution (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press,
1989), pp. 23–5.
72
On this subject, see G. Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette: kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte und
Werkinterpretation (Freiburg: Rombach, 2004), pp. 26–7.
73
Botstein, ‘The Patrons and Publics of the Quartets’, pp. 96–7. See also H. Seidler, Österreichischer
Vormärz und Goethezeit. Geschichte einer literarischen Auseinendersetzung (Vienna:
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1982), p. 57.
Social function and performance ideology 31
public performance of quartets in Vienna was becoming more common.

The case of Schuppanzigh’s quartet illustrates the pronounced shift that was
taking place in the private sphere of music making. This first professional
Viennese string quartet gave weekly concerts on a Friday in the Lichnowsky
residence in the mid- to late 1790s. During the first decade of the nineteenth
century, the quartet moved into the semi-public realm. From 1804,
Schuppanzigh put on morning subscription quartet concerts in the
Augarten, and afternoon weekly winter subscription concerts for a circle
of no more than 100 connoisseurs in the inn Heiligenkreutzerhof (later Zum
römischen Kaiser). Subscribers could pay five Gulden to attend four
Produktionen. Clemens Hellsberg lists no less than sixty public concerts
by Schuppanzigh for the period 1808–16.74
The repertoire of these series is difficult to ascertain, since there are no
surviving programmes; however, Schuppanzigh’s concerts may have been a
motivation and first semi-public venue for Beethoven’s Op. 59. The impetus
to write Op. 74 may also have stemmed from the Schupannzigh Quartet’s
concert series. Visiting Vienna in 1808–9, Reichardt reported regular quar-
tet performances involving Schuppanzigh and Anton Kraft, and Sunday
quartet parties in Zmeskall’s home.75 The concert series were significant
indices of change, but they were sporadic and short-lived. There was no
regular public chamber music series in Vienna until the 1820s.
String quartet performances of the time reflected the prevalent quartet
ideologies, but only to some extent. In a letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter of
1829, Goethe famously contrasted the figure of Paganini, who evoked a
‘Flammen- und Wolkensäule’ (pillar of flames and clouds), to the
more sober image of the Möser String Quartet in performance in
Berlin. Goethe saw the latter as a very different ‘exhibition’ (as he termed
it), but a kind of spectacle nonetheless, a ‘staging’ of serious discourse:
‘one hears four reasonable people engaged in conversation with one
another’.76 However, the early Viennese quartet concerts would also
have incorporated an element of ‘show’ or bravura display, something
to gratify if not entirely satisfy Viennese Schaulust. The ensemble that
performed at Lichnowsky’s, featuring seventeen-year-old Schuppanzigh
in 1794, was dubbed ‘das Knaben-Quartet’, which might be translated as
‘the Quartet of Young Stars’. The audience’s behaviour at Schuppanzigh’s
74
Hellsberg, ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh’, pp. 336–7.
75
See, for example, Reichardt, Vertraute Briefe, vol. II, pp. 119–20.
76
L. Geiger (ed.), Der Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter in den Jahren 1799 bis 1832 (Leipzig:
Philipp Reclam, 1902), pp. 193–4. Goethe’s imagery seems to be an oblique reference to the Book of
Exodus, which tells of God leading Israel into the wilderness by fire pillar at night and cloud by day.
early Quartettproduktionen was probably similar to that at the quartet

performances of the 1820s and 1830s, for which there is reasonably
detailed evidence.77 Those early audiences did not necessarily sink silently
into non-visual contemplation. Far more interactive than today’s cham-
ber music concert-goers, they applauded after each movement, clapping
and commenting during particularly pleasing passages. Especially loud
applause led to an immediate da capo repeat. All this was perhaps rather
less subtle than the audience feedback Baillot had hoped to foster in Paris.
Schuppanzigh and Joseph Böhm in Vienna, Karl Möser in Berlin, and
Pierre Baillot in Paris were violinists reputed to penetrate the genius of the
composer with ‘genius in performance’ and render the works in a refined
and appropriate manner.78 But it is debatable how close their ensembles
came to realising the ideals of ‘purity’ and ‘equality’ associated with ‘true’
quartets. For a start, reviewers of quartet performances were typically drawn
to comment on the first violinist, who was possibly more the showman than
the touted ideal of ‘selfless’ quartet performance would predict. An 1805
reviewer of Schuppanzigh’s concert series from the winter of 1804 was
unusually balanced in his attentions; still, the spotlight was on the leader:
Schuppanzigh, the entrepreneur, knows exactly how to penetrate the spirit of the
compositions with his excellent quartet performances, and to single out so charac-
teristically the fiery, powerful, also finer, delicate, humorous, lovely, trifling, that the
first violin could hardly be better. He is accompanied on second violin just as well by
his pupil Mayseder, a very talented young man . . . Schreiber plays viola . . . with
lightness and accuracy. The cello is admirably filled by Kraft the elder; he has a nice
full sound, an exceptional degree of facility and security, and never sacrifices the
whole in favour of the effects of his instrument. Of course, it is only the most
excellent, most distinguished compositions, which are being carefully studied by
these masters, and which are only performed in public after several rehearsals.79
Not all reviewers were so complimentary; nor did they always find that the
ideal of ‘selfless’ performance had been realised. Several early reviewers were
critical of Schuppanzigh’s quartet, including Reichardt, who deplored
Schuppanzigh’s foot tapping habits.80 One critic, for instance, reported
that the quartet had ‘lost more than they have gained through too much
77
This evidence is discussed in Gingerich, ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh’, 468.
78
On the notion of ‘genius in performance’ at this time, see M. Hunter, ‘To Play as if from the Soul
of the Composer: The Idea of the Performer in Early Romantic Aesthetics’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 58 (2005), especially 366–7.
79
Anon., Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 7 (1805), 534–5.
80
See also the dissenting voices mentioned in Gingerich, ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh’, 467.
Early canon formation 33
arbitrariness, and too frequent use of tempo rubato’.81 Early nineteenth-

century notions of ‘unity’, ‘purity’ and ‘equality’ in performance did not
necessarily accord with those of today. Score study and rehearsal were
increasingly considered vital, in line with Cambini’s 1801 prescriptions
and the 1805 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer’s comments cited
above, and specifically in connection with Beethoven’s quartets, but they
were not yet norms. In a conversation book from 1825, Holz observed to
Beethoven: ‘we only rehearse your quartets, not those of Haydn and Mozart,
[which] work better without rehearsal’.82
Contemporaries found the songfulness of Schuppanzigh’s performances
particularly striking. Viennese reviewer and playwright August Friedrich
Kanne reported: ‘mainly in the performance of the quartet as a singing
orator [Deklamator] and declaiming singer, and as a spiritual and emotion-
ally expressive artist, [Schuppanzigh] claimed his striking pre-eminence
over other virtuosi’.83 The ideology of ‘unmediated utterance’ or ‘genius in
performance’ is at work here: apparently this violinist could transmit the
composer’s thoughts directly to the audience. This may well speak more to
new ideals of genius and selfhood than to actual experiences of
Schuppanzigh’s performance; but it is reasonable to conjecture that the
songful impetus in Beethoven’s middle-period quartets owes something to
his acquaintance with Schuppanzigh’s style.
Early canon formation
Those ‘most excellent, most distinguished compositions’ in Schuppanzigh’s

concerts apparently included string quartets by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven,
Anton Eberl and Romberg (Andreas or Bernhard). String quartet publica-
tion data from Viennese firms in Beethoven’s time allows us a further
glimpse into the process of canon formation that was at work. Of all these
composers, Haydn is the most prominent. His quartets provided the major
impetus and model for string quartet production in general c. 1800, which in
fact would by no means have been lost on Beethoven – indeed I shall argue
that Haydn was a powerful source of his inspiration. In 1801, the year that
81
Cäcilia: eine Zeitschrift für die Musikalische Welt, 3 (1825), 246. The author was probably Ignaz
Ritter von Seyfried.
82
Herre and Köhler (eds.), Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte (1981), vol. VIII, p. 259.
83
A. F. Kanne, ‘Schuppanzighs Quartetten’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung mit besondere
Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat, 8 (1824), 321.
Beethoven published his first set of string quartets, Op. 18, the Viennese
correspondent of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported:
In terms of the composers who are most valued and most often used by the more
educated, Haydn sits justifiably above; and I challenge each person, who has had
entry into the best houses, to disprove me when I claim that the instrumental
quartets of Haydn and several other deserving composers of instrumental quartets
are nowhere better to be heard, and in the best-known places nowhere so correctly,
subtly and beautifully played, as in Vienna.84
Here, again, the ideology of the ‘true’ string quartet is in evidence, in the
emphasis on the performers’ fidelity to the composer and score: the skilful
Viennese performers apparently stand back and allow the works of the great
Haydn to speak.
Catalogues of the principal Viennese publishers of string quartets for the
period 1800–10 reveal other trends bearing upon canon formation. First,
the production of sets of six quartets starts to tail off, and sets of three per
opus, or a single-work opus, become the norm. So it is with Beethoven’s
middle-period quartets: Op. 59 is a set of three, while Opp. 74 and 95 are
single works. This publication trend registers a sense of privilege attaching
to the musical work: string quartets are no longer a bulk commodity to be
bought in half dozens, but are presented as unique, individual composi-
tions.85 Published string quartets now bifurcate more clearly into those
intended for connoisseurs and those for amateurs.
Right at the time of composition of Opp. 74 and 95, which were clearly
aimed at the connoisseur end of the market and professional performance,
Chemischen Druckerey’s publication of the Journal für Quartetten
Liebhaber (Journal for Quartet Amateurs) was a telling sign of the times.
The twenty-four volumes of this journal appeared in the years 1807–10 and
were directed at the reasonably substantial market of performers who
needed something less challenging than the quartets of Beethoven, or the
more difficult works of Haydn, Mozart, Krommer, or Pierre Rode. The
music in this series of journals consists exclusively of arrangements from
contemporary operas, ballets and pantomimes – rather like sheet music
today that reproduces for piano the hit tunes from Broadway musicals. The
composers represented are the popular composers of the day, such as
84
Anon., ‘Neuer Versuch einer Darstellung’, 639.
85
On this topic, see E. Sisman, ‘Six of One: The Opus Concept in the Eighteenth Century’, in
S. Gallagher and T. Forrest Kelly (eds.), The Century of Bach and Mozart: Perspectives on
Historiography, Composition, and Performance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2008), pp. 79–107.
Mozart, Cherubini, Gluck, Gyrowetz and Wranitzky. Beethoven is featured,

too: the sixth volume contains a trio from Fidelio (Act I No. 3, first version).
Here one can see clearly how two spheres of musical activity, the chamber
and the theatre, were literally merging. Quartets could actually be theatrical
works, ‘take-home’ versions of public works for private enjoyment and
study.
Alongside this new and relatively light repertoire, there is a clearly
retrospective aspect to the string quartets produced and published in the
early nineteenth century. This helped to establish and maintain the per-
forming and pedagogical canons of quartet composers, and a stylistic
emphasis on ‘learned’ elements such as fugue. In terms of publication, this
retrospective glance has two aspects. First, there are many arrangements of
works by earlier composers who were increasingly revered and canonised
c. 1800, such as Handel, Corelli and J. S. Bach.86 Then there is also a trend of
reprinting much earlier works (the fugal quartets of Gassmann and Monn,
for example), and more recent quartets, chiefly by Mozart and Haydn,
which were taking on the status of ‘classics’.87 The activity of
Schuppanzigh’s quartet, especially in the 1820s and 1830s, was a significant
force in this process: the core works for his concert series were the string
quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Reviewers of the series helped to
establish the canonic status of these works, attaching the word ‘classical’ to
this repertoire with a repeated emphasis that was new for the time.88
Schuppanzigh, Kanne opined, is ‘a mighty dam against the flood of modern
tinsel music, [he] dedicated his virtuosity solely to the acknowledgement
and rise of truly classical creations’.89 ‘Tinsel music’ would have meant
opera and its offspring, such as opera arrangements for string quartet, and
also keyboard variations and ‘potpourris’.
A further canon-forming trend c. 1800, of which Beethoven was aware,
was the creation of authorised and non-authorised arrangements for string
quartet of works by key quartet composers, past and present. These arrange-
ments may have reflected a market demand for more manageable string
quartets, or simply more string quartets, by these favoured composers.
86
On this subject, see L. Finscher, ‘Corelli, Haydn und die klassischen Gattungen der
Kammermusik’, in H. Danuser (ed.), Gattungen der Musik und ihre Klassiker (Laaber, 1988),
185–95.
87
In 1805, for example, Artaria issued Haydn’s six ‘Tost’ quartets, Opp. 54 and 55 (first
published in 1789–90); the following year Op. 74 and Op. 77 appeared (first published in 1796
and 1802, respectively), and the next year Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets, and also his quintets K.
593, 614 and 515, were re-issued, twenty years after their first publication. The ‘Haydn’
quartets were especially popular. Traeg, for example, had also re-issued these works in 1803.
88
Gingerich, ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh’, 452 and 490–4. 89 Kanne, ‘Schuppanzighs Quartetten’, 321.
In 1802, for example, Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie (Kunst- und Industrie

Comptoir), another prominent Viennese publishing house, issued a quartet
under Beethoven’s name with the title Quatuor, arrangé par lui même
d’après une des ses Sonates. This was Beethoven’s own arrangement of his
Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 14 No. 1.
This process of canon formation meant that an increasingly narrow band
of string quartet composers were praised at the expense of presumed ‘lesser
lights’. When Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, a vast wealth of string
quartets were available, by numerous composers whose names and works
have largely been forgotten. This richness is demonstrated by Johann
Traeg’s catalogue of 1799. In that year, Traeg could offer his customers
about 1,100 quartets in 218 sets, composed by some 118 composers.90 There
are also around fifty-seven sets of arrangements for string quartet of con-
certos, symphonies, operatic numbers and other instrumental and vocal
music. Attesting to the rage for theatrical works are arrangements for string
quartet of operas by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Christoph Willibald
Gluck, André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, Mozart, Giovanni Paisiello and
Antonio Salieri, among others. Beethoven is featured in Traeg’s 1804
catalogue, with Op. 18 and an arrangement (presumably Op. 14). But the
composer of string quartets most heavily represented there is Krommer,
with Hänsel in second place – two names scarcely heard today.91
Perhaps the greatest discrepancy between theory – the ideals and canon-
ised repertoire of the ‘true’ string quartet – appears when one compares the
popularity of the string quartet with that of other chamber genres. Although
the string quartet was undoubtedly the most popular chamber genre, and
not just in Vienna, and although it enjoyed the most privileged place in this
sphere, other chamber genres were also very popular and by no means
uniformly valued below string quartets. Sarah Jane Adams has considered
the popularity of chamber repertoire for mixed wind and string instruments
in Mozart’s time, and Katlin Komlós has alerted us to the importance of
chamber music with keyboard in the 1780s–90s.92 It can be seen from Traeg’s
1804 catalogue that this popularity continued into the early nineteenth
90
See A. Weinmann, Johann Traeg: Die Musikalienverzeichnisse von 1799 und 1804 (Vienna:
Universal Edition, 1973).
91
There are two large volumes of collected works by Krommer and Hänsel on sale, as well as
individual opera by each.
92
See S. J. Adams, ‘Quartets and Quintets for Mixed Groups of Winds and Strings: Mozart and His
Contemporaries in Vienna, c. 1780–c. 1800’, unpublished PhD thesis, Cornell University (1994);
K. Komlós, ‘The Viennese Keyboard Trio in the 1780s: Sociological Background and
Contemporary Reception’, Music and Letters, 68 (1987), 222–34; and Komlós, ‘After Mozart:
The Viennese Piano Scene in the 1790s’, Studia Musicologica, 49 (2008), 35–48.
century: Petiscus’s aversion to non-string quartet genres, expressed in 1810,

was not representative.
Beethoven’s own chamber music oeuvre contains thirteen works for
winds alone and wind with strings, as well as numerous works with piano,
and much non-quartet chamber music for strings. Schuppanzigh’s concerts
usually featured only instrumental music, but not just string quartets:
Beethoven’s Septet in E flat major, Op. 20, was tremendously popular, as
was the Sextet in E flat major, Op. 71. It is no accident that Beethoven chose
to launch his publication career in 1793 with a set of piano trios rather than
string quartets. It is tempting to assume that he was strategically avoiding
the string quartet, and would need to work up to following the enormous
precedent set by Mozart and Haydn. Indeed, this is suggested by his com-
ment to Amenda in 1801 that he had only just learnt to write quartets
properly, and by the compositional process of Op. 18, which was lengthy
and involved a good deal of sketching.93 But for Beethoven the piano trio
was an excellent choice for a first opus, showing off his compositional
prowess and his capability as a keyboard performer, and it was certainly
not an under-privileged genre c. 1800. The Op. 1 piano trios, like those of
Op. 70, which appeared at the time of the middle-period quartets, were
received as challenging modern music, valued not merely by reference to
ideals of the string quartet.94
In the end, the demands for homogeneity, spirituality and purity tell us
at least as much about the theorists’ social, political and religious concerns
and environment as they do about the aesthetics of contemporary cham-
ber works. These works can be more tellingly contextualised in the
broader range of aesthetic ideas from the time, some of which will be
discussed in the chapters that follow. In the case of the middle-period
quartets, Beethoven can be understood as composing more against than
with the Cabinetstück conception of ‘true’ string quartets. These works are
multifaceted creations, bringing to the foreground dualisms such as proc-
ess versus product, joy versus sorrow, learned versus entertaining, and
physical versus intellectual or spiritual. To heighten the drama, Beethoven
93
An eighty-four-page sketchbook, mostly devoted to these quartets, suggests that a great
deal of effort went into their composition. See Mus ms. Autogr. Beethoven Grasnick 2;
reproduced as W. Virneisel (ed.), Ein Skizzenbuch zu Streichquartetten aus op. 18. See also
R. Kramer (ed.), Ludwig van Beethoven: A Sketchbook from the Summer of 1800, 2 vols.
(Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1996).
94
On the early reception of the Trios Op. 1, see W. Wiese, Beethovens Kammermusik
(Winterthur: Amadeus Press, 2010), pp. 116–17; on the reception of the Trios Op. 70, see
A. Richards, The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge University Press,
2001), 208–9.
deployed a range of compositional techniques and expressive devices,

including fragmentation, parody, ironic reversal and vocality. By these
means, he extended contemporaries’ efforts to negotiate between the
formerly courtly and ‘private’ realm of quartet performance and recep-
tion, and the new, increasingly bourgeois and semi-public contexts. The
result was five works that are high points in the history of the early
nineteenth-century ‘theatrical’ string quartet.
2 Curtain up: performing the middle-period
quartets in Beethoven’s time
Cursed tipsy Domanovetz – not Count of music, but Count of

gluttony – Count of dinner, Count of supper etc. – The quartet is to be
rehearsed at Lobkowitz’s at half past ten or perhaps ten o’clock today.
H[is] E[xcellency], who, it is true, is generally absent so far as intelligence
is concerned, has not yet arrived – So do come along.1
Late in 1809 Beethoven invited Zmeskall to a rehearsal of what was very likely
to have been Op. 74 at Lobkowitz’s house. Beethoven’s letter, written in the
cheeky tone that he sometimes adopted for his friend, and indeed sometimes
for Op. 74, provides evidence of his practice of having works rehearsed before
sending them to the publisher. The performance probably took place shortly
after the work was completed. Trying out his latest quartets in this way
with the Rasumovsky Quartet was an invaluable proofing step that allowed
him to make corrections to his autograph manuscripts, and to give corrections
to publishers based on the feedback obtained through performance after
publication. The autograph manuscript of Op. 95, for instance, contains
numerous corrections and emendations of an editorial nature, which seem
to have been added later; they are mainly dynamic markings, accidentals and
articulation. It is likely that these additions and changes were made in
response to one or more of the early performances of the work, or in relation
to the production of the first edition.
Given this practice, one might expect Beethoven’s autograph manuscripts
and early editions to be ideal sources of information on historical perform-
ance practices associated with the middle-period string quartets. After all,
the composer worked closely with the principal early performers of his
works, and was becoming unusually detailed in his notation, specifying
articulation, phrasing, dynamics, even metronome markings and fingerings
much more closely than most of his contemporaries.2 In his L’Art du violon
(1834), Baillot observed:
1
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, 1803–1813, Ludwig van Beethoven. Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe,
vol. II, p. 93.
2
On this topic, see B. Bujić, ‘Notation and Realization: Musical Performance in Historical
Perspective’, in M. Krausz (ed.), The Interpretation of Music: Philosophical Essays (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1993), p. 139. 39
40 Performing the middle-period quartets in Beethoven’s time
Modern composers, especially Beethoven, have employed more signs and have
notated them with extreme care so that the character of the piece, of the passage,
or of the note is given with the greatest possible accuracy of accent.3
However, care is needed when reading the notation in these early sources:
performers and listeners of Beethoven’s day understood this notation on the
basis of reading habits and performance aesthetics that differ, sometimes
radically, from modern ones, and performance practices were much
more location-specific. Various lines of evidence can be traced to help
the modern-day performer, editor or listener, to read – and read into –
the early notation in a way that is in keeping with historical practices. They
include treatises on string instrument playing, letters from Beethoven to his
publishers, reports on the playing styles of string players known to
Beethoven, and information on the instruments and bows available to
performers of his time. Contemporary aesthetics and ideals of performance
are also highly relevant here. These sources rarely point to a single histor-
ically ‘correct’ answer; they need to be considered collectively, and with a
careful eye to relevance.
What, then, can be found out about the early performance practices
associated with Beethoven’s middle-period quartets? To start to answer
this question I go ‘behind the scenes’, considering three significant lines of
evidence found in early sources. This evidence can help broaden our
interpretations of these quartets today, and affords insights into
Beethoven’s conception of the role of the performer in these works.
Fingerings in early sources
Early performers of the middle-period quartets notoriously railed against

the demands that Beethoven placed on them. According to Czerny,
Schuppanzigh’s quartet laughed when they first saw Op. 59 No. 1, considering
it to be a joke, and Bernhard Romberg allegedly stamped on the cello part of
the second movement.4 The Italian violinist Felice Radicati related an exchange
with Beethoven, who had given him Op. 59 in manuscript and requested
Radicati to provide fingerings: ‘I said to him that surely he did not consider
these works to be music? – to which he replied, “Oh, they are not for you, but
for a later age!”’5 These much-repeated anecdotes tend to undermine our
3
Baillot, L’Art du violon, p. 204; trans. L. Goldberg as The Art of the Violin (Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1991), p. 376. (Italics original.)
4
Reported in Forbes (ed.), Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, p. 409. 5 Ibid.
Fingerings in early sources 41
sense of Beethoven’s concern with the practicalities of performance, and

also our understanding of the way he conceived of works as performed
entities. Yet this concern is obvious, for example, from his provision of
numerous fingerings in his works. Some 180 fingered passages are found in
Beethoven’s works for strings, more than double the number found in
Haydn’s.6 These fingerings, about half of which Beethoven seems to have
worked out in collaboration with performers, are seen in his autograph
manuscripts, manuscript copies of early editions that he supervised, and
revised versions that he gave to his publishers.7 Of course it is not always
possible to determine whether a given publication was supervised by
Beethoven.
The Op. 59 quartets are the only ones for which Beethoven provided
fingerings. Possibly he took this step in recognition of the new level of
difficulty that he introduced in these works. It also reflects a growing
tendency to specify aspects of performance that would previously have
been left up to the performers. The first edition of 1808, published in
Vienna by the Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie, appeared with fingerings
that are mostly also found in the autograph. The autograph of the third
quartet does not contain fingerings; it is not clear at what stage before
publication they were provided for this work. Other early editions of Op.
59, for example those from Simrock in Bonn (1808), Astor and Co. in
London (c. 1809), and Schott in Mainz (1810), contain these fingerings.
They have an effect on phrasing, articulation, rhythm and timbre.
Beethoven went beyond Haydn, who also included fingerings in his string
quartets, in his subtle and varied use of them to create specific expressive
effects. He made much use of same-finger shifts, which are no longer
common practice among string players; these shifts are both expressive,
sometimes suggesting portamento, and practical, reducing the complexity
of shifts between registers. In the fourth movement of Op. 59 No. 1, for
example, a 4–4 fingering in the first violin in bar 157 helps give the flavour
of folk music and makes it easier to move rapidly into and out of the upper
register (Ex. 2.1). In the second movement of Op. 59 No. 2, however,
the inessential 2–2 fingering in the viola in bar 32 suggests an expressive
slide, which might contribute to the depth of feeling conveyed (Ex. 2.2).
Around half of his fingerings are simply guides to easing technical
6
William S. Newman, ‘Beethoven’s Fingerings as Interpretive Clues’, Journal of Musicology,
1 (1982), 171–97. In approximately 180 out of 300 fingered passages by Beethoven that Newman
studied, the fingerings are for violin, viola or cello players.
7
On Beethoven’s fingerings in Op. 59, see J. Del Mar (ed.), String Quartets op. 59. Critical
Commentary (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2008), p. 20.
Ex. 2.1 Op. 59 No. 1, movement four, bar 157 (first violin)
Ex. 2.2 Op. 59 No. 2, movement two, bar 32 (viola)
Ex. 2.3 Op. 59 No. 3, movement four, bars 39–46 (first violin)
Ex. 2.4 Op. 59 No. 3, movement four, bars 420–2 (first violin)
difficulties, such as those for shifts into the upper positions in the first violin
in bars 173 and 331 in the first movement of Op. 59 No. 1; they allow the
violinist to creep up into the higher positions to reach higher notes by small
extensions and shifts of the left hand. This approach, combined with same-
finger shifting, is found in the extensive fingerings for the violin and cello in
their upper registers in the finale of Op. 59 No. 2, which was possibly added
by Radicati (see first violin bars 216–23; cello bars 224–8 and 335–9). The
fingerings are often consistent for parallel passages but not always so, as can
be seen in the fingering of analogous passages in the finale of Op. 59 No. 3.
Comparing bars 39–46 with bars 420–2 (Exx. 2.3 and 2.4), one sees that the
latter suggests shifting upwards on the same finger, the former changing
Articulation markings in the autographs 43
fingers as one shifts. The fingerings are suggestive, rather than comprehen-
sive: modern performers wishing to following historical practices can add
expressive fingerings following Beethoven’s model, or models of the time.8
One might try expressive portamenti in the inner voices at the opening of
the Adagio from Op. 74, for example, or sul una corda (on one string)
playing for the mezza voce theme in the first violin at the opening of the
Allegretto ma non troppo from Op. 95.
Articulation markings in the autographs
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Beethoven’s autograph performance

directions is articulation.9 Bow articulation is a crucial determinant of affect
throughout the Beethoven quartets. Performers from Beethoven’s day
onwards have found that many passages call for difficult but vital decisions
in this regard. Clive Brown notes that one of the key issues remains whether,
in moderate to fast tempi, detached notes should be performed so that the
bow leaves the string between notes (‘off-string bowing’).10 Not only conflict
of opinion but also ideological charge mark the historical discourse where
bow articulation is concerned. Questions of appropriate performance prac-
tice for the string quartet were closely tied up with the restrictive ideology of
performance that was developing around this genre precisely at this time.
This ideology is reflected in a comment by Louis Spohr to his pupil Alexander
Malibran in the 1840s, concerning what Spohr considered to be the correct
performance style for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven: he thought that spring-
ing bowings went against ‘die wahre Tradition’ (the true tradition). Malibran
reports: ‘Only in certain passages, in certain scherzos of Beethoven, Onslow
and Mendelssohn did [Spohr] allow that one could let the bow spring.’11
In considering off-string bowing, and other questions of articulation,
scholars have naturally turned to the composer’s notation in the autograph
manuscripts for guidance. Beethoven’s articulation markings are mainly
strokes, but these come in various shapes and sizes, inevitably raising the
8
See, for example, the expressive 2–2 slide marked in to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Op. 61,
movement one, bar 101, cited in Baillot, L’Art du violon, p. 140; trans. Goldberg, The Art of the
Violin, p. 245.
9
The following section draws on my ‘Off-String Bowing in Beethoven: Re-examining the
Evidence’, Ad Parnassum, 7 (2009), 129–53.
10
C. Brown, ‘Bowing Styles, Vibrato and Portamento in Nineteenth-Century Violin Playing’,
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 113 (1988), 99.
11
A. Malibran, Louis Spohr. Sein Leben und Wirken (Frankfurt: Sauerländer, 1860), pp. 207–8;
trans. C. Brown, ‘Ferdinand David’s Editions of Beethoven,’ in R. Stowell (ed.), Performing
Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 144.
question of whether the various forms they take convey information about
how the note in question is to be executed. This issue has generated much
debate, starting with Gustav Nottebohm’s essay ‘Punkte und Striche’
(Dots and Strokes) of 1872.12 Apparent ambiguities abound, although in
isolated instances Beethoven clearly wrote dots (for example, under slurs
and in some repeated-note figures and stepwise runs; these often imply
portato). This strongly suggests that he usually had in mind a general
marking that would cover many different nuances of articulation. He was
certainly not alone in this, but, unlike several other prominent composers of
his day, Mozart among them, he almost always specified articulation in
passagework, rather than leaving it up to the performers.
Treatise writers of the time tell us that the degree to which the bow was
detached depended greatly on the musical context – speed and affect in
particular. Slower, more solemn or melancholic music demanded a more
legato stroke; off-string strokes were associated with scherzo movements,
and solo lines. This was changing in the early nineteenth century, as a result of
the general preference for legato bowing styles of the influential French Violin
School, notably Viotti, and their followers, especially Spohr.13 However, con-
temporary reviewers associated clean, light, ‘piquant’ playing styles with the
performers closest to Beethoven during the time of the middle-period quar-
tets’ composition, who may well have favoured a less legato style. A reviewer
for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1805), for example, noted Clement’s
‘indescribable delicacy, neatness and elegance’ and ‘extremely charming ten-
derness and cleanness in playing’.14 Clement premiered Beethoven’s Violin
Concerto using a pre-Toure bow, which would have encouraged a light,
nuanced bowing style. Performance ideals were, of course, not always achieved
in practice. In 1808, Reichardt resorts to equivocation: ‘Mr Schuppanzigh has
a singular, piquant manner . . . he brings off the greatest difficulties with
clarity, although not always with the greatest purity.’15
Beethoven’s performance markings attest to the fact that he was not
content to rely on his performers’ own styles or understandings of con-
textual information. He was, for example, one of the earliest composers to
make use of the markings non legato or non ligato, which are found in later
12
G. Nottebohm, ‘Punkte und Striche’, in G. Nottebohm and E. Mandyczewski (eds.),
Beethoveniana: Aufsätze und Mittheilungen (Leipzig: Rieter-Biedermann, 1872), pp. 107–25.
13
See the evidence cited in C. Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750–1900
(Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 219–22; for further discussion of this topic, see my
‘Off-String Bowing in Beethoven: Re-examining the Evidence’.
14
Anon., ‘Nachrichten’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 7 (1805), 500–1.
15
Reichardt, Vertraute Briefe, vol. I, p. 206.
Articulation markings in the autographs 45
2.1 Beethoven, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, movement four, bars 40–1,
autograph score
Ex. 2.5 Op. 95, movement four, bars 40–1
works such as Op. 95, the Cello Sonata Op. 102 No. 1 and the String Quartet
Op. 130. Again, these markings evidence his increasing concern to prescribe
performance practice. Beethoven might have simply been indicating that he
did not wish the performers to add slurs. However, his clear specification of
staccato in proximal and parallel passages in the string quartet examples
suggests that by non ligato he also intended to indicate something akin to
on-string détaché there.16
16
On Beethoven’s use of this marking, see also Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice,
pp. 189–92.
Beethoven’s unprecedented use of dynamic markings can likewise be

partly understood as an attempt to specify particular qualities of perform-
ance that he desired – some new, some fast fading from common practice –
as integral features of the composed musical text, rather than the province of
the performers. His careful notation of unequal swells under slurs, for
example, as in the Larghetto espressivo from Op. 95 (Fig. 2.1 and
Ex. 2.5), which have both accentual and dynamic implications, typify
this increasingly composer-centred approach to the musical work.17
His notational practice in the middle-period quartets exemplifies a sig-
nificant shift that was taking place at this time, away from the idea of the
performer as co-creator with the composer.18 Especially in the Adagios of
the middle-period quartets, where, in the eighteenth century, the voice of
the performer-interpreter was to come most prominently to the fore, one
sees that Beethoven specified fine nuances of performance with a wealth of
markings; I return to this topic in the ensuing analytical chapters.
Equivocal evidence from early editors
Beethoven chose to claim new privileges as ‘playwright’ of the middle-

period quartets, increasingly specifying aspects that were previously left
up to performers. However, the dramatisation of these works still ultimately
lay and lies in the hands of the players.19 One can find historical information
about this in early editions, edited by performers who were reasonably close
in time and place to Beethoven. Manuscript parts from private perform-
ances of the middle-period quartets must have circulated before publica-
tion, but none of them are extant. They might have contained useful
information on performance practices in Beethoven’s immediate circle. In
the case of Op. 59, there exists a copy of the first edition of the last two
quartets with numerous pencilled editorial markings, dating from 1836; this
is held in the Beethoven-Archiv (shelf mark C 59/13). According to a
pencilled inscription on the front cover of the viola part for the third
17
On the ambiguity of this sign, see ibid., pp. 106–7 and 126–7. Beethoven’s notation of this sign is
not always clear as regards to placement of the high point or extent of a swell.
18
A thesis compellingly argued by L. Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, especially
p. 231. On the period before 1800, see especially D. Fuller, ‘The Performer as Composer’, in
S. Sadie (ed.), Performance Practice: Music after 1600 (New York: Norton, 1989), pp. 117–46.
19
On this topic, and regarding nineteenth-century performance, see M. Doğantan-Dack,
‘“Phrasing – the Very Life of Music”: Performing the Music and Nineteenth-Century
Performance Theory’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 9 (2012), 7–30; and P. Johnson,
‘“Labyrinthine Pathways and Bright Rings of Light”: Hoffmann’s Aesthetics of Music in
Performance’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 9 (2012), especially 80–3.
Equivocal evidence from early editors 47
quartet, the numerous fingerings and bowings relate to quartet rehearsals

that took place that year. The inscription reads: ‘angefangen zu studieren/
den 11 Februar 1836/vollendet den 5 März 1836/gespielt daselbst am
Jubiläum/des H. Direktor M. . . [five illegible letters]’ (began study/the
11th of February 1836/completed on the 5th of March 1836/played in said
place on the anniversary of the Director M. . .). John Moran conjectures that
‘M. . .’ in this inscription refers to Karl Möser, a Berlin violinist, conductor
and champion of Beethoven’s music. Möser was at the time the
concertmaster of the Berlin Hofkapelle.20 He had become acquainted with
Beethoven and Schuppanzigh in Vienna, and in 1813 began a celebrated
series of chamber music evenings in Berlin, dedicated, like those of
Schuppanzigh, mainly to the quartets of Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart.
Many of the fingerings in this copy are in keeping with those specified by
Beethoven. There is a tendency, too, to keep Beethoven’s original slurs
intact, that is, to retain bowings that articulate short phrases and musical
ideas. However, there is also a tendency to lengthen slurs and to make use of
hooked bowings. In later editions Beethoven’s slurs were treated either as
phrasing marks that could be broken, which is sometimes a viable inter-
pretation, or more often extended in favour of a longer, smoother line,
which undermines subtle rhetorical qualities of this music. The more legato
style that is implied by some of the 1836 rehearsal markings was perhaps
influenced by the French Violin School. This would make sense if the
markings originated from Möser, since in the late eighteenth century he
had developed his violin technique in relation to the styles of Rode and
Viotti, whom he had met London.21
Sometimes sources that seem closest to Beethoven are in fact far from
reflecting his wishes as regards performance directions. The Steiner first
edition of Op. 95, which appeared in September 1816, is a prime example.
Several letters between the composer and the publisher show that he was
dissatisfied with the first edition. In December 1816, for example, Beethoven
expressed his disgruntlement to Steiner: ‘It was agreed that in all the finished
copies of the quartet etc. the mistakes were to be corrected. Nevertheless the
Adjutant has been impertinent enough to sell these without corrections.’22
However, sources seemingly remote from Beethoven can prove closer than
20
J. Moran, ‘Techniques of Expression in Viennese String Music (1780–1830): Reconstructing
Fingering and Bowing Practices’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London (2001), p. 200.
21
J. Moran, s.v. ‘Möser, Karl,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. XVII,
p. 180.
22
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, 1814–1816, Ludwig van Beethoven. Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe,
vol. III, p. 348. (Italics original.) See also pp. 290 and 347.
Ex. 2.6 Op. 74, movement one, bars 189–91 (F. David edition, first violin)
one might think. Brown argues that Ferdinand David’s 1870s editions of
Beethoven’s string music can provide us with information on performance
practices that would not have seemed alien to Beethoven, even if he did not
concur with David’s technical and aesthetic approach.23 These are the
earliest surviving systematically fingered and bowed editions for the middle-
period quartets, and represent the performance practices of an important
German violinist whose training was completed in Beethoven’s lifetime.
David was a pupil of Spohr, and an early champion of Beethoven’s Op. 18
outside Vienna. He was much influenced by the French Violin School,
however, so did not necessarily convey what Beethoven would have wanted
or expected from his closest circle of string players in the first decade of the
nineteenth century.
We can consider the David editions of the middle-period quartets from
two angles. First, they confirm string performance practices that are known
to have been typical of Beethoven’s day. The preponderance of open string
markings in these editions reflects Viennese fingering practices c. 1800. The
David editions also support the notion that vibrato was not treated as a basic
element of tone production as it is today, but rather was generally used
sparingly as an expressive device. Many of David’s fingerings, like some of
Beethoven’s, offer the opportunity for portamento. For example, in the first
movement of Op. 74, he provides the first violin with an inessential shift of
position that suggests a deliberate slide between the last two notes of bar 190
(Ex. 2.6). Whether Beethoven would have sanctioned as many portamenti as
the David editions imply, and how audibly they would have been rendered
in early performances, remain matters of debate.
David’s editions also point to new performance practices and aesthetics
that have little to do with those in Beethoven’s Vienna. For example, in
places he obscured the original text by adding dots under slurs to indicate
staccato where Beethoven had not done so, and by changing dots under
slurs to horizontal lines. For David, the horizontal lines under slurs, which
he applied inconsistently, meant on-string portato, while the dots under
slurs implied staccato executed in a single bow stroke.24 This dualistic
23
Brown, ‘Ferdinand David’s Editions of Beethoven’, p. 121.
24
Ibid., p. 141; and Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice, p. 258.
Equivocal evidence from early editors 49
notation masks the fact that, where Beethoven did intend articulated slurs,
various degrees of detachment are possible, granted that he probably never
intended dots under slurs to indicate sharply detached slurred staccato.
Writers such as Andreas Moser and Hanslick went so far as to group
Mayseder, Schuppanzigh and Clement as a ‘trinity’ of early nineteenth-
century Viennese violin players, although it really makes more sense to talk
of a coherent Viennese school of string playing only after Beethoven’s
lifetime.25 Nonetheless, a ‘Viennese approach’ to string instruments at this
time can be distinguished, a performance and compositional style that
favoured variety, piquancy and playful extension of technique. Evidence
regarding the performances of the violinists closest to Beethoven, including
the ‘trinity’, seems to fit this description. Quartet composers in Beethoven’s
Vienna, meanwhile, were united in exploring performance-related dimen-
sions in their works. They made experiments with fingerings for expressive
and humorous ends – for example, incorporating sul una corda playing,
slides, open strings and harmonics. They also composed colouristic devices
and prominent performance gestures into their string quartets, including
lengthy trills and high registral feats.26
Beethoven’s exploitation of stringed instrument technique and expres-
sion builds on that of his contemporaries, and takes on a new significance in
his middle-period quartets. Not only was he unusually careful and detailed
with performance specifications here, asserting his rights as author and
dominant interpreter in a new way. I shall argue that his composition of
these works also entails a strikingly new dramatisation of quartet space and
a theatricalisation of string quartet performance itself. His approach in the
middle-period quartets is thus radically innovative in this respect, but at the
same time it is in keeping with the piquant, playful spirit of quartet
composition and performance in early nineteenth-century Vienna.
25
E. Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens, pp. 228–30; A. Moser, Joseph Joachim: ein Lebensbild
(Berlin: Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908), vol. I, p. 17.
26
For an example, see Hickman’s discussion of Paul Wranitzky’s String Quartet in C major, Op. 10
No. 5, in ‘The Flowering of the Viennese String Quartet’, 162–3.
3 ‘Not generally comprehensible’: Op. 59 No. 1
and the drama of becoming
Listeners in Beethoven’s day were at first repelled and confused by his second
set of string quartets, Op. 59. Contemporaries decried these works as
‘verrückte Musik’ (crazy music) and the ‘Flickwerk eines Wahnsinnigen’
(botch job of a mad man).1 The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung Viennese
correspondent of 27 February 1807 was a little more tactful, and gives us a
hint of the awe that these bold new works must have inspired. Acknowledging
their difficulties, he observed that the quartets appealed to connoisseurs: ‘The
three new, very long and difficult violin quartets of Beethoven, dedicated to
Count Rasumovsky, draw the attention of all connoisseurs. They are deeply
thought and excellently worked, but not generally comprehensible.’2 The
reviewer went on to concede that the third quartet was more approachable
than the first two. Early performers were likewise puzzled by these works,
especially the Scherzo of Op. 59 No. 1.3
Negative reactions were soon tempered by more approving and appre-
ciative responses. By 5 May 1807 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
Viennese correspondent could observe that ‘in Vienna Beethoven’s newest
difficult but dignified quartets please ever more; the amateurs hope that they
will soon be printed’.4 While the Op. 59 quartets were still considered
unusually complex, they came to be celebrated, rather than deemed prob-
lematic, precisely for this complexity; they were seen as a major advance on
the string quartets of Op. 18 because of their new depths and musical
intricacies. The greater difficulty of the first two quartets of this three-
work set, meanwhile, was now cited to praise these works at the expense
of the third quartet.
1
Cited by W. Salmen, ‘Zur Gestaltung der “Thèmes russes” in Beethovens op. 59’, in L. Finscher
and C.-H. Mahling (eds.), Festschrift für Walter Wiora zum 30. Dezember 1966 (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1967), p. 397; see also Forbes (ed.), Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, pp. 409–10.
2
Anon., ‘Nachrichten’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 9 (1807), 400. The report was dated 27
February, but printed on 18 March.
3
As reported by W. von Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, 5 vols. (Hamburg: Hoffmann and
Campe, 1860), vol. IV, p. 30.
50 4
Anon., ‘Kurze Notizen aus Briefen’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 9 (1807), 517.
Public versus private in Op. 59 51
Op. 59 need not demand arbitration as to whether it is ‘not generally

comprehensible’ or easily accessible: the three quartets clearly have elements
of both, permitting various levels of listening. My analyses aim to enhance
our sense of the multifaceted and often dualistic character of the middle-
period quartets in general. In this chapter I discuss conceptual tensions that
pertain to the music of Op. 59, and especially the String Quartet in F major,
Op. 59 No. 1: public versus private, and process versus product. I emphasise
features of the F major quartet that have been ignored or downplayed,
especially its process-orientation – its surprising and moving ‘drama of
becoming’, which involves an ongoing process of re-reading. The duality
of ‘learned’ versus ‘light’, to which I turn when considering the finale, leads
to a discussion of the issue of dedication. Although Count Rasumovsky was
the dedicatee of Op. 59, and although Beethoven certainly wove elements
into these works that relate to Rasumovsky, in an important sense Haydn –
the most prominent string quartet composer in Beethoven’s Vienna – is the
‘implied dedicatee’ for all of the middle-period quartets.
Public versus private in Op. 59
Since the mid-nineteenth century, Op. 59 has attracted comments that have
been repeated and accepted without question. They are ripe for reassess-
ment and historical contextualisation, especially the notion that the opus is
‘public’ in scope and style. Writers cite the new length of the movements in
Op. 59 in general, the emphasis on sonata forms, and the use of special
effects such as pizzicato and high registers, as evidence of the work’s ‘public’
character.5 In terms of compositional motivation and the apparently ‘pub-
lic’ style of this opus, a connection has been made between Op. 59 and
Beethoven’s concentration on the more public genres after Op. 18: the
symphony, piano concerto, and large-scale vocal and theatrical music.6
Kerman summarises the view of Op. 59 No. 1 as ‘public’ by pairing it with
the ‘Eroica’ Symphony in terms of breadth and spirit; such comparisons are
common in the literature on this work.7 Commentators point out that
Beethoven’s composition in the more ‘private’ genres, particularly piano
sonatas, retreats into the background in this period. A general shift towards
a more public audience for the string quartet at this juncture, and especially
5
Webster critiques this viewpoint: ‘Middle-Period String Quartets’, pp. 94–5.
6
The view is encapsulated in Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 239–40.
7
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 100–3.
52 Op. 59 No. 1 and the drama of becoming
a move to establish professional string quartets in Vienna, are also consid-

ered as motivating factors for the style of Op. 59.
While these large-scale works undoubtedly form an important musical
context for Op. 59, there is a need to be more critical in applying the term
‘public’ to these quartets, and to ask exactly what their ‘public’ nature might
entail. Certainly a shift in chamber music making was happening in turn-of-
the-century Vienna, and Beethoven was consciously seeking to disseminate
his works, including the quartets, in centres such as London and Paris where
public performance of quartets was more established. But the immediate
performance contexts for the middle-period quartets were still private or
semi-private: early performances of Op. 59 presumably took place in
Lobkowitz’s or Rasumovsky’s Vienna residences, before Rasumovsky relin-
quished sole rights to the works.8
The Op. 59 quartets were ‘private’ works, too, in that they initially drew
the attention of connoisseurs. This connoisseur appeal manifested itself in
various ways, musically speaking. In these works, Beethoven drew broadly
on Baroque compositional devices such as traditional lamenting motifs,
‘walking’ bass lines and especially fugue – elements that are likely to have
attracted connoisseurs such as Zmeskall and Rasumovsky. In the sup-
posed gap in quartet composition between Op. 18 and Op. 59, Beethoven
in fact continued his exploration of string quartet writing in his sketch-
books. Of particular note among his sketches from 1803 to 1806 are
arrangements for string quartet of fugues by earlier composers such as
Handel, Johann Joseph Fux, Gottlieb Muffat, C. P. E. Bach and J. S. Bach.9
These studies left their mark on all of the middle-period quartets, and so
probably did his study of the fugues in Haydn’s String Quartets Op. 20.10
Fugal elements, hailed by Beethoven’s contemporaries as ‘ancient’, ‘sci-
entific’ and ‘sublime’, would have made Op. 59 seem especially ‘deeply
thought’ and ‘excellently worked’, as the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
reviewer has it. By the time of Haydn’s Op. 20 (1772), fugue was central to
the string quartet writing tradition. There and in later quartets Haydn
integrated it with homophony in a spontaneous and sometimes even
8
See Albrecht, ‘“First Name Unknown”’, 11–13.
9
R. Kramer, ‘“Das Organische der Fuge”: On the Autograph of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F
Major, Opus 59, No. 1’, in C. Wolff (ed.), The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven:
Studies in the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 229.
10
Kramer conjectures that the cello-playing Zmeskall might have inspired Beethoven’s interest in
that opus, which seems to have informed his thinking about the string quartet from around the
mid-1790s, when he copied out Op. 20 No. 1. See ‘“Das Organische der Fuge”’, pp. 231–2.
Zmeskall was the dedicatee of the 1800–1 Artaria reprint of Op. 20.
Process versus product in Op. 59 53
capricious way.11 Beethoven’s own adaptations of the tradition of fugal

quartet writing in Op. 59 were more extensive as regards procedure and
subject matter; these might well have been aspects of the works that were
initially ‘not generally comprehensible’.
More generally, it makes sense to speak of an interaction of ‘private’ and
‘public’ elements in connection with Op. 59 and the middle-period quartets
in general. In Beethoven’s day, and especially in the field of chamber music,
the borderline between ‘public’ and ‘private’, regarding style, aesthetics and
performance location, was ambiguous and shifting.12 ‘Private’ aspects of the
string quartet – elements that appealed to the connoisseur (such as fugue) or
generated an aura of intimacy (such as relaxed, ‘conversational’ inter-
changes between voices) – could be publicised: they could be writ large or
‘staged’, even parodied, so as to be more readily perceived and enjoyed by
larger audiences, although not necessarily in fully public settings. The
‘staging’ in Op. 59 can be understood in terms of a new dramatic impulse
in chamber music at this time, in keeping with a perceived rapprochement
between the chamber and theatre styles c. 1800. The theatricality of Op. 59
manifests itself partly in musical gestures that seem exaggerated compared
with the refined style of Op. 18. Such gestures could be appreciated by a
broader range of listeners than guests at a private Viennese quartet party,
although not necessarily in much larger spaces, and through multiple
senses – sight and touch as well as hearing.
Process versus product in Op. 59
The dramatic nature of Op. 59 extends to a tension between form and

content. In placing Op. 59 with respect to tradition and to ‘public’ style,
writers have often discussed Beethoven’s remarkable new treatment of
sonata form. The first quartet of the set is especially striking from this
point of view: sonata forms are referenced in all movements, in itself a
new departure for Beethoven in the string quartet, but each movement
breaks with the traditional formal structures in more or less profound
11
See H. C. Robbins Landon and D. Wyn Jones, Haydn: His Life and Music (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1988), pp. 163–4; and J. Webster, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony and the Idea of Classical
Style: Through-Composition and Cyclic Integration in His Instrumental Music (Cambridge
12
See especially Sutcliffe, ‘Haydn, Mozart and Their Contemporaries’, p. 190; and M. Hunter,
‘Haydn’s London Piano Trios and His Salomon String Quartets: Private vs. Public?’, in E. Sisman
(ed.), Haydn and His World (Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 109–25.
ways. This formal innovation was surely another factor in the early percep-
tion of the works as ‘not generally comprehensible’.
This treatment of form demands deep and careful examination. Janet
Schmalfeldt looks back at the tradition of Beethoven criticism emanating
from the aesthetics of Friedrich Schlegel and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, and filtering down through German music critics such as
Hoffmann, Adolph Bernhard Marx, Carl Dahlhaus and Theodor
W. Adorno. She finds the Hegelian critical tradition a considerable help
in understanding form in Beethoven’s works, especially those of the
middle period.13 Specifically, it illuminates these works’ dramatic aspect.
For Adorno, the dramatic element in Beethoven’s music is grasped when
one perceives the antithetical character of individual moments within his
forms.14 Following Adorno and Dahlhaus, one can argue that Beethoven’s
forms are dialectical precisely in the Hegelian sense. In this line of
thought, the ultimate result of the formal unfolding would be a synthesis
in which a given musical concept and its opposite are united.15 Despite
their focus on synthesis, these writers would agree that to fix upon
products, results, or outcomes would be to miss the point, and to mis-
represent the process-oriented character of this music. Hoffmann nicely
captures the sense of Beethoven’s works as process through the active
metaphors he uses to describe the experience of the Fifth Symphony:
Beethoven ‘sets in motion the levers of shivering, of fear, of horror, of
pain, and wakens that infinite longing that is the essence of Romanticism’.16
To listen to his music is to have powerful feelings set in motion, to be
awakened to longing. Infinite processes, rather than resolution, are crucial
to the musical experience. In the analysis to follow, I shall consider how this
perspective applies to the F major quartet.
More than a decade before Hoffmann, Friedrich Schlegel had noted the
importance of process to Romantic works of art in his 1798 account of
13
J. Schmalfeldt, ‘Form as the Process of Becoming: The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition and the
“Tempest” Sonata’, Beethoven Forum, 4 (1995), 37–71; and Schmalfeldt, In the Process of
Becoming: Analytical and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music
(Oxford University Press, 2011), especially Chapters 1–4.
14
T. W. Adorno, Beethoven. Philosophie der Musik. Fragmente und Texte, Rolf Tiedemann (ed.),
Nachgelassene Schriften, 2nd edn (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), p. 35; trans. E. Jephcott as
Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Fragments and Texts, ed. R. Tiedemann (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1998), p. 13.
15
Summarised in Schmalfeldt, ‘Form as the Process of Becoming’, 39–40.
16
E. T. A. Hoffmann, ‘Beethovens Instrumentalmusik’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 12 (1810),
633. (My italics.) M. E. Bonds discusses Hoffmann’s verbs in this passage in ‘Rhetoric versus
Truth: Listening to Haydn in the Age of Beethoven’, in T. Beghin and S. M. Goldberg (eds.),
Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric (University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 121–4.
Movement I: connection and dissociation 55
Romantic poetry. For Schlegel, Romantic poetry is still ‘im Werden’ (in the
process of becoming); ‘indeed’, he writes, ‘this is its very essence, that it can
only forever become, and never be completed’.17 August Wilhelm Schlegel
enlarged on this view in the first of the lectures ‘Über dramatische Kunst
und Literatur’ (On Dramatic Art and Literature) that he was to read before
an avid audience of more than three hundred Viennese in 1808, including
members of the Beethoven circle such as Lobkowitz and his wife, and Prince
Ferdinand Kinsky. Schlegel’s connection between process and the idea of
melancholy is of relevance to Op. 59. Modern works of art, he contends,
have an element of melancholy about them, even when they are not overtly
melancholy in tone or content; he relates this to their expression of a sense
of inner striving for a perceived ‘home’ or sense of felicitousness, which he
claims is wanting in the Christian era. In ancient art (by which he meant
that of ancient Greece and Rome), by contrast, he finds a sense of perfection
and completeness reflecting the more finite worldview and self-contained
subjectivity of those times and people. ‘The Greeks solved their problem to
perfection’, he observes, ‘but the moderns’ pursuit of the infinite can only be
partially realised.’ Capturing the moderns’ sense of longing in a musical
metaphor, he asks: ‘what else can the fundamental mood of their songs be
than melancholy?’18
An overtly melancholy voice surfaces in the third movement of Op. 59
No. 1, Adagio molto e mesto, while the other movements range from serious
to witty and ironic. The fundamentally melancholy mode is felt in all the
movements regardless of the predominant affect, if one follows Schlegel’s
idea. Beethoven’s treatment of various musical parameters – especially
register, working with and against melody, harmony and rhythm – creates
a sense of striving, and continually unfolding process.
Movement I: connection and dissociation
The following analysis of the opening Allegro stresses instability, formal

manipulation, and onward drive, in order to draw attention to the move-
ment’s function in the larger plot of the quartet. The second movement
from Op. 59 No. 1, Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando, has attracted
much more attention than the first, more indeed than any other movement
17
116th Athenäum Fragment, E. Behler (ed.), Schriften und Fragmente: ein Gesamtbild seines
Geistes. Friedrich Schlegel (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1956), p. 94.
18
A. W. von Schlegel, Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur. Vorlesungen von August Wilhelm
Schlegel (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1809), vol. I, pp. 23–5; see also Chapter 7, n. 18.
from the middle-period quartets. The Allegretto needs to be put in its place:
its formal complexity is predetermined, if not over-determined, by the first
movement’s false reprise of the exposition, false recapitulation, and use of
register to dramatise formal unfolding to the last.
Registral and tonal tension are generated from the very opening of the
quartet. The lyrical cello melody is uncharacteristically long. Beginning on
the dominant it centres on this tone, even though it is bounded above and
below by the tonic pitch, F, in bars 1–4 (Ex. 3.1).19 The range is low and
confined, but will soon expand outwards, when, in bar 9, the first violin
takes over the melody. The cello now clings to the supertonic as the bass of a
second inversion dominant seventh for nine bars, contributing to the sense
of expanding space and suspended time, and creating a harmonic tension
that will persist to the end of the movement. In the second paragraph, the
cello’s ascent from tonic to supertonic will be emphasised in the first violin’s
highest register. Beethoven returns again and again to the opening exchange
between these two outer voices as the work unfolds, re-reading it variously.
This re-reading draws the listener closer to a ‘compositional persona’
inscribed in the work, who seems to be continually at work: it is as if
Beethoven’s sometimes difficult creative process lingers, expressively.
Beethoven’s striking use of the high and lowest registers in Op. 59 No. 1
contributes much to the work’s process-orientation. His treatment of regis-
ter is strategic and dramatic; here and elsewhere it functions as a servant of
two masters. On the one hand, long-range registral connections help pro-
vide coherence across large spans of music and articulate large-scale struc-
ture. On the other hand, and more significantly, registral events are an
ongoing source of destabilisation at the level of motif, phrase and section,
confounding the straightforward unfolding of form. These events can often
be perceived visually, since the players perform in unusual positions (high
registers) or execute rapid changes of position (registral leaps). This can
suggest larger-than-life theatrical feats and dramatic exchanges. The com-
poser’s new dramatisation of quartet space in Op. 59 contributes not only to
the physical and visual character of this music, but also to the difficulties it
poses for performers. It is probably another reason why the opus seemed
shockingly modern to his contemporaries, and at first ‘not generally
comprehensible’.
Even a subtle registral shift can contribute to striking formal surprise – a
characteristic of this work in general, and central to Beethoven’s dramatisa-
tion of form as process. He decided not to repeat the exposition and made a
19
See also A. Gibbs, ‘Beethoven’s Second Inversions’, Music Review, 53 (1992), 83–4.
Ex. 3.1 Op. 59 No. 1, movement one, bars 1–19
clear autograph marking to that effect. This was the first time that he had
made such a decision in a string quartet, and it can be understood as part of
a larger tendency to underscore the process character of his forms.20 As the
development begins (bar 103), listeners might at first think they are hearing
an exposition repeat. But the cello shifts upwards by a semitone in bar 108 to
sit on G[, further exacerbating the original tonally tense G of bars 8–16,
which draws attention to the unexpected structural swerve. The deceptive
move suggests a theatrical ‘re-reading’ of the opening: what is dramatised
here is precisely the absence of the expected exposition repeat. In the series
of modulatory motions that follow, the tonic and main theme are prepared
20
R. Kramer, ‘Review: Beethoven’s Facsimiles’, 19th-Century Music, 6 (1982), 79.
Ex. 3.1 (cont.)
but the listener’s expectations are continually confounded by surprise

deflections.21
The use of register to complicate the formal unfolding escalates in the
development. Visually, the motion increases. Octave transfer, which is at
work in numerous places in this movement, helps effect rapid registral
shifting through previously charted space: the first violin moves upwards
to attain a new highpoint, b[3 (bar 111). A move to D minor is undercut by a
return of a mysterious registrally destabilising passage from the end of the
exposition (bars 144–51, cf. 85–90, also 332–7). The instability is then
compounded: the passage from bars 152–82, which Kerman terms a ‘leis-
urely rhapsody’ for first violin, Indorf a ‘Des-Dur-Idylle’ (D flat major idyll),
is a moment of striking tonal remove, the more marked because it comes at a
point where one might expect tonal preparation for the recapitulation,
especially given the return of the opening idea over a first inversion
21
See also L. Lockwood, ‘Process versus Limits: A View of the Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1’,
in Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University
Press, 1992), pp. 201–2.
dominant in bar 152.22 Ramifications of this D flat detour will echo across the
quartet, becoming particularly pronounced in the slow movement. Evoking
otherworldliness, the first violin floats up into the high register, ‘sempre
staccato e piano’, capturing b[3 again (bar 174) following a crescendo.
At this point, numerous aspects of the movement can be understood as
Haydnesque in spirit, if not in letter. First and foremost is the way in which
the themes arise from one another so fluidly, in the manner of ‘developing
variations’.23 The second subject, for example, flows from what has gone
before – another long-breathed melody now decorated with trills, which are
themselves to be developed later in the work. The treatment of register
might well also owe something to Haydn, especially his String Quartet in
C major, Op. 20 No. 2, which shows a similar controlled expansion out-
wards during the exposition, and will attain the same highest point, c4, in the
course of the work (as tonic rather than, as here, dominant).24 A similar
passage to the mysterious registral displacement first heard in bars 85–90 of
Op. 59 No. 1 is central to the registral drama of the finale of Haydn’s Op. 74
No. 2 (bars 228–35), and a high-register passage marked ‘assai staccato e
piano’ is to be found in the Andante con moto from Haydn’s Op. 71 No. 3
(bars 90–6 and 99–108). New in Op. 59 is the force with which the registral
plot unfolds, the heightened drama of repeated and sustained use of registral
extremes and the coverage of registral space.25
Also new, astonishing and dramatic is the handling of fugue, which is
now injected into the development section of Op. 59 No. 1 at this tonally
remote, registrally free moment. Richard Kramer finds that a ‘paradox of
continuity and laceration speaks out from the music’.26 In terms of continu-
ity, one of the double fugue subjects relates closely to the preceding stepwise
first violin rhapsody. Yet the fugue contrasts markedly with the rhapsody’s
liberated lyricism; the shift into the revered strict style of quartet composition
creates an ‘archaic aura’ (Kramer) that interrupts the idyll with its own rules,
tensions and expectations. In terms of ‘laceration’, the fugal edifice will
soon fall away. Its crumbling can be felt and seen. Far from providing a
formal culmination point, the fugue seems to motivate formal derailment,
pursuing the tonal tension from the start of the development, where the
22
Indorf, Beethoven Streichquartette, p. 250; Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 98.
23
For Webster’s application of this concept in Haydn’s music, see Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony,
especially pp. 20–9.
24
See also the discussion of Op. 20 No. 2 in relation to Op. 59 No. 3 in Chapter 5.
25
By contrast Haydn’s treatment of register is more subtle and strategic: he tends to hold the cello’s
low C in reserve for longer spans, then deploys it more suddenly and strikingly. See my ‘Register
in Haydn’s String Quartets: Four Case Studies’, Music Analysis, 26 (2007), 309–12.
26
Kramer, ‘“Das Organische der Fuge”’, p. 240.
cello had veered off to G[. A predicted D[ is replaced by D\ in the first violin
(bar 184). G[ is then singled out and prolonged in both fugue subjects, and is
projected up into the second then first violins’ mid-registers (bars 187–8 and
197–8). Three regular entries of the subjects and two stretto entries follow,
during which the register climbs steadily and sforzarto accents threaten to
pull apart the texture; the fugue is finally sundered by a diminished seventh
(bar 210). Now time and inertia are lost as the entire texture subsides, in
subdued syncopations, to a low unison G (bars 217–18). Visually one experi-
ences slowing and sinking. Violins, and possibly cello, play open strings,
contributing to the mysteriously open, ambiguous quality of the discourse.
The lean towards the learned is dramatically curtailed and the fugue remains
pointedly unresolved here, but a drama involving the learned style has been
set in motion and will continue in the finale.
This fugal interruption seems to motivate the still more destabilising and
visually appreciable events that dramatise the retransition. After the dom-
inant is finally sounded and confirmed in the cello (bars 222–3, 233–4 and
235ff.), first violin moves steadily upwards to the highest pitch of the
movement, c4, and indeed of the work (bar 242), in a dramatic tightrope
walk via an unaccompanied b[3–b\3 (Ex. 3.2). This solo shift underlines the
fact that c4, when it is reached, is insecurely anchored by a first inversion
tonic, whose bass is heard in the cello’s mid-high register (bar 242) as the
first violin plunges down two and a half octaves. The passage relates closely
to bars 16–19, both in the use of whole notes and in the sense of registral
climax. It continues the process of re-reading, too, in that even after the
extensive dominant preparation, the listener is still denied a stable tonic and
the opening theme. Registral strain is notched up higher than ever as all
voices rise to a diminished seventh on G], a re-reading of the sonority that
had shattered the fugue in bar 210, which compounds the impact.27 In a still
further dissociating move, the second idea of the first subject group returns
(bars 242–9) before the arrival of the tonic and opening theme. This drama
of continuity and laceration culminates in the spectacular cello leap to low
C from its high register – which is also readily visible to an audience (bars
252–3, Ex. 3.3). With miraculous fluidity, the opening theme now emerges
from this textural tear.
Kerman detects an aura of ‘serene breadth’ and ‘perfect inertia’ in and
after the recapitulation of the second group.28 Stability, though, is multi-
faceted: Beethoven retains the registral and tonal tension. A striking high-
register version of the theme is heard in the coda, reinforced by double
27 28
Kramer also makes this connection, ibid., p. 241. Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 100.
stops, sforzandi and the sounding of c4 once again (bar 356). Indorf terms
this an ‘Apotheose’ (apotheosis), and Kerman describes the way this ‘trium-
phant harmonized version’ cancels the subdominant, transporting the
theme towards Lydian realms.29 Climax point it most certainly is,
29
Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 252; Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 103.
melodically and rhythmically: in a context of otherwise fluid thematic

transformation, the opening theme is now heard with forcible clarity. Or
is it forced clarity? The effect is more one of ‘trying to reach’ than actually
reaching, since this thematic statement is not firmly grounded registrally or
tonally. As the theme closes, the cello is still extremely high, and the
remainder of the coda is given to registral interchange between parts, and
to leaps rather than to serenity. Attaining its c4 once more, the first violin is
at last supported by a low-register tonic (bar 387), but the cello still
prevaricates, reiterating the supertonic in a twice-sounded sforzando low-
register grumble, perpetuating the original tonal tension to the last.
At the close of the exposition, Beethoven had initially inserted a forward
repeat sign and the instruction ‘la seconda parte due volte’ (the second part
twice (bars 112–342)). Initially, he also wrote a six-bar transition back to the
opening of the development, starting piano and building up the texture by
means of imitative forte entries of the quaver-note motif. He subsequently
deleted this passage and the large-scale repeat. The effect is to maintain the
dynamic, rhythmic and textural momentum and intensity for the full-
voiced, resonant return of the opening theme in the high register at the
beginning of the coda. Lockwood points out that Beethoven thus missed the
chance to ground this statement more fully, as would be the case if the low-
register statements of the theme earlier in the work were repeated before the
coda.30 However, this compositional choice can be understood as highly
strategic, operating as much on a work level as a movement level: the
intensity and comparative registral instability of the coda, heard as the
climax to a lengthy process of registral expansion and dissociation, goads
the listener onwards to seek (registral) resolution in later movements.
Movement II: sonata and scherzo
Scholars since Lenz’s time have puzzled over the second movement’s form:
is it in sonata form, rondo form or both?31 This questioning has largely
failed to take account of the role of formal play in the quartet as a whole, or
the concept of form as unfolding process, most poignantly enacted in the
Adagio. In the second movement, Beethoven draws on strategies of drama-
tisation that were deployed in the first movement, generating several new
manoeuvres. His exploration of registral space and registral techniques is
once again crucial to the plot in this ongoing drama of becoming.
30
Lockwood, ‘Process versus Limits’, p. 205. 31
See Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, pp. 27–33.
Movement II: sonata and scherzo 63
Most analysts have regarded the movement primarily as a sonata form,

though strongly influenced by scherzo-trio structure. Kerman is virtually
alone with his reverse view of the movement as a five-part scherzo-trio with
a development section (bars 155–258).32 On the scherzoists’ side is the fact
that in contemporaneous works Beethoven was expanding his typically
tripartite scherzos into five-part designs (see Op. 95, for instance); so the
movement can be understood in this context of scherzo expansion.
Nevertheless, a broad sonata form outline was fundamental to his concep-
tion: one sees from the autograph that, even late in the compositional
process, he intended a large-scale repeat of the material from bars 155–
391, which would support the parsing of these bars as development and
recapitulation (compare the second-part repetition contemplated in the first
movement). Lockwood noted this in a seminal article on the movement’s
form, suggesting that it should be understood, at a lower level, to entail a
double exposition, a corresponding double recapitulation, and a double
coda.33 This is set out in Table 3.1, together with five other formal plans
for the movement that recent scholars have proposed.34
What falls out most clearly from Table 3.1, and the related lengthy
discussions of form in this movement, is that ambiguity is precisely the
point here, and that the second movement keeps in play both a scherzo-trio
refrain-like structure and the plotting of a sonata form. Hence an inves-
tigation of Beethoven’s formal multivalence, rather than a quest for a single
‘correct’ formal fit, seems the most appropriate point of analytical depart-
ure.35 Formal ambiguity arises from the incongruence of one or more
musical parameters at points of expected structural articulation. These
32
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 103–9. See also H. Riemann, Beethoven’s Streichquartette
(Berlin: Schlesinger, 1910), pp. 55–9. J. Del Mar also emphasises the scherzo-trio reading. See ‘A
Problem Resolved? The Form of the Scherzo of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F, Op. 59, No. 1’,
Beethoven Forum, 8 (2000), 165–72.
33
See L. Lockwood, ‘A Problem of Form: The “Scherzo” of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major,
Op. 59 No. 1’, Beethoven Forum, 2 (1993), 88.
34
B. R. Barry, ‘Dialectical Structure in Action: The Scherzo of Beethoven’s F Major Razoumovsky
Quartet Reconsidered’, in The Philosopher’s Stone: Essays in the Transformation of Musical
Structure (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000), pp. 18–31; Del Mar, ‘A Problem Resolved?’;
D. Headlam, ‘A Rhythmic Study of the Exposition in the Second Movement of Beethoven’s
Quartet Op. 59, No. 1’, Music Theory Spectrum, 7 (1985), 114–38; Indorf, Beethovens
Streichquartette, pp. 253–261; Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 103–9; Lockwood, ‘A
Problem of Form’, 85–95.
35
Lockwood usefully references Wittgenstein’s illustration of a duck or rabbit, depending on how
you look at it. That modern-day writers want to hear this movement more as sonata form than as
scherzo-trio arguably tells us most about today’s analytical perspectives and (corresponding)
listening habits. See his response to Del Mar in the discussion section following ‘A Problem
Resolved?’, 171–2.
Table 3.1 Six modern analysts’ views of the form of Beethoven’s String Quartet
Op. 59 No. 1, movement two
Bars Main Key Barry Del Mar Headlam Indorf Kerman Lockwood
1–38 B[ 1st Exp. Scherzo: Exp. 1st Gr. Scherzando I 1st Exp.
(Scherzo) 1st Gr
39–67 D min 2nd Gr. 2nd Gr.
68–90 B[ 2nd Exp. rep. Exp. 2nd Exp.
(Scherzo
repeat)
91–114 D min → B[
115–47 F min Trio Trio I
148–54 Trans.
155–238 D[. . . Dev. (Trio) Dev. Dev. Dev. Dev. Dev.
(Scherzo)
239–58 G[ 1st Gr. False rec. Rec.* Rec. 1
259–64 B[ Scherzando II
265–74 Rec. (Scherzo) Rec.
275–303 G min 2nd Gr.
304–26 F rep. 1st Gr. Rec. 2
327–53 V/Dmin 2nd Gr.
→Dmin
→B[
354–86 B[ min rep. Trio Trio II
387–93 ‘link’ Trans.
394–403 G[ Coda (Trio) Coda
404–19 Coda 1
420–45 B[ (Scherzo) Final Coda Scherzando III Coda 2
Scherzo
446–76 Coda
*Indorf has bar 239 as the beginning of a false recapitulation, which is later understood to be the ‘real’
recapitulation.
incongruities contribute greatly to the sense of comedic play in this move-

ment: ‘sempre scherzando’ is the key phrase in Beethoven’s title.36
At the level of the musical paragraph and phrase, as well as the higher
structural levels, this movement is replete with moments of playful dissoci-
ation. The first occurs in bars 1–8, where the paired phrases are split
between solo cello and solo second violin in different registers. The dis-
junction is compounded, registrally, visually and harmonically, when this
process is repeated by viola and first violin, the viola starting on A[
36
Kramer, too, notes a ‘sense of parody’ in this movement: ‘Review: Beethoven’s Facsimiles’, 79–80.
(bars 9–16). The re-reading process begun in the first movement is thus
continued: the lyrical antecedent phrase of the first movement is here
reduced to a monotone, the subsequent phrase to a non sequitur. All voices
then join for a rousing C[ chordal passage, which slips into a songful, dolce
conclusion back in the tonic (bars 23–7); this confirms the movement’s
playful stance, in providing rather too smooth an exit for such a startling
opening.
Here, as in the first movement, copious thematic development confounds
one’s sense of form as product, but compounds one’s sense of form as an
unfolding, and here very ambiguous, process. In bars 28–9, an elided
cadence into the transition brings a leaping motif derived from the opening
monotone; this is also related to the first movement, where sprung motifs
are common as derivatives of the opening theme. The new D minor music
beginning in bar 39, with its melancholic, dotted, downward gait, might be
heard as the start of the second subject group, and when the opening idea
returns in bar 68 the listener could at first assume this to be the start of a
standard exposition repeat. However, as a variation of this theme emerges in
bar 74, it seems that the development is under way. Or is it perhaps a
‘secondary exposition’, a written-out varied repeat? If so, the composer will
be expected to set up a point of harmonic tension that is left open to be
resolved. Yet B flat major returns firmly in fortissimo and with a perfect
authentic cadence in bars 100–1.
This tonal return makes sense if one hears the movement as a scherzo and
the new material introduced in bar 115 as a first trio, as do Kerman and Del
Mar. After all, this material is in a new key (F minor, the dominant minor
and the tonic minor of the quartet as a whole), and differs from the preceding
material in its articulation and dynamics, at least for a few bars. But in
several aspects – especially rhythm, texture, time signature and register – it
does not depart substantially from what came before, so one does not feel
the pronounced sense of structural articulation typical of the start of a trio.
This section is introduced with a thinning out of the texture reminiscent of
that preceding the first D minor passage (bars 35–8), and by a solid arrival
on the low C (bar 114) as V/v. The dominant’s fifth scale degree is high-
lighted registrally in the first violin (bars 128–31 and 141–4), as it is in the
second group of the first movement, and the cello articulates the cadence in
the dominant (bars 147–8) following a descent to low C from its high
register. One might hear this as a second subject group within a secondary
exposition, as does Barry, or indeed as a third subject group.37
37
Barry, ‘Dialectical Structure in Action’, p. 25.
All the commentators listed in Table 3.1 agree that there is a development
section in bars 155–238, even though thematic, registral and tonal explora-
tion has already substantially commenced. This new section is clearly
articulated, aurally, visually and sensually, by the fortissimo move to D flat
(the key that had intruded prominently in the first movement’s develop-
ment) in the cello’s sonorous low register. It is soon clear that the rate of
modulation has increased, along with the pace at which melodic ideas are
developed. Registrally, too, the action speeds up: the first violin had reached
the g3 in bar 106 and now moves by process of octave transfer on up to a[3
(bars 157–8). Formal play itself develops more rapidly: moments of silence
are heard in bars 169–70, 175 and 176, giving listeners and performers pause
to puzzle over where the discourse might lead.38 Beethoven decided to
provide still more intrigue here, inserting an allusion to the ‘songful’ motif
from bars 23–7 into the score late in the compositional process, and in the
remote key of B (bars 171–5). He made a further striking link back to the
first movement with the passage marked ‘sempre stacc. e piano’, this time
for all instruments (bars 225–31), using not only textural and performative
means but also registral reference: the attainment of c4 in bar 229. This pitch
was also the high point of the first movement, where it was likewise reached
towards the end of the development section (Ex. 3.4; cf. Ex. 3.2). Thus the
re-reading process continues.
Of course the first-time listener might doubt that the development is
about to end. Nor is one sure in bar 239, after a further pause for reflection
(or confused recoil), that the recapitulation has begun. As Table 3.1 dem-
onstrates, modern-day listeners have disagreed on this point. Lockwood
suggests that one need not try to find a precise start to this section: it can be
regarded as purposively illusive, just like the point of recapitulation in the
first movement. Indeed, the process here seems to reverse that of the first
movement, again in a vein of gentle playfulness: first a thematic recapitu-
lation begins in bar 239 (but in the ‘wrong’ key, G flat), which then
becomes a tonal recapitulation in bar 259.39 In the first movement, the
tonic returns with the material from bar 19 and the opening theme follows.
Barry hears the ‘real’ recapitulation in bar 265, after the dolce theme has led
firmly back to the tonic; she argues that this dolce theme has become an
38
On the rhetorical function of the pause in chamber music of the time, see especially G. Wheelock,
‘The Rhetorical Pause and Metaphors of Conversation in Haydn’s String Quartets’, in G. Feder
and W. Reicher (eds.), Haydn und das Streichquartett (Tutzing: Schneider, 2003), pp. 67–88.
39
Compare the Piano Sonata in F major, Op. 10 No. 6, in which the recapitulation begins
thematically in D before recovering the tonic.
Ex. 3.4 Op. 59 No. 1, movement two, bars 225–31
important structural marker.40 However, in the course of the development it

had arguably functioned as a structural blurring device.
Further unexpected tonal manipulations are to follow, which do as much
to complicate the structure as to clarify it. The ‘second group’ material from
that first exposition, originally heard in D minor, is recapitulated in G minor
(bar 275). The relationship is easy to comprehend, in that the G minor
passage is a fifth below. More difficult to grasp is the recapitulation of the
first group material from the ‘second exposition’ in F major (bar 304), unless
one hears this key as the home tonic of the entire quartet. The material from
bars 91–114 is at first recapitulated a fifth higher, on V of D minor (begin-
ning in bar 327); the strong cadence into the tonic (bars 336–7) is then
reiterated. The material beginning in bar 115, which first appeared in F
minor, is recapitulated in the tonic minor (bar 354), thus clarifying retro-
spectively that this passage first functions as ‘third group’ material.
40
Barry, ‘Dialectical Structure in Action’, pp. 28–9.
Structural play persists. In bar 420 one hears the final return of opening
material (from bars 1–26) in the tonic. With Kerman and Del Mar, one
might argue that scherzo is implied convincingly here; however, plenty of
codas in sonata-form movements deploy a return to the opening theme in
the tonic, notably including the coda of the first movement. Beethoven will
do the same in the Adagio and finale. Perhaps bars 391–2 mark the start of
the coda? However, the perfect authentic cadence there is in the middle of a
phrase, in the minor, and in the midst of a recapitulation of earlier material.
What follows is essentially tonic prolongation, relating closely to the launch
of the development in texture and dynamics. A clearer structural articula-
tion in terms of texture occurs at bar 404, or indeed bar 420. After this point,
registral closure is finally announced, which might justify the placement of
the coda even later: the upper voice descends from the high point attained in
the development to emphasise the tonic, b[3 (bar 434 and again in bar 468).
To ask when and where this movement has ‘become’ sonata form, or
indeed any fixed form, is the wrong question. Certainly the opening idea has
become something new in bar 420, or rather something more. It is sub-
stantially modified by combination with a new melody, a procedure also
found in the finale of the Sixth Symphony. The opening theme has been
clarified, or completed. In the first movement, this is effected by fortissimo,
accentuated projection of the theme into the high register; here ‘completion’,
or further re-reading, is achieved by filling out the opening rhythmic motif
with the new melodic component. However, to argue that the movement now
crystallises in hindsight into sonata form would be to deny the import of all
the preceding formal play, and the fact that the play goes on. The new theme
is followed by a fragmented answer, pianissimo, shared between the voices
(bars 423–7). The further disruptive silences, followed by fragments of the
dolce music (bars 446–53), might prompt the listener to reflect again on the
plot’s multivalence and point to the artful construction of this discourse.
Again, the composer’s creative process and voice are brought to the surface. If
in the first movement he appears to be continually at work, here he is
perpetually at play: the most significant aspect of the movement’s form, affect
and aesthetic stance are summarised in one phrase, ‘sempre scherzando’.
Beethoven’s few extant sketches for the Allegretto point to a process-
oriented conception of the movement.41 These sketches are for the opening
theme and its developments. The theme is found here in E flat, G major
41
Extant sketches for the second movement comprise those found on the bifolium that was
interpolated into the sketchbook Mendelssohn 15 and transcribed by G. Nottebohm, Zweite
Beethoveniana (Leipzig: Rieter-Biedermann, 1887), pp. 79–81.
Movement III: freedom and confinement 69
(with the broken chord idea) and D minor incarnations, exhibiting an

emphasis on thematic development in multiple tonal guises; this kind of
development can be considered as part of the re-reading process, which
characterises the quartet as a whole.
Movement III: freedom and confinement
The extant sketches for the third movement are found on a single bifolium
comprising two versions of the movement’s opening.42 On the last sheet
bearing these sketches are the words ‘Einen Trauerweiden oder Akazien-
Baum aufs Grab meines Bruders’ (A weeping willow or acacia tree over my
brother’s grave). Neither of Beethoven’s brothers was dead at this date.
Writers conjecture that he was upset about the marriage of his brother
Kaspar Karl to someone he did not regard highly.43 Biographical backing is
not necessary, however, to appreciate the distinctly earnest and melancholy
tone of the movement, which is signalled at the outset by his tempo/
character designation, Adagio molto e mesto (very slow and sad), and is
all of a piece with the work’s larger process-orientation. Kerman finds the
movement overdone: ‘Sentimentality was clouding Beethoven’s vision . . .
there is something overblown in the expression, something in the feeling
that the technique does not properly support.’44 This movement can be
understood quite otherwise: as the most expressive – in the sense of tragic –
development of the tension between form and content in the Op. 59 set,
where purposeful expressivity arises precisely because there is ‘something in
the feeling that the technique does not support’. Beethoven develops this
tragic mode further in the A flat major slow movement of the String Quartet
in E flat, Op. 74, which shares several features with this movement.
A melancholy voice, intrinsic to Schlegel’s and other early Romantics’
conception of Romantic art, comes clearly to the fore in this Adagio. F minor
was linked intimately with melancholy in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
musical thought.45 Tending sometimes towards overblown, overstated
gloom, the key apparently ‘expresses beautifully a black helpless melancholy,
42
Ibid., pp. 82–3. 43 See Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 262.
44
45
For Beethoven’s own acknowledgement that keys have real stable expressive characteristics, see
J. Cobb Biermann, ‘Masculine Music? Feminine Music? Beethoven’s Music for Two Women
Characters’, in M. Tomaszewski and M. Chrenkoff (eds.), Beethoven: Studien und
Interpretationen (Krakow: Akademia Muzyczna, 2012), pp. 356–7.
and sometimes causes the listener to shudder with horror’.46 In 1821,

Castil-Blaze echoed Rousseau’s 1749 characterisation: F minor ‘reaches
towards lugubriousness and despair’.47 Conceptions of this key’s character
often include an element of dramatised lament. For Christian Friedrich Daniel
Schubart (whose Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst Beethoven owned), it
represented ‘deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery, and longing
for the grave’.48 In his ‘Ideen über Musik’ (Ideas about Music) for the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1823, Johann Jacob Wagner went further,
relating F minor to the pathetic (and enduringly popular) image of Goethe’s
Werther, and to weeping willows by a grave as in Beethoven’s sketch note.49
A more immediately relevant interpretation of F minor occurs in con-
nection with Fidelio, the work that preceded Op. 59. Carl Ludwig Seidel’s
1828 description of the dungeon scene as an exemplar of F minor employs
the dialectic of freedom (release through death) versus restraint (imprison-
ment) that was central to conceptions of melancholy c. 1800:50
In the introduction to Florestan’s aria in the dungeon, the key F minor clearly
depicts for us – even without words – the cold horror of the site and the prisoner’s
longing for the grave . . . In F minor, with its purest dominant C major, there lies
more clearly than in any other key a presentiment of the unspeakable dénouement
beyond the grave.51
Later writers such as Gustav Schilling and Ferdinand Hand drew on this
description, and the notion that Fidelio provided a classic example of F
minor melancholy.
The Fidelio example is very apt in this context. In the 1806 version of the
opera, Beethoven set Florestan’s central scena as a recitative and aria
followed by a quiet coda. There are a number of points of contact between
the F minor Adagio orchestral introduction to Florestan’s aria (which
remained mostly unchanged in the 1814 revision) and the string quartet
46
J. Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg: Schiller, 1713), p. 249.
47
F. H. J. Castil-Blaze, s. v. ‘Ton’, Dictionnaire de musique moderne, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Paris: Au
Magasin de Musique de la Lyre Moderne, 1825), vol. II, p. 320; J. J. Rousseau, s. v. ‘Ton’,
Dictionnaire de musique (Paris: Duchesne, 1768), p. 517.
48
C. F. D. Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Vienna: Degen, 1806; repr. Hildesheim:
Olms, 1969), p. 378.
49
J. J. Wagner, ‘Ideen über Musik’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 44 (1823), 714–5; trans. Steblin,
A History of Key Characteristics, 2nd edn (University of Rochester Press, 2002), pp. 263–4.
50
On this topic, see my ‘Haydn’s Melancholy Voice: Lost Dialectics in His Late Chamber Music
and Songs’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 4 (2007), 82.
51
C. L. Seidel, Charinomos. Beiträge zur allgemeinen Theorie und Geschichte der schönen Künste, 2
vols. (Magdeburg: Rubach, 1828), vol. II, p. 111, n. 151; trans. Steblin, A History of Key
Characteristics, 264.
Adagio (Exx. 3.5–3.8). Notable among them are the fluctuating dynamics of
both works (both begin piano with strings in the low register), and rhyth-
mic/motivic similarities: the turn figure (lower strings) and dotted up-beat
figure (first violin, bassoon, oboe) in bar 11 of the scena seem to be related
respectively to the Adagio’s high-register violin figure in bar 21 and to the
opening theme of the quartet (bar 1); while violin syncopation in bar 21 of
the scena and the strings’ demisemiquaver figure, beginning in bar 24, can
be related to the first violin figures beginning in bars 9 and 23, respectively,
of the quartet.52 These figures contribute to a general atmosphere of melan-
choly unrest, as do the numerous swells and diminuendi in both works,
which aurally and visually suggest sighs. The quartet Adagio’s off-tonic
opening, in medias res, with a melody that hovers around scale degree five
and leans expressively on its upper neighbour, D[ (bar 8), also has affinities
with the second part of the 1806 version of Florestan’s aria ‘In des Lebens
Frühlingstagen’ (In the springtime of my life). The A flat major slow
movement from Op. 74, too, features a delayed entry of the first voice,
whispered delivery (sotto voce/mezza voce), dotted rhythms, falling figures,
appoggiaturas – all characteristic of expressions of melancholy, as were flat
keys in general.53
The Adagio in Op. 59 No. 1 creates a sense of vocalised delivery from the
start. Tenor-register lyricism surfaces when the cello takes over the opening
melody in its high register (bar 9). Like its counterpart in the second
movement, this exchange of melodic material between violin and cello
reverses the course of events of the work’s opening, but here the re-reading
results in an air of pathos rather than playfulness. This movement’s affect
remains subject to dispute, difficult to characterise exactly. Kerman finds it
to be unduly exaggerated, claiming that ‘the theme strives too greedily for
gloom by means of insistent appoggiaturas, and it risks more than it
prudently should through the weeping descant of its repetition’.54
However, gloom is certainly not the only affect evoked here. Beethoven
calls up the subtle ‘pleasing pain’ of melancholy, a temperament that was
not considered straightforwardly sad or gloomy at the time. Registrally, the
transition section represents an expansion upwards, a continuation of the
cello’s trajectory, which counters the falling gestures of the opening.
52
In turn, the beginning of Act II in Fidelio bears resemblance to Haydn’s ‘The Spirit’s Song’ in F
minor, Hob. XXVa:41, especially in the spare textures and the unexpected vocal entry.
53
For a relevant discussion of musical features associated with melancholy, fantasy and farewell in
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E flat of 1809, ‘Les Adieux’, Op. 81a, see Sisman, ‘After the Heroic
Style’, 83–92.
54
Ex. 3.5 Op. 59 No. 1, movement three, bars 1–10
The violin reaches g3 in bar 21, regaining this note in bar 28 as the second
subject unfolds. It is true that as the exposition draws to a close the melody has
become laden with sighing figures, which had been central to the representa-
tion of melancholy since the Renaissance. These figures occur from bars 33 to
44 in various guises, used in registral and melodic contexts that suggest
constraint. Transformed into upward octave leaps in the bass in bar 33,
however, the motif seems to motivate the upward gesture that sweeps the
first violin to a new high point, a\3, in bar 36, pending the exposition’s coda.
The dialectic of freedom versus restraint that shapes this movement is

further enacted in the development (bars 46–83), which opens in A flat.
Kerman calls the turn to the major here ‘inexplicable’ and finds that it
‘denatures the second subject’.55 However, the use of a major key need not
automatically detract from the evocation of melancholy: some of the most
finely wrought melancholy music of Beethoven’s past – the Baroque past and
more recent Viennese vocal and instrumental music – was written in a
major key. The A flat major section of Florestan’s aria ‘In des Lebens
Frühlingstagen’ is an example.56 This section is a resigned reflection on lost
happiness, a confrontation of imprisonment and death sweetened only by the
consolation of having done his duty. The A flat section of the quartet’s
Adagio, like this part of Florestan’s aria, enacts confinement: a registrally
constrained turn figure in the first violin is heard against a registrally wide-
ranging melody, which starts in the cello and seems to push the upper voices
55
Ibid.
56
For a further example, see the analysis of Haydn’s A flat major setting of ‘She never told her love’,
Hob. XXVIa:34 in my ‘Haydn’s Melancholy Voice’, 89–91.
Ex. 3.7 Fidelio, Op. 72, Act II No. 12/11, bars 11–14
upwards, but no further than the flattened seventh, g[3; g[1 is emphasised as
the local upper registral limit in the 1814 revision of ‘In des Lebens
Frühlingstagen’ (Adagio), significantly at the phrase where Florestan laments
his confinement: ‘die Ketten sind mein Lohn’ (the chains are my reward).57
57
See also Matthew Head’s discussion of resignation and endurance in Florestan’s aria, in
‘Beethoven Heroine’, especially 104.
Ex. 3.7 (cont.)
Deliberately Baroque or ‘Baroqued’ techniques were also part of the late

eighteenth-century melancholy mode – for example, Haydn’s use of a
running bass in his F minor song ‘The Wanderer’.58 In the quartet Adagio,
such techniques hint subtly at longing of the kind Florestan expresses in his
58
On ‘Baroqued’ techniques in music of this time, see also A. Richards, ‘Haydn’s London Trios and
the Rhetoric of the Grotesque’, in Beghin and Goldberg (eds.), Haydn and the Performance of
Rhetoric, especially pp. 265–70.
Ex. 3.8 Fidelio, Act II No. 12/11, bars 21–4
aria: a desire to re-hear the past and recover it in the present, which is
inevitably curtailed. Beethoven incorporates a pizzicato running bass in the
cello from bar 59 in the development section, which seems to drag the
register downwards, and leads with a sense of inevitability to the dominant
of F minor. The upper voices now take over the pizzicato, and a mid-low-
register dominant pedal (bars 67–70), as if to confirm the constraints.
Ex. 3.8 (cont.)
The listener perhaps expects the recapitulation to follow from the dom-
inant pedal, although Beethoven avoided a straightforward recapitulation in
the preceding two movements. Indeed, the passage from bars 67–83 can be
heard as ‘dominant preparation’, aided by the sounding of the cello’s
resonant low C. Yet, as Kerman observes, the D flat major passage in bars
72–83 provides a ‘striking digression’.59 It is worth noting the very similar

tone, function and location of the D flat passage in the slow movement from
Op. 74, and, more proximally, the D flat digression towards the end of the
development in the first movement. Kerman, for one, finds no real aesthetic
or expressive import in the Adagio’s D flat digression, dismissing the
passage as at best merely structural and at worst overblown: ‘This frank
maggiore balances the A flat major which opened the development . . . The
note of consolation is unmistakable, yet . . . excessive, fulsome, and essen-
tially unearned.’60 Adorno took a much more sympathetic stance. He was
fascinated by this passage, writing about it in several places.61 For him, the
very superfluity of the D flat cantabile was, paradoxically, a necessity. The
passage brings to the fore a meaningful tension between form as a process of
unfolding or becoming, and form as a normative ‘jelly mould’:
In the formal sense this passage appears superfluous, since it comes after a quasi-
retransition, after which the recapitulation is expected to follow immediately. But
when the recapitulation fails to appear it is made clear that formal identity is
insufficient, manifesting itself as true only at the moment when it, as the real, is
opposed by the possible which lies outside identity.62
Thus form takes on new meaning through formal transcendence. In a radio

broadcast of 1965, Adorno stated his understanding of the expressive
import of this passage more simply: he finds it stamped with a ‘character
of dawning hope’.63
In this passage, feelings seem to want to exceed musical conventions: the
‘dawning of hope’ is a process, a manner of striving, which remains incom-
plete. The passage can be heard as a most clearly expressed but ultimately
unresolved tension between content and form. The choice par excellence for
representing the unresolved, unravelling state of melancholy, D flat major
was the key that Schubart heard as ‘degenerating into grief and joy’.64 The D
flat song seems to do precisely this. The mechanical pizzicato over the
dominant pedal gives way in bar 72 to a beautiful lyrical melody. Adorno
noted that this theme is quite new: ‘it is not reducible to the economy of
motivic unity’.65 Rather, it creates a sense of otherworldliness, of tonal and
melodic release. Gradually, though, the soundscape is clouded by the sigh-
ing motifs, as if the musical persona represented here cannot quite shake
off the traditional emblems of melancholy (or traditional compositional
59
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 111. 60 Ibid., pp. 111–12.
61
See Adorno, Beethoven, pp. 36, 89, 104, 134, 246–7, 250–1 and 261–2.
62 63
Ibid., p. 36; trans. Jephcott, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, p. 14. Ibid., p. 261.
64
Schubart, Ideen, p. 378. 65 Adorno, Beethoven, p. 36.
economies, in Adorno’s terms) to bask in some moment of free lyricism – as

if joy is always tinted with grief.
The D flat song develops in the cello’s mid-low register (bar 76) creating a
duet, an extension, perhaps, of the opening dialogue. But this, too, subsides
as the violin is given over to the sighing motif (bars 82–3). That this section
can also be heard as ‘unearned’ and ‘excessive’, in formal terms, seems
precisely to be the point: it dramatises a sense of freedom from confine-
ments, which can only ever be fleeting – like the interruption of the D flat
idyll with fugue in the first movement. The interrupted introspection
suggests an assumption fundamental to the Romantic conception of the
artist or poet: true freedom of expression and thought can be attained only
by withdrawal into the self; but the turbulence of life always threatens to
intervene, creating a kind of captivity.66 Understood as a figure of the
transience of this interiority, and perhaps the necessary confinement of
spiritual-emotional life, the D flat music is extremely poignant.
One might conjecture that in this Adagio Beethoven was developing ideas
he was mulling over in connection with Florestan’s original aria, and the
revised version. In the 1806 version of the aria, the A flat music is followed
by an F minor Andante (un poco agitato), which evokes an idyllic past as
Florestan contemplates a portrait of Leonore. As he reflects on ‘schöne Tage’
(Halcyon days), there are pronounced dips into D flat major, especially at
the phrase ‘als ich dich mit frohem Schlage meines Herzens fest umfing’ (as I
held you tight with the happy beating of my heart) (bars 73–7; see Ex. 3.9),
where he literally ‘re-members’ – puts together – the physical experience of
past pleasures. Michael Tusa has pointed out that sketches for this section
attach great importance to the motion C–D[–C, weaving it deeply into the
structure to express agitation.67 This figure plays a larger role in the opera,
surfacing as Leonore’s ‘Schmerz’ (pain) motif in Act I, which I shall discuss
in Chapter 5. Beethoven ultimately diluted the presence of D flat major in
the 1806 revision of Florestan’s aria, and was evidently dissatisfied with the
result. He subsequently replaced the Andante section with the extended F
major conclusion ‘Und spür’ ich . . .’, in which Florestan drives ecstatically
upwards in pitch and dynamics as he experiences a rhapsodic vision of
Leonore. Florestan reaches the upper limit of his register, b[1, with the half-
delirious cry of ‘Freiheit ins himmlische Reich’ (freedom in heavenly
realms).
66
See also Lockwood, ‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of Heroism’, p. 36.
67
M. C. Tusa, ‘The Unknown Florestan: The 1805 Version of “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen”’,
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993), 191–4.
Ex. 3.9 Fidelio (1805/6 version), Act II No. 12, bars 74–9
Increasing registral and indeed physical intensity is a pronounced device

in the music of the new ‘visionary’ Florestan, who would emerge in song in
1814.68 This progressive intensity reigns supreme in the recapitulation and
coda of the quartet Adagio, which is similarly inspired and forward-looking.
The recapitulation is reduced in terms of bar count, but greatly expanded in
terms of note-count per bar. Here again, Beethoven uses registral events as a
chief means of generating momentum. Mounting registral intensity goes
hand in hand with the sustained rhythmic intensity of the repeated notes in
the inner voices. In bar 86, the first violin breaks suddenly out of the registral
confines of the theme to reach f 3 (cf. bar 3), and will emphasise this note in
the course of the second group recapitulation (bars 101–4). The physical
intensity of the inner-voice repetitions and high-register excursions are
matched by an equally palpable sense of physical release in the coda,
68
On the motivation behind this new version, see Tusa, ‘The Unknown Florestan’, 215; and
Lockwood, ‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of Heroism’, p. 35.
Ex. 3.9 (cont.)

which begins in bar 114.69 Continuing the process of thematic climax found in
the codas of the preceding two movements, a further varied statement of the
opening theme is heard here. The theme begins in the second violin and is then
reinforced by the first violin in its mid-high register, marked molto espressivo
(bar 116). This culminates in an extended first violin cadenza, reaching c4 and
fleetingly tonicising C major – the key that might bring the ‘unspeakable
dénouement beyond the grave’. Yet release will not bring a firm resolution
of the preceding pathos in this movement. It is the most blatantly open-ended
movement of the work: the violin swoops down to a trill on the dominant.
Movement IV: learned and light
Will the dénouement in fact take place? To follow this drama through the
finale we need to consider Beethoven’s use of Russian folksong, a strikingly
innovative element in the first two quartets from Op. 59. This usage relates
to his dedication of the works to his Russian patron and music connoisseur,
Rasumovsky, and also to his own considerable interest in folksong. His
treatment of folksong in the finale of Op. 59 No. 1 and the third movement
of Op. 59 No. 2, like his use of ‘folktale’ in the second movement of Op. 59
No. 3, is crucial to each work’s unfolding plot. In the F major quartet,
Beethoven builds towards the appearance of the folksong, carefully staging
its arrival in the finale. In this way, he brings the preceding movements’
processes to a dramatic culmination, if not to a complete synthesis.
The finale functions in several ways as a culmination point in the work,
although it is not unequivocally triumphant and conclusive. The most
obvious link to the preceding material is the dominant trill, which persists
in the first violin for four and a half bars as the movement opens, is taken up
by the cello in bars 8–12, and pervades the movement in general, especially
the coda.70 Links to preceding movements are also established in terms of
register (the sounding of c4 at significant moments), texture (fugato) and
procedure. As regards procedure, re-reading is the hallmark of this finale.
Beethoven re-reads his own work, while also re-reading folksong.
This was his first use of folksong in a string quartet. He drew attention to
it visually and aurally, announcing it to performers and score readers in the
first and subsequent editions with the label ‘Thème russe’, and staging its
69
Kerman also notes this, but not the corresponding sense of physical confinement within this
movement: The Beethoven Quartets, p. 112.
70
For early performers and score readers, the link would have been still more apparent, since early
editions typically have no page break between the two movements.
Movement IV: learned and light 83
arrival with the trill and hushed cello solo. It is not clear whether
Rasumovsky gave the Russian theme to Beethoven, or whether the com-
poser selected it himself. Beethoven drew on the Russian folksong collection
of Nikolai Lvov and Johann Gottfried Pratsch (first edition 1790) for both of
the songs he used in Op. 59. He was not concerned to preserve the folksong
in the form transmitted by Lvov-Pratch: he changed the key, added artic-
ulation to the theme (chiefly staccato dots), and wound up the tempo – in
Lvov-Pratsch, the song was marked Molto Andante, in G minor. The result
is lively, even ‘light’, and seems not to convey the meaning of the song’s lyric,
a soldier’s lament. Its opening line, ‘O misfortune mine’, would seem better
suited to the Adagio.
Beethoven’s treatment of the theme has attracted a good deal of criticism
since at least the mid-nineteenth century. The complaints are threefold: that
he is unsympathetic to the original folksong (‘misreading’), that he imme-
diately applies to the song a variety of learned devices (‘mistreatment’), and
that the resultant theme is anyway unsuited to its setting within the quartet
(‘misapplication’).71 The charge of ‘misreading’ is made with respect to the
folksong, which is assumed to be original but may not in fact be well
represented in Lvov-Pratsch, and is premised anachronistically on modern-
day ethnographic ideals. The charge of ‘mistreatment’ also neglects
Beethoven’s musical context, in which popular tunes were certainly found
in finales of large-scale instrumental works, including Beethoven’s own.72
The charge of ‘misapplication’ is perhaps the most serious, because it
takes aim at Beethoven’s understanding of genre. For Kerman, the finale
‘strikes a tone wrongly scaled to the quartet as a whole’.73 But this is to
disregard the larger process of re-reading deployed in the finale, a process of
re-hearing elements of the opening movement, which is well under way by
the finale and is of a piece with the whole work’s dramatisation and process-
orientation. Friedrich Schlegel found such renegotiation of ideas highly
engaging. ‘Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts’, he observed in his
39th Athenäum Fragment: ‘They have to be turned around and synthesised
71
For these three views, see especially and respectively Alexander Oulibicheff, Beethoven, ses
critiques et ses glossateurs (Leipzig: Brockhaus; Paris: Gavelot, 1857), pp. 265–6; Abraham,
Beethoven’s Second-Period Quartets, pp. 27–8; and Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 114–15.
Mark Ferraguto has considered this reception in ‘Beethoven à la moujik: Russianness and
Learned Style in the “Razumovsky” String Quartets’, paper read at the American Musicological
Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 2011.
72
Most proximally the ‘alla polacca’ finale at the conclusion of the Triple Concerto, Op. 56. See
also, for example, his deployment of a contredanse from his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus,
Op. 43, with the finale of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, Op. 35.
73
with their antipodes. This is how many philosophical works acquire a

considerable interest that they would otherwise have lacked.’74 Such
works were designed to appeal to the learned/connoisseur reader: the
‘considerable interest’ lies in the revelation of complex thought processes
and concepts. In an extended essay ‘Über die Unverständlichkeit’ (On
Incomprehensibility), Schlegel defended his texts against those who would
claim incomprehension: all incomprehensibility is relative, so that an appar-
ently incomprehensible text becomes comprehensible when viewed within
its own context and thought system, which might include provocative ironic
reversals.75 Early listeners who found Op. 59 ‘not generally comprehen-
sible’, as well as later critics who have puzzled over forms and procedures in
the F major quartet in particular, would have done well to take account of
this viewpoint.
With Schlegel’s notion of thought reversal and synthesis in mind, consider
the way Beethoven re-reads his own opening gambit here, employing the
folksong. The melody still lies low in the cello, and centres on the dominant,
but now it acquires an aura of familiarity from its associations with a popular
tune and the appealing piquancy of Beethoven’s articulation. In bar 9, the first
violin takes over the main melody, just as it did in the first movement and
with a similar registral disposition; however, the cello now sits firmly on the
dominant rather than clinging to the supertonic, so that the tonality moves
more securely to the tonic, F major (Ex. 3.10). The effect of the re-reading is
one of revelation after the preceding tonal complexities and prevailing mel-
ancholia. Registral expansion is also carried out in a similar way to that in the
first movement, but more rapidly as befits the lively tone and the fact that
registral outer limits have already been clearly established. By bar 19, the first
violin has reached c4, the highest pitch in the quartet, and the cello simultan-
eously sounds its lowest string, open C. Again, the re-reading clarifies: the
registral limits articulate the definitive arrival of the tonic, here in bar 18, and
the parallel registral processes establish connections with other movements,
especially the first (compare Exx. 3.1 and 3.10).
Along with clarification, the re-reading process brings complexity –
added interest for the connoisseur. The theme is immediately subject to
varied fugal procedures, starting with the first violin’s trilled counterpoint,
proceeding with inversion in bar 9, and moving swiftly into a canon between
viola and first violin, starting in bar 16 with the third statement of the theme.
The application of learned procedures to the lively theme would probably
74
F. Schlegel, ‘Fragmente’, Athenaeum, 1 (1798), part II, 12.
75
F. Schlegel, ‘Über die Unverständlichkeit’, Athenaeum, 3 (1800), 335–52.
Ex. 3.10 Op. 59 No. 1, movement four, bars 1–22
have appealed to connoisseurs such as Rasumovsky. Beethoven further re-

reads the Russian theme at the start of the recapitulation (bar 179), drawing
on its modal ambivalence by adding E[, so that the theme at first sounds as if
it is in B flat rather than F. This creates a formal play akin to that in the first
and second movements, subtly masking the point of thematic return.
The re-reading process is pursued further in the double fugato that
precedes the coda, which begins in bar 266. This fugato re-reads events in
the first movement, where the fugue was also delivered pianissimo, starting
in the upper voices. The former fugue, though, is long-breathed, earnest and
tonally tense; here segments of the Russian theme are recombined so that
they fit together contrapuntally; thus learned fugato is made to sound
Ex. 3.10 (cont.)
delightful, like whispered snatches of lively conversation. Such treatment of

the theme may well have been influenced by Haydn, whose theatrical
(‘Shakespearian’) mixture of the serious and comic was celebrated and
criticised by contemporaries.76 Indeed, Haydn can be understood as an
‘implied dedicatee’, a source of inspiration for key elements in this work
and all the middle-period quartets: style mixing, strategic use of register and
highly artful formal manipulation.
Procedures of culmination are at work here, too, which at first seem to
resolve some of the preceding complexities. As in the previous three move-
ments, a climactic version of the theme is presented in a coda. In bar 310, the
violin soars upwards again, touching c4 as it sounds the folksong; this is now
played legato, piano, and much more slowly (Adagio ma non troppo), then
fades away (sempre perdendosi . . . ppp). At last the movement and work
seem to have reached a point of real clarity: perhaps this is the dénouement,
76
On this subject, see especially E. Sisman, ‘Haydn, Shakespeare, and the Rules of Originality’, in
Haydn and His World, pp. 3–56; see also Chapter 4.
where the ‘true’ songful nature of the theme is revealed? Strikingly projected
in this way, the transformed Russian song might be heard as the goal of the
unfolding processes in each of the preceding movements. However, any
such expectations are dramatically undercut. A striking reversal takes place,
an ironic twist in the plot: what directly follows is a lively gallop upwards in
the upper voices, presto, so that sweet song is promptly dissolved into the
quartet’s resounding brilliance (Ex. 3.11).
The events of this coda fit rather nicely into Hegel’s description of the
result of the process of becoming: just as one grasps that a process has led
to the uniting of a concept and its apparent opposite, the concept, its
opposite and the process of becoming itself all vanish. The result should
be a synthesis, uniting concept and opposite. Perhaps ‘song’ is revealed
here to be at the root of the musical utterance – something that runs
deeper in the musical consciousness than styles such as ‘learned’ or ‘light’,
and fundamental or prior even to the unfolding of form. This line of
thought would accord well with the Romantic quest for the roots of
utterance, a topic discussed further in Chapter 5. Ironic reversal, mean-
while, such as the dissolution of this song in the players’ final upward
flight, is equally a hallmark of Romanticism, and especially of Schlegel’s
‘incomprehensibility’. It suggests the device of parabasis, from ancient
Greek drama, whereby actors or a chorus come forward to speak ‘out of
role’, thus suspending or ending the fictive illusion. Beethoven brings new
narrative voices onto the stage in Op. 59, exploring this kind of irony
much further in Op. 95.
The autograph shows that Beethoven contemplated another large-scale
repetition in this movement, of bars 286 to 324. Given that this would
have taken place in the coda, it might not have had the same structural
implications as the repeats he contemplated in the first and second move-
ments. But this is the passage in which the very high register is attained
once more, so repetition would have reinforced the sense in which all
movements are connected by registral limits (the top c4 in particular).
Furthermore, the Adagio version of the Russian theme would have been
heard again, along with the sharp reversal of affect at the concluding
Presto, which might have confirmed the quartet’s emphasis on registral
ascent, and diluted the effect of the reversal of mood. Why did Beethoven
ultimately discard this repeat? The answer perhaps lies in the strong
process-orientation of the entire work, expressed in each movement’s
unique formal unfolding and enhanced by Beethoven’s manifold
devices for creating instability and open-endedness, especially registral
events.77 To repeat the coda’s strikingly abrupt reversal would be to rob
the quartet of a wonderfully fitting final act of destabilisation. As it is,
process prevails.
77
Compare Lockwood, who argues that the answer lies in the achievement of balanced proportions
within the movement: ‘Process versus Limits’, pp. 206–8.
‘Rasumovsky’ quartets? 89
‘Rasumovsky’ quartets?
It sounds as though Count Rasumovsky had been tactless enough to hand

Beethoven the tune [used in Op. 59 No. 2], and Beethoven is pile-driving it into
the ground by way of revenge.78
Commentators on Op. 59 have approached Beethoven’s use of the Russian

folksongs from two distinct perspectives. For Alexander Wheelock Thayer
(probably following Carl Czerny/Otto Jahn), the Russian themes represent
Beethoven’s deliberate intention to pay a compliment to his Russian
patron.79 Writers after Thayer have tended to want to distance Beethoven
from a straightforward homage to Rasumovsky in these works. Kerman and
Richard Taruskin go so far as to see Beethoven’s treatment of the themes as
parodies directed against the Russian count.80 Walther Salmen, Vetter and
Indorf also wish to see the composer distanced from the ‘sentimental’
folksong movement of the early nineteenth century.81 Salmen notes the
use of Russian folksongs in various art music contexts around the turn of the
nineteenth century, but argues that Beethoven’s usage in the Op. 59 quartets
goes further, raising the folksongs to the level of ‘autonomous’ art.82
These writers seem to be arguing not only for the emancipation of
Beethoven from the realms of traditional musical patronage, but also the
emancipation of the string quartet from the realm of popular music. There
are at least two problems with these positions. First, the Russian themes that
Beethoven used are not straightforwardly ‘digested’ or subsumed in sonata
form, although they are certainly subjected to much thematic manipulation.
The Russian theme in Op. 59 No. 1, with its tonal ambivalence, could in fact
serve to mask traditional formal boundaries, for example at the point of
recapitulation in the finale. It is an integral part of the ‘re-reading’ process in
this work and is strikingly transformed and projected in the coda, bringing
into bold relief the process of formal and thematic unfolding.
Then, it is clear that Beethoven was very conscious of the importance of
his relationships with his patrons, even if he did not always bow completely
to their wishes. Tyson has shown that at some stage before publication,
78
79
Forbes (ed.), Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, p. 408.
80
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 113; R. Taruskin, On Russian Music (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2009), p. 374.
81
See Salmen, ‘Zur Gestaltung der “Thèmes russes” in Beethovens op. 59’; W. Vetter, ‘Das
Stilproblem in Beethoven Streichquartetten op. 59’, in Mythos-Melos-Musica: Ausgewählte
Aufsätze zur Musikgeschichte, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1957), vol. I, pp. 363–
7; and Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 243.
82
Salmen, ‘Zur Gestaltung der “Thèmes russes” in Beethovens op. 59’, p. 403.
Beethoven actually toyed with a change of the dedication of these works

from Rasumovsky to Lichnowsky, and conjectures that this might have
resulted from his quarrel with the former, which he rectified when the
argument was resolved: the composer was well aware of his power as
dedicator, and no doubt wished to use it strategically.83 Parody or cheeky
wit directed against Rasumovsky would have been highly inappropriate,
especially given the strains of his political position (France and Russia were
negotiating a non-aggression treaty) and personal life (the illness and death
of his wife) at that time.84 The element of re-reading in all the movements
after the first in Op. 59 No. 1 can be understood as self-directed, and aimed
towards the development of the quartet as a genre. This procedure is of a
piece with the early Romantics’ ‘melancholy’ conception of the work of art.
It suggests not only a continual process of compositional working and
reworking, which persists as part of the meaning of the work, but also the
sense of ironic self-reflection and ‘taking back’ that had long been con-
sidered a trademark of the melancholy poet.
83
A. Tyson, ‘The “Razumovsky” Quartets: Some Aspects of the Sources’, in A. Tyson (ed.),
Beethoven Studies 3 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 134–5. Del Mar conjectures that
perhaps he finally decided to dedicate the works to Lichnowsky after all, but that the title page
reflects a mistake on the part of the publisher. See J. Del Mar (ed.), String Quartets op. 59. Critical
Commentary (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2008), p. 18.
84
See Albrecht, ‘“First Name Unknown”’, 11.
4 ‘With much feeling’: song, sensibility
and rhapsody in Op. 59 No. 2
The second quartet from Op. 59, in E minor, is vital in establishing the
expressive breadth of the opus; yet the first and third quartets have attracted
more attention, both admiring and adverse. At worst, the second quartet is
basically ignored, for instance in the Beethoven biography of Marx (Leben
und Schaffen, 1859). After a lengthy introduction to the opus as a whole, he
discusses the first and last quartets, omitting the second quartet entirely. In
the second edition, he added a single short paragraph – brief observations
on Beethoven’s use of a Russian folk theme in the third movement.1 He
finds that Beethoven ‘emancipated’ the voices in the Op. 59 quartets, so that
they are newly ‘personal’ in style, but does not venture near the E minor
quartet’s individuality. Lenz offers more detailed observations on the sec-
ond quartet, although most of his attention is devoted to the first, and the
third gets more attention than the second. Most telling are his epithets for
each work: ‘Stolz. Schwärmerei. Kraft.’ (pride, passion/rapture and power)
respectively.2 One has the impression that rapturous passion is valued less
by Lenz than pride or power, or is perhaps more difficult to discuss.
Helm (1885) is exceptional among the early commentators on the
middle-period string quartets, giving much higher praise and more atten-
tion to the E minor work than usual. He characterises the quartet as heroic
but ultimately non-triumphant: it represents ‘a struggle against hostile
powers of fate, which, however, does not fully flare up’.3 Because of its
character of unfulfilled striving, he considers Op. 59 No. 2, especially its first
movement, to be the most fitting image of the composer that can be found in
his quartets. True, the second quartet is something of a transitional work in
his account of the opus, in which the third quartet is the goal: he finds
that Beethoven demonstrated a growing awareness of his own artistic
power as he progressed through the composition of these quartets.4
Nonetheless, Helm found a way of approaching the slow movement of the
second quartet, in particular, that places it within a central discourse about
1
A. B. Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Berlin: Janke, 1863), vol. II,
pp. 45–6.
2
Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. IV, p. 22.
3
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 73. 4 Ibid., p. 97. 91
92 Song, sensibility and rhapsody in Op. 59 No. 2
music of the time; his discussion of the ‘Classical’ Adagio can still help to
broaden our views of this work today.
Kerman (1967) typifies the modern-day treatment of the second quartet
from Op. 59. He considers it together with the third quartet, and tends to
view the opus as a whole from the vantage point of the first of the set, and
through the lens of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony. In effect, he reverses the priority
of nineteenth-century writers, who tended to privilege the third quartet. He
criticises Op. 59 No. 2 for the ‘wispiness’ of its thematic material, and finds
the slow movement to be particularly problematic, especially in its form.5
Like the earlier writers, he considers each of the Op. 59 quartets, and each of
Beethoven’s later quartets, to be more ‘personal’ than those that came
before, by which he means that each has a quite particular character. He
characterises Op. 59 as a whole as unrestful, but finds that the second
quartet is nervously and twitchily disquiet, rather than powerfully so.
Like virtually all other commentators, Kerman emphasises the sym-
phonic and ‘heroic’ character of Op. 59, and the pertinent bold innovations
in the opus. All the Op. 59 quartets are, for Kerman and for modern-day
writers in general, ‘explorers’ – or they should be.6 Herein lies the nub of the
problem: the second quartet does not seem to fit well with expectations.
First, its perceived wispy, nervy character is diametrically opposed to the
expected ‘heroic’ style as it has been understood, which demands goal-
directedness and sharply etched ‘symphonic’ themes (or at least that is the
perception regarding the first theme in the first movement). Then, an
‘exploratory’ character is less evident in the second quartet than the first,
especially if one focuses on form, as modern analysts have tended to do: in
this respect, the second quartet can be understood as affirming tradition
rather than forging ahead.
However, the exploratory aspect of Op. 59 can be understood, broadly, to
encompass the musical sensibility embodied in the second quartet: this
work does not explore form as much as it does feelings, or humours. The
investigatory and dynamic character of the work is more inwardly directed
than that of the first quartet, so that, within largely traditional formal
schemes, there is great depth and fluidity of expression. Mutatis mutandis,
because of this very depth the formal structures need to be more firmly
established.
The work is ‘in E’, or rather it hovers around E: three of the movements
are in E minor, and the slow movement in E major, as is the trio. The
5
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 120 and 129.
6
See Introduction, n. 11; see also Lockwood, ‘Process versus Limits’, p. 198.
Song, sensibility and rhapsody in Op. 59 No. 2 93
fluctuating character of this quartet is captured nicely by Christian Friedrich

Daniel Schubart (and other writers, some following Schubart) in describing
E minor as a key that tends towards C major, as indeed it does in this work:
Naïve, womanly, innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs

accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the
pure happiness of C major. Since it has by nature only one colour, one could
compare it to a girl all dressed in white with a rose red bow at her breast. From
this key one steps with inexpressible charm back again to the fundamental key of C
major, where heart and ear find the most complete satisfaction.7
While Schubart’s attribution of femininity to E minor is overt, in the

literature we find a more covert feminine gendering of Op. 59 No. 2.
The most commonly cited ‘feminine’ attribute of the work is its labile
quality, found especially in immediate thematic transformation and
extensive tonal fluctuation. This covert gendering of the second quartet
helps to explain why it has not been found to embody the expected
attributes of the ‘heroic’ style, which has been emphatically gendered as
masculine.8
In this chapter, I shall be primarily concerned with exploring the unique-
ness of the E minor quartet, and finding aesthetic contexts in which to
understand it. But it is important to recognise that, even though the Op. 59
quartets are highly individualised, in several fundamental ways the three
works are closely linked. They are connected in the manner of developing
musical ideas; the related approach to form (more as unfolding process, less
as ‘mould’); the strategic and expressive use of registral space; the witty, bold
treatment of tradition (especially the string quartet’s fugal heritage); and the
inspiration of vocal and theatrical works – all features that also imply
inspiration from Haydn’s quartets. On a tonal level, one can note that, in
a context of general flexibility, two key centres exert a particular pull in the
second quartet: the Neapolitan (F major) and the submediant (C major – as
one might expect from Schubart’s description). Since these are the keys of
7
Schubart, Ideen, p. 380.
8
See, for example, Marx’s comments on the lusty, powerful manliness in the Presto of Op. 74,
which he associates with Beethoven’s heroic/symphonic style: Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen,
vol. II, p. 316; or his comments regarding Op. 59 No. 3, which shows ‘der männliche, kampfrüstige
Sinn heroischere Handlungsweise’ (the manly, battle-ready sense of heroic actions), p. 47. On
‘feminine’ attributes in music, which are associated with masculine creative anxiety, see
S. C. Downes, The Muse as Eros: Music, Erotic Fantasy and Male Creativity in the Romantic and
Modern Imagination (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), especially p. 9. On ‘masculine’ symbols in
connection with Beethoven’s music, see H. Rösing, ‘Auf der Suche nach Männlichkeitssymbolen:
Beethoven und die Sonaten(hauptsatz)form’, in C. Bartsch, B. Borchard and R. Cadenbach (eds.),
Der ‘männliche’ und der ‘weibliche’ Beethoven (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2003), especially pp. 5–13.
the outer two quartets, the second quartet can be considered the tonal
cornerstone of the entire opus, which creates a tonal and affective impetus
towards the last quartet.
Movement I: Allegro
‘The spirit of this noteworthy first movement’, wrote Helm, ‘arises from
something like defiance, anger restrained with effort.’9 His observation
captures the startlingly impassioned opening gesture, comprising two
sharply punctuated chords, i–V6, followed by silence (Ex. 4.1). A triadic
theme, introduced in eerie pianissimo octaves by the outer voices, is also
abruptly silenced, and followed by a shift to the Neapolitan scale degree,
where it is repeated, and again falls silent. If the chords are defiant, then the
ensuing discourse perhaps suggests anger restrained; certainly it is whis-
pered and obscure. According to Riemann, the opening two chords were to
function as audience ‘silencers’.10 However, Beethoven, like Haydn before
him, was not content to use the chords simply as prefatory material to a
string quartet, but would integrate them fully into the movement.11 The
chordal gesture becomes an important means by which to articulate form in
an otherwise highly fluid movement: it is deployed at the start of the
development (Ex. 4.2) and coda. The chords are also immediately developed
at the outset. The rising fifth, heard in the top voice, is integral to the
opening theme group: the first violin melody in bars 3–4 outlines this
interval at the lower octave, and the cello mirrors this one octave below,
inverting it in the low register to close the phrase.
As in the first quartet of the opus, Beethoven’s tendency to immediately
and copiously develop exposition material generates the ‘process’-orientation
of the work. Octaves, for example, are used to articulate the retransition.
Other elements of this opening theme complex will also become prominent.
Silences punctuate the first paragraph, and are then ‘developed’ in the
development section. Importantly, the opening exposes a tonal tension
that is central to the entire work: the abrupt shift up a semitone to sound
the opening idea in F major in bar 6 forecasts the many diversions to
and intrusions of Neapolitan tonalities that follow. Each of these elements
9
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 73. 10 Riemann, Beethoven’s Streichquartette, p. 64.
11
On other composers’ use of such chords in the string quartet context, see L. Finscher,
‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3: Versuch einer Interpretation’, in G. Schuhmacher (ed.),
Zur musikalischen Analyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), p. 127, n. 14.
Movement I: Allegro 95
contributes to the ‘nervy, twitchy’ character of the movement – its labile and
sensitive aspect.
Forte chords at the opening might be understood to suggest public
performance, as they have been in some of Haydn’s later string quartets.12
However, as in Op. 59 No. 1, one can find many elements of the E minor
quartet that can be considered ‘private’ in style and scope, and thus fit with
Helm’s characterisation of the first movement, in particular, as inward-
looking and lamenting. Once again, the idea of theatre can help negotiate
this rather simplistic ‘public versus private’ binary. Gestures of inwardness
invite the listener into the drama, helping to minimise the ‘staged’ aspect of
the work – to break the ‘fourth wall’ and allow the viewer to identify with the
characters and passions represented.13
12
See, for example, L. Somfai, ‘The London Revision of Haydn’s Instrumental Style’, Proceedings of
the Royal Musical Association, 100 (1973), 167–9; and H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle
and Works, 5 vols., Haydn in England, 1791–1795 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), vol. III,
pp. 459–60.
13
On this point, see also Sutcliffe, ‘Haydn, Mozart and Their contemporaries’, p. 190.
Ex. 4.2 Op. 59 No. 2, movement one, bars 70b–6
Consider the unusually soft dynamic of the theme that emerges in bar 3
and the way this theme is developed with increasing intensity in bars 9–14,
with subtle swells and sforzati. Sighs of various kinds are heard in bars 9–18:
expressive suspensions (cf. cello, bars 11–12) and appoggiaturas (violin 1,
bar 14), and especially the falling sixth (violin 1, bar 18). The drama here is
fundamentally different from that at the opening of the first quartet, as
practically all writers have observed. A comparison of the first nineteen
bars of these two works demonstrates that the second is much more con-
cerned with short, nuanced phrasing than long-range unfolding. Tonally,
melodically, registrally and rhythmically, the music is more fluid and finely
chiselled. It possesses a rhetorical quality typical of what eighteenth-century
writers termed ‘sonata style’, as opposed to ‘symphony style’, which is
exemplified by the sweeping opening of Op. 59 No. 1.14
14
A full discussion is found in Broyles, Beethoven: The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s
Heroic Style, pp. 9–36.
As in Op. 59 No. 1, register has a dual stabilising and destabilising role.

The high register in particular is used to create and prolong a sense of
instability, contributing to the quartet’s twitchy, nervy exploration of sen-
sibility, and generating a need (not always fulfilled) for registral completion
or resolution. The transition starting in bar 21 is essentially a development
of bars 13–17, using the semiquaver run built now on the tonic rather than
the dominant. The first violin climbs to f3 in bar 25 (the Neapolitan degree,
but here the dominant seventh of C); more dramatically, the e[3s of bar 27
cancel the tonic, E. Registrally, a certain stability is attained: the first violin
moves on upwards via g3 (bar 39) to a3 (bar 44) over V/G; this marks the
outset of the second group, which, in other respects, flows seamlessly out of
the first. The passage that follows avoids cadential articulation of G, making
it seem harmonically labile. It is also registrally and rhythmically change-
able: the first violin moves up to g3 once more then sinks into a homo-
rhythmic syncopated passage (bars 58–64), thus developing the opening
syncopation (bars 3–4 and 6–7). The closing theme, after the perfect
authentic cadence in bars 64–5, is unusually brief.
Lenz’s term Schwärmerei suggests a musical–poetic context for the work,
with its fluidly unfolding and fluctuating passions, in the late eighteenth- and
early nineteenth-century rhapsody. The term ‘rhapsody’ derives from the
ancient Greek rhapsōdos, referring to the reciter or recitation of epic poetry,
without the accompaniment of instruments. This term itself derives from
rhapsōdein meaning ‘to sew [songs] together’, which describes the improvi-
satory practices of the rhapsōdos, and captures the lyrical, improvisatory
character of later rhapsodies. Literary rhapsodies by eighteenth-century
German poets such as Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Johann
Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock were often fragmentary
and open-ended, and were set to music, as, for example, in Schubart’s
collection of songs and solo keyboard works Musicalische Rhapsodien
(1786). An apt example from Book 2 is the brief song ‘Mädchen Laune’,
which, depicting the supposed lability of girls’ moods, changes key and metre
several times in its forty-eight bars.15 The musical rhapsody represented
the early Romantics’ paradigmatic quest to capture poetic sentiments in
sound. The use of adventurous harmony helped in this pursuit – for
instance, in Reichardt’s poignant Rhapsodie (published 1794), which
sets an extract from Goethe’s Harzreise im Winter.16 Favourite fare for
15
C. F. D. Schubart, Musicalische Rhapsodien, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Herzoglichen Hohen Carlsschule,
1786), vol. II, pp. 27–8.
16
J. F. Reichardt, Musik zu Göthe’s Lyrischen Gedichte (Berlin: Neue Berlinische Musikhandlung,
1794), pp. 32–3.
domestic music making, the nineteenth-century musical rhapsody (typically

for keyboard) was free in form, often emotionally exuberant, and composed
in a single extended movement. The composition of Op. 59 No. 2 ‘on E’
implies a similar effect, as do several inter-movement links, and destabilising
effects at the movement level.
The passionate, schwärmerisch (enraptured) character of the E minor
quartet’s first movement emerges clearly in the development section, which
is harmonically highly unstable. Predominantly in minor keys, it involves
much enharmonic movement. In bars 70b, 72, 74 and 76, for example, the
opening chordal gesture is sounded first one semitone lower, in E flat major,
then transformed in mode to E flat minor, enharmonically reinterpreted as
D sharp minor, and finally sounded in B minor (the minor dominant,
important in the finale’s second theme), whose altered Neapolitan (C
minor) is then touched in the course of the modified development of the
theme (Ex. 4.2). Thus the opening tonal tension is exacerbated in this drama
of sensibility. All the musical materials heard so far, not simply the main
gestures and tonal areas of the opening, are fair game for development:
rhetorical pauses have become pronounced, and a lurching syncopated
figure seems to be derived from the exposition’s coda; this coda material
is now heard in a new, modulating guise (bars 91–6 and 99–106).
In the development, the tendency towards C major, which will play a role
in the tonal shaping of the entire quartet, starts to become more apparent. C
major had already been implied softly by the cello’s uncanny pianissimo low
open C (as the dominant of F in bar 6), and more forcefully sounded in the
scales of the exposition (cf. bars 16–17, 24–5). In bar 107, it is articulated by
the low C, as the fortissimo goal of two of the modulating syncopated
passages; here the opening gesture is combined with the semiquaver run-
ning idea, itself a development of bars 4 and 7. This passage might be heard,
following both Helm and Schubart, as an attempt – as unsuccessful as it is
short-lived – at defiant triumph or hopefulness. The eruption fades into
pianissimo murmuring, and the instability is then intensified by the unisons
in bars 124–6, which might potentially lead in any tonal direction. These
unisons develop the textural idea first heard in bar 3, intensifying the
rhetorical, declamatory element and thus the rhapsodic character. Unison
trills in bars 133–8 hark back to the first quartet; in both works they are an
aspect of inter-movement integration.
At the phrase level the movement is extremely fluid; conversely, the
higher-level sectional divisions are clearly articulated. Compared with
Op. 59 No. 1, there is much less in the way of formal surprise or manipu-
lation. The device of repetition provides stability in this and subsequent
movements. In the first movement, there are repeats of the exposition

and development/recapitulation, the latter deployed by Beethoven for
the last time in a string quartet. Even in Op. 18 Nos. 1–4 he used no such
repeats. The recapitulation, beginning in bar 141, is more straightfor-
ward than that in any of the movements of Op. 59 No. 1, but it still
involves significant recomposition. Silences between the opening
chords are filled by running semiquavers, as in the development, con-
tributing to a sense of flowing, spontaneous rhapsody. Re-voicing begins
after seven bars; and in bar 156 Beethoven departs further from a
literal repeat of the exposition. Initially he wrote a three-bar passage,
mostly in two-part counterpoint between first violin and cello, which led
quickly to the fortissimo transition to the second group (cf. exposition
bar 26; Fig. 4.1a and Ex. 4.3a). This was then crossed out, revised and
extended by two bars to create the downwards-sweeping semiquaver run,
passing through each voice in turn (Fig. 4.1b; Ex. 4.3b). This sequential
sharing of the same melodic idea between the voices becomes especially
pronounced and significant in the slow movement, and then the finale. The
unearthly sounding of the cello’s low C in bar 6 is developed further here,
too, bringing yet another reference to C major during the modulation to the
tonic major.17
The lengthy coda, beginning in bar 209, is only partially concerned
with restabilisation. At the start of the coda, the modulating chordal
gesture leads to soft ruminations on the opening theme in the inner
voices; the cello has chromatic motion upwards, the first violin an
augmented version of second group material. Tonally, the passage
moves through E major to C major once again, the key of hope and
happiness in Schubart’s interpretation. Agitation is introduced, however,
through syncopations derived from the coda of the exposition; this leads
to a dissonant crunch on a dominant ninth chord in bars 237–40. Firm,
low-register resolution of this chord is delayed until bars 250–1, where
the pianissimo gesture from the opening, bar 3, is presented fortissimo
and turns cadential; that is, it becomes a closing gesture – a very
Haydnesque manoeuvre. This is an odd sort of cadence, though, and
hardly a complete resolution, since it leads to fortissimo unisons and
then fades to a murmur. In bar 250, the first violin had reached a3 once
again, via g3; yet, as Miller notes, this registral high point is ‘left hanging
17
See also W. Drabkin’s discussion of this passage, ‘Beethoven and the Open String’, Music
Analysis, 4 (1985), 20–2.
4.1a Beethoven, String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2, movement one, bars 153–5 and 161–4 autograph
score, showing crossed out draft of bars 156–8
4.1b Beethoven, String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2, movement one, bars 156–60, autograph score
Movement II: Molto Adagio 101
Ex. 4.3a Op. 59 No. 2, movement one, crossed out draft of bars 156–8 (see Fig. 4.1a)
saliently’, the exposure of this note emphasised by the registral leap.18

Thus, as the curtain falls on Act I of the E minor quartet, a sense of
open-endedness is created, despite the stabilising accomplishments of
the movement’s large-scale repeats.
Movement II: Molto Adagio
As in Op. 59 No. 1, the drama of this quartet is encapsulated by the

discourse of the Adagio, itself a turning point for Beethoven. To understand
the broader significance of this movement, we can turn first to Helm’s
analysis. What Helm perceived as a gradual deepening of expression in
the slow movements was a unifying theme in his seminal writings on the
Beethoven string quartets. He saw the development of the slow movement
as central to Beethoven’s artistic and spiritual development in these works,
and thus to his whole oeuvre, tracing progress to a supposed climax in
Op. 135. In turn, he considered these slow movements to be climactic for the
Classical Adagio in general, and exemplary for (if unsurpassed by) later
composers of string quartets. Margaret Notley sets Helm’s comments on the
Beethovenian quartet Adagio within a larger culture – or really cult, as a
result of its emphatic and narrow ideological implications – of the Classical
Adagio in nineteenth-century thought.19 These slow movements had
18
M. Miller, ‘Peak Experience: High Register and Structure in the “Razumovsky” Quartets, Op. 59’,
in Kinderman, The String Quartets of Beethoven, 73.
19
M. Notley, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music and the Cult of the Classical Adagio’, 19th-
Century Music, 23 (1999), 33–61.
Ex. 4.3b Op. 59 No. 2, movement one, bars 153–60
become a touchstone for a new kind of nineteenth-century spirituality, to be

accessed primarily as and through the work of art and the artist genius.
In the context of chamber music, this conception of the Adagio related to
a new, spiritualised understanding of the string quartet as the unified
utterance of the four voices. In his 1810 essay ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’,
Petiscus had referred to this aspect of string quartet ideology in his locution
Viereinigkeit (fourfold unity), which, coming from a Protestant theologian,

was to be understood as potentially sacred.20 In 1828, with reference to the
scores of Beethoven’s late quartets and their Bachian counterpoint, Marx
distilled this ideal in a new vision of the string quartet in performance,
which embodied the new Kunstreligion (art religion) of the Romantics: ‘No
more do we have four jolly brothers-in-art who make music for their own,
and our, pleasure; we have four deeply stirred creative spirits, who soar in
glorious freedom and wonderful sympathy in a quadruple brotherly
embrace.’21 For Marx, quartet discourse had risen above the functional
(witty, conversational) to become a spiritualised, politicised manifesto.
The metaphor of quartet conversation was thus adapted to take on elements
of Kantian philosophy, particularly Kant’s conceptions of extended sym-
pathy and universal brotherhood; people were to learn – chiefly by means of
public-sphere discussion – to pursue the ‘common good’, ultimately uniting
in a world community.22
Like the Kantian philosophy, the new quartet ideology was based on what
was in reality a hegemonic, Germano-centric worldview. The idealisation of
slow movements, and those of the Beethoven quartets in particular, was a
way of celebrating and constructing German identity – and cultural, social
and religious ‘unity’ – through art. Thus Ludwig Nohl could observe in his
1885 history of chamber music that ‘nothing is more a product of the
German way [than] the Adagio of sonata form’, which ‘required the full
awakening of inwardness’ in the late eighteenth century.23 This inwardness,
a capacity for ‘soulful’ expression that goes well beyond technical mastery,
apparently emerged in Haydn’s works and then peaked in those of Mozart
and Beethoven. Naturally this view entailed the exclusion of composers,
genres, works or movements that seemed not to fit.24 The discourse about
20
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 520; see Chapter 1.
21
A. B. Marx, ‘Quatuor für zwei Violinen, Viola und Violincell von Beethoven . . .’, Berliner
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 5 (1828), pp. 467.
22
For Kant’s ideas on public-sphere debate and world community, see in particular ‘An Answer to
the Question: What Is Enlightenment?’ (1784) and ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’ (1795), in
M. J. Gregor (ed.), Practical Philosophy, Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant
(Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 11–22 and 311–51. On the idea of the public sphere, see
J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
23
L. Nohl, Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Kammermusik und ihre Bedeutung für den Musiker
(Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1885), p. 59.
24
Even a German writing in a canonic genre such as the string quartet could be excluded. Notley
cites the case of Robert Volkmann’s six string quartets, reviewed in 1868; the slow movements,
especially, were found wanting compared with Beethoven’s Adagios; see ‘Late Nineteenth-
Century Chamber Music’, 34 and 59–60.
the Classical Adagio reinforced the canon of chamber music as primarily the
string quartets of Haydn, Mozart and especially Beethoven; in this sense, it
functioned, and still does, to limit understandings of chamber music.
However, this nineteenth-century discourse has musically illuminating
aspects for the modern critic, one of which is the emphasis on the variable
processes of textural and melodic unfolding.25 This emphasis helps us to
move beyond traditional formal analysis, and simple descriptions of form,
to capture more of the unique and moving drama of these slow movements.
What mattered most for Helm and like-minded writers was that an Adagio
(or Adagio-related) movement conveyed a sense of lyrical, endless unfold-
ing, whose model was to be found in song. To describe this ideal, Helm
adopted Wagner’s expression ‘unendliche Melodie’, which Wagner had
introduced in his essay ‘Zukunftsmusik’ (Music of the Future) of 1860.26
There Wagner argued that ‘melody’ inheres in the thematic and motivic
substance of a piece of music, rather than in periodic phrasing.27
For Helm, a primary example of unendliche Melodie was, naturally
enough, the Cavatina from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 130. In that
movement, he found, ‘everything appears without exception as the most
soulfully eloquent song’.28 He also underlined the impulse to song in the
slow movement from Op. 74, observing: ‘Here there are no longer padding
or transitional passages in the older sense, everything sings (or speaks)
much more, every measure, every note.’29 Perhaps more surprisingly he
found the Molto Adagio from Op. 59 No. 2 to be a particular touchstone for
endless song. He celebrated its seemingly paradoxical ‘earthy’ spirituality,
rhapsodic character and exemplary sense of eternal flow: ‘a wonderful
hymn, deeply religious and yet with an earthy fervour, a long-breathed
rapturous work, its periods not coming firmly to a close but rather always
connecting with transitional chords, in a word, one of those “unending
melodies” that become more and more frequent in the second half of
Beethoven’s creative work’.30 Writing over twenty years earlier, for the
Deutsche Musik-Zeitung in 1861, Selmar Bagge had also singled out this
Adagio and celebrated it for ‘solche Unendlichkeit der Gedanken’ (such
endlessness of thoughts).31
25
Ibid., 38.
26
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 82; R. Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen von
Richard Wagner, 3rd edn (Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1898), vol. VII, p. 130.
27
Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VII, pp. 125–8.
28
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 214. 29 Ibid., p. 127. 30 Ibid., p. 82.
31
S. Bagge, ‘Beethoven’s E-moll-Quartett, op. 59’, Deutsche Musik-Zeitung, 2 (1861), 289.
So much for the late nineteenth-century ideology of the quartet Adagio.

Let us turn to the Molto Adagio in Op. 59 No. 2, as it might be understood in
early nineteenth-century terms. This movement is a turning point,
rather than an endpoint, regarding the kind of endlessness that late
nineteenth-century writers valued and wanted to locate in the ‘Classical’
Adagio. The movement takes shape around a series of subtle oppositions,
including on a formal level a careful balancing of articulation and elision.
Beethoven took care to subtly blur points of transition on various levels.
Thus, for example, the first violin’s commencement of the flowing
rhythmic counterpoint to the second statement of the opening eight-bar
hymn (in bar 8) creates a fluid connection between the first two phrases.
Again, Lenz’s word ‘rhapsody’ is apt for the resulting musical texture.
Flowing notes of shorter value – semiquavers or triplets – pervade much
of the movement, masking points of transition and creating a sense of
dynamism in this otherwise extremely slow and sometimes very harmon-
ically static music (Beethoven’s tempo designation is crotchet = 60 beats/
minute). The harmonic movement contributes to a sense of large-scale
unfolding: it is not until bar 8 that the tonic appears in a root position
triad. This effect of gradual tonal revelation is enhanced by the slow building
up of the four voices at the outset, which enter one by one, each after a delay
of a minim (Ex. 4.4). The music is not so much in E major as it becomes
E major.
However, structural articulation is certainly not lacking here. The tran-
sition beginning in bar 16, for instance, is marked by the first violin’s
accompaniment figure – a striking textural inversion. And the cadences
are in fact more audible than in many other slow movements. An example
occurs in bars 47–8, where the cadence is signalled clearly by the first violin’s
decorative prolongation of a 6–4 chord (bars 42–7). A shift in register and
the return of the opening phrase, transposed upwards into B major, serves
to articulate the opening of the development (bars 52–5), even as the first
violin’s trill functions as a linking device (it is also used this way in Op. 59
Nos. 1 and 3).
Beethoven seems to have been working towards a new composition-
centred conception of the Adagio, while still thinking in terms of a late
eighteenth-century, performance-centred understanding. Deep expression
in the eighteenth-century Adagio was understood to be largely the province
of the performer. Witness Johann Georg Sulzer, who, after instructing the
composer that ‘künstlich ausgedacht Figuren’ (artfully invented [musical]
figures) are not at home in this kind of music, proceeded to instruct the
performer that his input of expression is vital:
The Adagio requires particularly good performance: not only due to the fact that in
the slow tempo every little error is very easily perceptible, but also because it will be
rendered dull, owing to the lack of richness, if it is not made tasteful through
sustained and powerful expression. The player who cannot settle into a soft, gentle
affect, which itself gives the true mood of this genre to him, will not be successful
therein.32
In his Lexikon of 1802, Koch devoted most of his lengthy article on the
Adagio to the question of performance. He paraphrased Sulzer; and regard-
ing ‘good performance’, he observed more pragmatically that ‘the Adagio
must be performed with very fine nuancing of the waxing and waning of
notes, and in general with a very marked blending of notes’.33 When Koch’s
treatise was revised in 1865, the expressivity of the Adagio was now under-
stood to reside more in the composition itself. There was still mention of the
performer, and the requirements for good performance. However, the
32
J. G. Sulzer, s. v. ‘Adagio’, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, 2nd edn, 4 vols. (Leipzig:
Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1792; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), vol. I, p. 23.
33
Koch, s. v. ‘Adagio’, Lexikon, p. 65.
priorities were clearly reversed, so that richness of compositional ideas, far

from being excluded, was required to create meaning and interest: ‘a slow
movement can easily become exaggeratedly broad, dull, and, if there is
insufficient richness of ideas, very boring’.34
In 1807, Beethoven was clearly concerned to remind performers that they
had a substantial role in realising the appropriate aesthetic for the move-
ment, noting at the beginning of the movement: ‘Si tratta questo pezzo [con]
molto di [sic] sentimento’ (the piece is to be performed with much feeling).
Careful use of unwritten expressive devices such as tempo rubato, porta-
mento and vibrato, as well as finely nuanced bow articulation, would have
been implied by such a performance direction. More broadly, the term
sentimento relates to ideas about the representation and expression of feel-
ings in the cult of sensibilité c. 1800: an ideal performer (like an actor) could
‘enter into’ the passions that are to be represented in order to communicate
them seamlessly to others – witness Sulzer’s call for the Adagio performer to
‘settle into a soft, gentle affect’. When performers read the notation ‘for the
affect’, listeners would supposedly experience the genre’s ‘true mood’. For
certain early Romantic writers, this was to lead to a sublime merger, in
which the performer identified profoundly with the composer’s genius and
played as if creating the work ‘anew’.35 Perhaps contemporaries experienced
something like this in performances with the violinist Schuppanzigh, whom
Kanne had described as a ‘singing orator [Deklamator] and declaiming
singer’ and as a ‘spiritual and emotionally expressive performer’ (see
Chapter 1). The implications of such ‘declamation’ had been discussed as
early as Plato, who in his dialogue the Ion (380 bc) argued that much of the
power of the verbal declamation of the rhapsōdos comes from sheer sound
and committed delivery.36
Beethoven was also forging ahead with the ever more composition- or
‘work’-centric practices of his day, in keeping with the Cabinetstück con-
ception of the string quartet described in Chapter 1. Indeed, he was leading
the way with such practices. He took great care with dynamic and articu-
lation markings, as well as the written-out first violin embellishment,
including detailed slurs, swells and diminuendi that contribute to the
34
Koch, s. v. ‘Adagio’, Musikalisches Lexikon. Auf Grundlage des Lexikon’s von H. Ch. Koch, ed.
A. von Dommer (Heidelberg: Mohr, 1865), p. 21. See also Notley, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century
Chamber Music’, 43.
35
On this topic, see M. Hunter, ‘“To Play as if from the Soul of the Composer”’, especially
361–8.
36
For a full discussion, see J. Bremer, Plato’s Ion: Performance as Philosophy (North Richland Hills,
TX: Bibal, 2005), especially pp. 365 and 378.
sense of lyrical unfolding. Tellingly, this Adagio plays on the performers’

typical roles in a subtly provocative way, drawing attention to its ‘composed’
nature and to the authorial voice of Beethoven. The first violin’s extended
middle-register accompaniment figure (bars 16–20), for instance, was
unprecedented in a string quartet, and would have stood out as a marked
texture.37 Bagge heard it as counterpoint, and was much struck by the
creation of double counterpoint here involving the cello. He exclaimed at
the composer’s learned voice: ‘wie gelehrt!’ (how erudite!).38 Striking, too, is
the role reversal, in which the first violin now becomes soloist and soars up
into its high register in two waves within the second group, the first ascent
beginning in bar 27, the second including the embellishment of the 6–4
chord. Both times the violin recaptures the high point of the first movement,
a3, taking this on up to b3 (bars 28 and 43). Here Beethoven invokes the
rhetoric of improvisation, and the idea of the performer as composer: it is as
if one sees and hears the first violinist in the act of improvising embellish-
ments.39 This kind of rhetoric is a feature of several of Haydn’s quartet slow
movements.
Another duality is at work here, too, which relates to the tension between
sensible/invisible performer and learned/intrusive compositional voice. On
the one hand, for Helm the texture in bars 43–7 evokes a sense of spiritual
contemplation, even transport: he hears the first violin figuration over a
pedal as ‘Triole der Beruhigung’ (triplets of quieting) and later ‘Triole der
Verklärung’ (triplets of transfiguration).40 Indeed, the Adagio from Op. 59
No. 2 can be understood to engender a sense of meditation and spirituality
that is at least as typical of Beethoven and of the middle period as his more
stormy music. A reading of the movement as ‘spiritual’ has been encouraged
by an anecdote Czerny recounted to Jahn: ‘the Adagio of the E minor
Quartet . . . came to him while he was looking at the starry heaven’.41
E major was a key associated with brilliance and radiance, also
heavenliness and joy.42 In Fidelio, for instance, E major and high registers
37
For a detailed discussion of this passage, see M. Hunter, ‘“The Most Interesting Genre of Music”:
Performance, Sociability and Meaning in the Classical String Quartets, 1800–1830’, Nineteenth-
Century Music Review, 9 (2012), 67–73.
38
Bagge, ‘Beethoven’s E-moll-Quartett, op. 59’, 290.
39
For a discussion of this topic with regard to Haydn’s chamber music, see J. Webster, ‘The
Rhetoric of Improvisation in Haydn’s Keyboard Music’, in Beghin and Goldberg (eds.), Haydn
and the Performance of Rhetoric, pp. 172–212.
40
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 89.
41
O. Jahn, Gesammelte Aufsätze über Musik, 2nd edn (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1867),
p. 291.
42
See Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics, pp. 251–6.
are aligned with true love, light and hope in the face of adversity in
Leonore’s aria ‘Komm Hoffnung’ (No. 9).43 A further connection to the
Benedictus from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis reinforces the link to spiritu-
ality: Warren Kirkendale observes that both movements feature a soaring
first violin with smooth triplets and steep descents, which in the mass seem
to symbolise heavenly presence.44
Yet what could Helm mean when he refers to ‘earthiness’ in this supposedly
heavenly music? He could perhaps have meant the relatively low-register,
hymn-like opening, and its subsequent development. This theme incorpo-
rates a transposed and slightly altered version of the tones B–A–C–H
(H = B\), a veiled allusion to J. S. Bach. This motif is then developed in
vocal, fugal style in the lower voices as the opening paragraph continues.
Bach, and the strict contrapuntal style for which he stood, were a part of
Beethoven’s heritage, and a focal point for the composer as he worked
towards Op. 59 in his sketches.
In the development section, the Bachian reference becomes more
obvious. Kerman finds the development ‘rather conventional, and probably
a flaw even within Beethoven’s own frame of reference’.45 However, this
section might be read as an expressive point of maximum tension in the
movement, in that it juxtaposes the high-register ‘music of the spheres’ and
songfully expansive ‘music of the future’ with the low-register reference to
counterpoint and the strict style of the musical past. The cello moves down
to a pedal on D\ in bar 59, and sounds the B–A–C–H motif in bars 63–4,
unveiled at pitch in the low register (Ex. 4.5). The first violin had moved up
to a3 in bar 57, and recaptures b3 over a diminished seventh chord in F sharp
minor (bar 68). Then, perhaps in a gesture of attempted reconciliation
between the two kinds of music, it glides downwards through three octaves
(Ex. 4.6).
The retransition hints at the significant process of re-voicing that takes
place in the recapitulation and coda. A melodic fragment is passed down
through the voices (bar 77), recalling the first movement (bars 155–8) where
the cello had also moved down to articulate low C. The recapitulation begins
(bar 85) not with the plain opening hymn, but with an adorned version,
strikingly transformed with a new counter melody in the second violin and
an embellished running bass taken from the flowing rhythmic counterpoint
43
See also, for example, Mozart’s use of E major for the Chorus ‘Placido è il mar, andiamo’ (No. 15)
in Idomeneo and the Trio ‘È la fede delle femmine’ (No. 2) in Così fan tutte.
44
W. Kirkendale, ‘New Roads to Old Ideas in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis’, Musical Quarterly, 56
(1970), 690.
45
that begins in the first violin at the end of bar 8. Re-voicing continues: the
second group is modified so that the violin’s triplet embellishment is
threaded through with counterpoint, and passed down then up through
the voices (bars 116–23). Following this, the first violin moves up to c]4 (bar
124), the highest point in the opus. Listeners might make large-scale con-
nections here, linking this back to other stratospheric soundings; locally,
though, this neighbour note over a dominant pedal engenders instability
and onward drive.
The significance of this movement runs deep as well as wide. With the
veiled and then unveiled reference to Bach and Baroque musical devices in
this Adagio – embellished chorales, counterpoint and running bass lines –
Beethoven might be understood to participate in the canon formation
Movement III: Allegretto 111
associated with the ‘Classical’ Adagio in the nineteenth century. The move-
ment, one could argue, constructs and celebrates the Adagio as part of
Germany’s musical heritage. With his characteristic weaving of voices into
shared polyphonic textures, here, too, Beethoven seems to participate in
shaping the contemporary ideology of ‘true’ (and ‘spiritual’) string quartets.
In 1810, Petiscus enlarged on the Viereinigkeit of quartet discourse with this
observation:
It appears to us an essential aspect of the true quartet that all four voices unite in an
inseparable whole through like participation in the main melodic material of the
piece. This occurs simultaneously in two ways: the main melodic idea of the tone-
painting (possibly in different versions) is alternately taken up and expressed by the
different voices – alterna amant Camoenae – and, in alternation with the above, a
multi-part song can be discerned, in which all the voices progress melodically. It is
chiefly the latter that constitutes the character of the true quartet.46
If in the ‘true’ quartet all four voices unite in an inseparable whole, then in
the coda to this Adagio the unification of voices is an uneasy one. The codas
in Op. 59 No. 1, especially those in the outer movements, present climactic,
transformed versions of the main theme and are thus crucial to the process
of thematic development. The Adagio from the E minor quartet follows this
process, but only in part. As the coda commences (bar 138), one finally
hears the unadorned version of the opening hymn, which had been stra-
tegically omitted at the start of the recapitulation. It is now presented as a
climax, with the melody transposed one octave higher in the first violin, and
reinforced with double stops so that it is heard in a resounding five-part
version. The hymn is distorted by the use of sforzandi on weak beats and
chromatic harmonic motion (Ex. 4.7); it subsides into a low-register mur-
mur. As the movement closes, triplets are passed down through each voice
in turn, in a gradual diminuendo. In this guise they seem to be more triplets
of resignation than of triumph or ecstatic transfiguration – the multipartite
song of the ‘true’ quartet unravelled (Ex. 4.8).
Movement III: Allegretto
The Allegretto takes up this mood of resignation, or melancholy, and

weaves it into a five-part scherzo. The movement is formally less complex
46
Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 516. The phrase ‘alterna amant Camoenae’ is a reference from
Virgil: ‘The women of Camoena [muses] love it [here: the theme] alternately’. (Italics original.)
than the scherzo from Op. 59 No. 1, but nonetheless progressive in charac-
ter. It was new for Beethoven to write a scherzo in five parts. He created this
form by marking the repeat at the end of the ‘Maggiore’ so that both the
scherzo and the trio would be played again, without repeats, after which the
scherzo would be played once more, also without repeats. In terms of
expression, the complexity persists: in character the movement is neither
minuet nor scherzo. The first section has an elegiac, melancholic quality,
rather than the typical light-hearted character, which results partly from the
emphasis on the minor but more from the limping rhythm. Webster labels it
a ‘sardonic minuet’.47 The lurching rhythm relates back to the first move-
ment, as do the scherzo’s harmonic fluctuations, which are underscored by
dynamics. Tonal motion, too, contributes to an air of ambivalence. The first
section moves from E minor to D major; this is reinterpreted in the second-
time bars as the dominant of G major. The second section of the scherzo,
which involves a spinning out of the main melody, is harmonically labile
47
Webster, ‘Middle-Period String Quartets’, p. 95.
and contains reminiscences of the dominant ninth crux points of the first
movement (bars 24–5 and 32–3; see the first movement, bars 237–40).
C major, latent in Op. 59 No. 1 and in the first and second movements of
this work, now becomes more prominent, in terms not only of register
(especially the highest register and the cello’s open C) but also of harmonic
tendency. One thinks of Schubart’s comment about the ‘imminent hope
[when in E minor] of resolving in the pure happiness of C major’. The key is

strongly implied, but not reached as a decisive tonal goal, so that there is a
sense of incomplete resolution here. In the Allegretto, for example, c3s are
sounded in the first violin at the end of the scherzo, where they are left
hanging, resounding saliently in registral space (bars 44 and 46–8). The
cello’s low C was also prominent as a pedal in bars 17–23, and recurs in a
strikingly sonorous fortissimo Neapolitan chord in bar 29, creating another
link back to the tonal world of the first movement.
The ‘Maggiore’ takes the place of a trio and forms a decisive contrast, with
running quavers throughout and several witty turns; it also shows
Beethoven’s concern with integration. This was his second use of Russian
folk material in Op. 59, and again there is pointed reference to the fact, each
entry labelled ‘Thème russe’.48 One can compare the treatment of this theme
with the use of folksong in the finale of Op. 59 No. 1. Again, the song is
substantially modified to fit its new context. The original is an Andante song
of praise to God. This new version is a sprightly dance, transformed by
staccato articulation and the fast tempo. As he did in Op. 59 No. 1,
Beethoven treats the folksong contrapuntally. Here it is heard in a regular
fugal exposition in four parts. Whereas the Russian theme in the first quartet
had first been presented in the cello and then the first violin, now the viola
states the theme, followed by second violin, then cello and first violin. In bar
80 there is a second exposition, with a free countersubject. The running
triplets of this countersubject connect the texture of this movement to that
of the second subject of the slow movement, although the effect of this here is
one of liveliness, rather than contemplation. The emphasis on the second beat
of the bar in this theme, meanwhile, links the Maggiore to the scherzo.49 Thus
the theme is integrated into the movement and into the work as a whole.
Beethoven’s treatment of the Russian folksong shows that counterpoint
can be witty and engagingly theatrical, as it is in the finale of Op. 59 No. 1.
This fugue is more a clever updating of learned style than a perverse
misreading of the folksong (pace Kerman).50 It can be heard as a
Haydnesque jab at anyone who would view counterpoint, or indeed the
string quartet, as an edifice of erudition. Not that either Haydn or Beethoven
were denigrating the genre; rather, Beethoven’s treatment of counterpoint
48
In fact, this label appears first in the first edition and not in the autograph. Possibly this was one
of several corrections added at the proof stage and approved by Beethoven; however, no specific
documentation of his involvement with this edition survives.
49
Miller, ‘High Register and Structure’, p. 76, notes that there is registral completion with respect to
the scherzo in bars 93 and 112–18.
50
Kerman, The String Quartets of Beethoven, p. 130.
in the string quartet scherzo, and this scherzo in particular, can be viewed as
a further aspect of his participation in Germanic canon formation – like his
deployment of counterpoint in the slow movement, but now with a quite
different voice. Writing about the humour in Beethoven’s scherzo move-
ments, Nohl claimed that Beethoven was building on the ‘eigentümliche
Stimmung’ (particular voice) found in the minuets of Bach, Mozart and
Haydn, which were marked by a certain ‘wonnevoll-wehmüthige Weise’
(blissful-wistful manner) – a phrase precisely suited to this scherzo.51 He
went on to reiterate Petiscus’s ideal of the ‘true quartet’, but with more overt
emphasis on ‘spirituality’ and ‘equality’, in effusive commentary on the
modern counterpoint he found in Beethoven’s quartets:
[The quartet parts are] no longer accompanying, indeed not merely ‘obbligato’ here
and there, but rather each voice is always and everywhere individually enlivened,
thus becoming melody in the highest sense, so that now truly each of the four spirits
present, and as if on the same thought, pronounce their own ideas – a universal life,
which places this modern instrumental music, especially the quartet . . . spiritually
coequal to the old counterpoint.52
In fact Beethoven’s theatrical treatment of counterpoint here tends to

deconstruct the quartet’s supposed representation of ‘equality’. Instead of
the previous turn-taking with the theme, the compressed entries of viola and
first violin, in bars 106 and 112 respectively, sound rather like they are
‘butting in’ with a higher-register version of the same thought (Ex. 4.9). The
distorting sforzandi on weak beats underline the wit and ‘bizarre Laune’
(bizarre humour), as Czerny called it.53 A chaotic life of rambunctious role
play is thus conveyed, one spiritually worlds apart from the old counter-
point, and flaunting its distance.
As in the finale of Op. 59 No. 1, the folksong emerges markedly transformed
in its final hearing. In bar 116, the dynamic is reduced to piano and Beethoven
marks all parts with slurs and all entries of the theme ligato (Ex. 4.9) In this
way he brings the folksong closer to its original form and reveals its
songful character. Again the effect might be understood as (gentle) reversal.54
51
Nohl, Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Kammermusik, p. 110.
52
Ibid., p. 111. The term ‘Allleben’ seems to be a reference to a concept developed by Goethe, which
translates roughly as ‘vita universalis’ or ‘universal life’.
53
C. Czerny cited in G. Schünemann, ‘Czernys Errinerungen an Beethoven’, in Neues
Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 9 (1939), 72. Compare W. Kinderman, for whom the trio contains ‘a
parodistic fugal medley’, Beethoven, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 135.
54
This also anticipates the so-called ‘Kamarinskaya’ technique associated with Glinka and held to
be typically Russian.
In the F major quartet, another sharp change of affect follows. In the C major
quartet, though, we are left with the songful version of the Russian
theme. This procedure is entirely in keeping with the overall affect of
the work, which is strongly lyrical. The emphasis on song here also serves
to reinforce Beethoven’s formal dedication of the works, to a Russian patron
whose elevated situation in life and musical background were indebted to his
uncle, Alexei Rosum Rasumovsky, a very talented singer.55
And what of Haydn, whom I have been proposing as the ‘implied
dedicatee’ behind these works? Haydn’s early champions considered song-
ful style and vocal aesthetics fundamental to his success as a composer of
symphonies and string quartets, while his music’s bizarre Laune troubled
his critics.56 The song-based as well as the theatrical and ‘bizarre’ aspects of
Haydn’s style were very likely to have informed Beethoven’s own aesthetics
in the middle-period quartets. Like Haydn, Beethoven was compared to
Shakespeare, who had become a touchstone for early Romantics wishing to
defend modern dramatists (including composers) against charges of inco-
herence. Johann Gottfried Herder, for example, acclaimed Shakespeare’s
mixing of high and low comedy, considering this essential to authentic
modern drama. Such drama would reflect the complex spirit and mores of
the modern age:
Wherever possible [a nation] will create its drama out of its own history, the spirit of
its age, customs, views, language, national prejudices, traditions and pastimes, even if
they are carnival farces or puppet plays . . . Shakespeare’s age offered him anything
but the simplicity of national customs, deeds, inclinations and historical traditions
which shaped Greek drama.57
In his rhapsodic defence of Beethoven’s Fifth, Hoffmann likened

Beethoven to the Bard and found his instrumental music fittingly up to
date in its complexity. His music gave rise to the sublime, and thus could
seize upon the soul of the modern listener. However, its deep coherence,
which Hoffmann also found in Shakespearian drama, demanded a new
deep listening in order to make its affective mark: the symphony ‘rushes
like a rhapsody past many a man, but the soul of each thoughtful listener
is assuredly stirred with one lasting feeling’.58 The same could well
have been said in defence of the bizarre Laune that Beethoven evokes in
Op. 59 No. 2.
55
See E. Walter, ‘Graf Rasumowsky: Beethovens Freund und Gönner’, Skizzen: Illustrierte
Zeitschrift für Musik und Unterhaltung, 11 (1937), 5–6.
56
On the early reception of Haydn’s music as songful, see my ‘Instrumental Arias or Sonic Tableaux:
“Voice” in Haydn’s Early String Quartets Opp. 9 and 17’, Music and Letters, 89 (2008), 348–51. On
the early reception of Haydn’s music as ‘bizarre’, see Sisman, ‘Haydn, Shakespeare, and the Rules of
Originality’, p. 23.
57
R. Otto (ed.), Herders Werke, 5 vols., 6th edn (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1982), vol. II,
pp. 212–13.
58
Hoffmann, ‘Beethovens Instrumentalmusik’, 634 (references to Shakespeare, deep coherence)
and 658 (rhapsody, deep listening). See also A. Comini’s discussion of this passage, The Changing
Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), p. 81.
Movement IV: Presto
The Russian theme is sounded fourteen times in succession in the course of

the ‘Maggiore’, paving the way for the finale with its pervasive thematic
repetitions. Vetter relates this aspect of the work to folksong, which involves
numerous repetitions of the main theme, arguing that Beethoven had
internalised this part of his musical heritage.59 The use of large-scale
repetition is a hallmark of the whole work, which can also be understood
to satisfy a need to balance, at least somewhat, the instability that is created
on numerous other levels. A crucial source of instability in the quartet as a
whole, and especially in the finale, is tonal. Arnold Schoenberg drew
particular attention to this movement as an exemplar of what he termed
‘schwebende Tonalität’ (hovering tonality).60 As in the slow movement, the
tonality is not presented clearly from the outset, but rather emerges. The
movement begins ‘on’ C major and shifts to E minor in bar 7 – and then
only briefly.
The wavering character of the work inheres strongly in the form of the
finale. Formally the most innovative movement of the work, it is an amal-
gam of sonata and rondo, like the second movement of Op. 59 No. 1. The
latter veers more towards the sonata scheme, while this movement, with its
manifold statements of the opening theme, moves in the direction of rondo,
with a decided flavour of alla ungarese. Like the references to Bachian
counterpoint and to Russian folksong, this allusion to Hungarian gypsy
music can be understood as another way Beethoven celebrates, constructs
and also deconstructs his musical heritage, within (and including) that most
privileged of musical genres – the string quartet. The opening nine-bar
theme is repeated; then, following an elided cadence in bar 18, the theme is
developed, then again repeated (bars 18–23, 23–31): shown in Table 4.1. A
further repetition follows, dissolving into a closing figure after bar 43, which
comprises three quavers and is reminiscent of the conclusion to the
‘Maggiore’. If tonality emerges in this movement, then themes threaten to
disintegrate: on a motivic as well as a tonal level the process character of the
work comes to the fore once more.
59
W. Vetter, ‘Beethoven und Russland’, in Mythos-Melos-Musica, vol. I, p. 372.
60
A. Schoenberg, Harmonielehre, 3rd edn (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1922), p. 459; P. Cahn, ‘Zum
Problem der “schwebenden Tonalität” bei Beethoven’, in A. Bingmann, K. Hortschansky and
W. Kirsch (eds.), Studien zur Instrumentalmusik: Lothar Hoffman-Erbrecht zum 60. Geburtstag
(Tutzig: Schneider, 1988), pp. 285–93.
Movement IV: Presto 119
Table 4.1 Structure of the first group in Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2, finale
Bars 1–9 10–18 18–23 23–31 31–6 36ff.
Theme a a b . . . elision a . . . elision b a . . . breaks off
Despite phrase-level disintegration, large-scale integration is at work. A

transition follows (bars 48–69), which draws on the three-quaver figure and
also introduces trills; these, as has been seen, are a linking feature within the
work and the opus. The second subject, in B minor, includes a move to the
Neapolitan degree as the first violin reaches the high point and the cello
moves to the open low C (bar 74), which recalls the tonal motion in the
scherzo. The exposition coda follows in bar 85, with a high-register pedal in
the cello followed by a witty interplay of the three-quaver figure between the
voices, harking back to passages of thematic/registral interchange in the first
and second movements (Ex. 4.10, cf. bars 251–74). Kerman puts his finger
on a key source of wit here: the retransition sounds like an exaggerated
version of the cheeky interplay of voices that Haydn used in such passages.61
Formal fluctuations persist, and the tonal wavering is widened. The
overall form is a sonata-rondo, ABACA, with the recapitulation of the B
section in the tonic, a formal type known to Beethoven especially from
Mozart. The rondo character comes to the fore when the opening theme
(only) returns in bar 107. However, the sonata character (or at least its
thematic working) becomes more apparent in the development (C) section,
as was common. Here again, fugato features prominently, again in modern
guise. A double fugato unfolds (bar 146), against which a running counter-
subject is heard, derived from the quavers of the jaunty main theme.
Contrary to typical sonata form, the recapitulation in bar 215 brings not
the opening theme, but a greatly extended statement of the second subject in
the tonic; this tends towards F major, making a reference to the first move-
ment (where F major is emphasised as the Neapolitan) and creating a
further large-scale tonal link to Op. 59 No. 1. The wavering towards F is
especially apparent in bars 232–5, where the first violin describes a slow
neighbour-note motion, f3–e3–f3–e3, as the bass descends from A to the
open C (Ex. 4.11). The violin’s top c4 is also sounded as a consonant peak
here (bar 220), reinforcing this ever-latent pivot tone.
Finally the main theme returns (bar 275). The preceding emphasis on F
and the delayed thematic return highlight the fact that even in the
61
recapitulation the tonic is not emphatically confirmed: the listener is pulled,

once again, towards the ‘inexpressible charm’ of C major. However, if heart
and ear want to find complete satisfaction in C, they will not, ultimately, in
this quartet. Beethoven now dramatises this fact. The c4 is sounded again,
most strikingly in that it is quitted by a sharp plunge downwards (bars 342–
4). This high point will be resolved to b4 in bars 403–5, where this pitch is
reiterated strikingly, a registral resolution further marked and supported
tonally by the low-register tonic. But this resolution is belated and breath-
less: it takes place at the very last minute, in the course of a più presto coda
(beginning in bar 384), and only after a rapid sequence of passages
Ex. 4.10 (cont.)
juxtaposing E minor and F major, chromatic motion and a final sounding of

the main theme (beginning in bar 372) amidst the cello’s most insistent
fortissimo pummelling on the low C (Ex. 4.12).
Daniel Gregory Mason considered the quartets of Op. 59 to be high
points of Beethoven’s entire middle period. For Mason these works
apparently represent the most dramatic and productive confrontation and

expression of Beethoven’s compositional technique and his emotional
unrest: ‘This was a moment in Beethoven’s life, ever afterwards irrecover-
able, when completely ripened technical power coincided with the personal
suffering that had unexpectedly, in the heyday of his professional success,
revealed to him the irremediable tragedy of all experience.’62 In Mason’s
account, this dramatic tension between Beethoven’s technical prowess and
his personal suffering finds ultimate expression in the slow movements of
Op. 59 Nos. 1 and 2, where one apparently experiences most profoundly the
sharp contrasts and onward drive that have been taken to typify the ‘heroic’
style. He might equally have emphasised sustained melancholy and pro-
found pathos (in the Adagio molto e mesto from Op. 59 No. 1) or con-
templation and resignation (in the Molto Adagio from No. 2). Like Helm,
Mason wished to read biography into the music; but, focused on his
62
D. G. Mason, The Quartets of Beethoven (Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 94
triumph narrative and the paradigm of ‘heroic’ Beethoven, Mason would

adduce quite different musical characteristics to make his interpretive case.
Mason’s view typifies the most common stance on these works, which
emphasises the ‘heroic’ and ‘symphonic’ traits of these quartets at the expense
of the other affects and voices we might hear. In recovering the inwardness of
Op. 59 No. 2’s Adagio movement in particular, and the sensitive, rhapsodic
character of the E minor quartet more generally, we can still focus on
tensions, but on subtle dualities rather than stormy conflicts or for that matter
endless, flowing calm. In the Adagio, one thinks of the contrast and contra-
diction between the earthy and the spiritual, stasis and dynamism, perform-
ance and composition, and Beethoven’s musical past and present. Underlying
all the movements, but especially the third and fourth, is a subtle tonal and
affective tension, between lament and hope/happiness. This is arguably
exacerbated rather than resolved in the Allegretto and Presto by formal
reconstruction and witty play with traditional musical elements. By the finale,
resolution is wanted on several levels – tonal, registral, affective – but, left late,
it never entirely takes place.
As I shall argue in Chapter 6, subtle dualities and a lack of ultimate
resolution are not necessarily at odds with conceptions of the heroic in
Beethoven’s day. Indeed, that the E minor quartet can be described as nervy,
twitchy, labile and ultimately unresolved marks it not so much as empty of
heroism, but rather as full of feeling. Missing from many interpretations of
the work is a strong sense of the way its particular dramatic mode – its edgily
sensitive, songful and rhapsodic unfolding – comes most readily to the fore
as and through sensitive performance, like the original Greek epic recitation
of the rhapsōdos. Nineteenth-century editors tended to add further per-
formance directions to the work; both editors and performers have sub-
sequently tended to undermine points of articulation in favour of a single
gush of sound, showing a misunderstanding of the carefully balanced nature
of Beethoven’s Adagio concept at this point in his career. It was not centred
simply on the composition of long-breathed melodies. Beethoven’s Adagio,
and his lyrical music more generally, remains open to a sensibility that lives,
breathes and is reinvented each time it is played. This lyrical conception is
related to that of Haydn, informs other movements and aspects of his
middle-period quartets, and will prove decisive for the expressiveness of
his late quartets.
5 ‘Helden-Quartett’: genre, innovation and ‘heroic’
voices in Op. 59 No. 3
The String Quartet C major, Op. 59 No. 3, has a chequered reception history,
but was at first one of the most popular of the middle-period quartets.
Although Op. 59 as a whole was originally considered difficult music of not
entirely good quality by Beethoven’s contemporaries (performers as well as
listeners), the C major quartet was something of an exception. The Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung reviewer of 27 February 1807 found that the opus as a
whole was ‘nicht allgemeinfasslich’ (not generally comprehensible).1
However, the writer qualified this with regard to No. 3: the ‘originality
[Eigenthümlichkeit], melody and harmonic power’ of the third quartet
‘must win every educated friend of music’.2 This quartet was the earliest
of the set to be arranged for other performing forces (for piano and for
guitar) – a mark of its popularity, especially that of the slow movement.3
Another index of its positive early reception is the fact that the
Schuppanzigh Quartet included it alongside the much admired Septet in
E flat, Op. 20, and Quintet in E flat, Op. 16, in their farewell concert of 11
February 1816, before Schuppanzigh departed for Russia. On his return in
1823, the work featured prominently in the quartet’s concerts.
In the later nineteenth century, praise for the C major quartet became
more decisive. In 1885, Helm noted that Austrian musicians had nicknamed
it ‘Helden-Quartett’ (Heroes’ Quartet), elevating it to the level of the ‘Eroica’
Symphony, and interpreting the work in a way that has been largely lost to
us today, despite the pervasive use of symphonic and heroic paradigms in
discussions of the middle-period works. Helm drew heavily on Marx in
reading the work, especially the outer movements, as a psychological jour-
ney; he was more inclined to compare the quartet to the Fifth Symphony
than the Third.4 In a conflation of Beethoven’s biography and music that
1
Anon., ‘Nachrichten’, 400.
2
Ibid. The term ‘Eigenthümlichkeiten’ means ‘peculiarities’ or ‘characteristics’, but here has the
additional positive sense of something that is not borrowed or received from another, but is rather
a product of Beethoven’s own powers of invention.
3
See, for example, an arrangement of Op. 59 No. 3 for piano four hands: Grand Quatuor/de violon/
composé et arrangé/pour le/piano forte/à quatre mains/par/L. v. Beethoven (in fact by C. D.
Stegmann) (Bonn and Cologne: Simrock, [c. 1830]). British Library shelf mark: L–bl, f.85.n.(1.).
4
124 Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 98.
Genre, innovation and ‘heroic’ voices in Op. 59 No. 3 125
was entirely typical of the time, Marx found Op. 59 No. 3 to be one of the
truest images of its creator in its representation of triumph over personal
trial.5 This can be contrasted to modern opinion: David Wyn Jones, for
example, observes, ‘none of the three quartets evokes the characteristic
heroic quality evident in [the ‘Eroica’] and others from the period’.6
The early commentators also drew attention to the ‘orchestral’ concep-
tion of the quartet, which they located in Beethoven’s prominent use of
octaves between the violins, and the homorhythmic movement. With its
‘symphonic’ aspects, the quartet was thought to reach out to a new listening
public: Marx likened its musical language to a public address, rather than a
discussion. Thus, again, he moved away from the traditional metaphor of
conversation for the string quartet, towards one that related the work to
idealised public-sphere discourse: ‘In the forum, before the people, one
speaks differently than at the green table [am grünen Tisch].’7 Reflecting
his understanding of the broad appeal of the work, he noted that the
Andante struck a tone that was ‘urmenschlich’ – fundamentally human.8
The finale has proved one of the most controversial movements of the
middle-period quartets, although it has not generated as much debate as the
Scherzo from the first quartet. Alexander Oulibicheff found it too orches-
tral, while Helm and Marx celebrated this same aspect of the movement and
invoked the idea of the sublime to describe the listeners’ awe at its almost
indescribable power.9 Lenz found in the finale an ‘Uebersiedelung’ (reloca-
tion) of the strict style (fugue) to the free-flowing realm of the quartet, while
Helm would read the movement as a synthesis, a ‘unification of fugue . . .
with sonata form’.10
A second phase in the work’s reception emerged in the twentieth cen-
tury.11 Scholars’ complaints about the C major quartet tended to centre on a
supposed lack of ‘learned’ (intellectual) and formal elements that had come
to be considered intrinsic to the string quartet, and a lack of radicalism
relative to the other quartets of Op. 59. In No. 3, they perceived a shortage of
5
Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 46; Helm quotes from Marx: Beethovens
Streichquartette, p. 98.
6
D. Wyn Jones, ‘Beethoven and the Viennese Legacy’, in Stowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion
to the String Quartet, p. 214.
7
Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 47. Discussions ‘am grünen Tisch’, to which this
quartet discourse is opposed, were originally private and of a theoretical and political nature; the
resulting ideas still had to be proved in practice.
8
Ibid., vol. II, p. 49.
9
A. Oulibicheff, Nouvelle Biographie de Mozart, 3 vols. (Moscow: Semen, 1843), vol. III, p. 17; Marx,
Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 50; Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 114–16.
10
Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. IV, p. 48; Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 113.
11
On this reception history, see also Webster, ‘Middle-Period String Quartets’, pp. 95–6.
126 Genre, innovation and ‘heroic’ voices in Op. 59 No. 3
thematic working (especially in the first movement), and a want of clarity in

the sonata forms of the outer movements. Gerald Abraham complained of
an absence of ‘close reasoning’ and ‘inner logic’ in the first movement, and
insufficient ‘effective polyphonic working’ in the finale.12 He anticipated
Kerman in finding the minuet elementary.13 Riemann’s criticism of the
work encapsulates the sentiments of other writers of his time: ‘the [first]
movement brings no surprises . . . the entire quartet preserves this peculiar
character of exceptional simplicity and the abstinence from puzzles’.14
Kerman’s unease extended to the finale; again, the problem was perceived
as one of undue simplicity. He drew attention to the simple accompaniment
of the fugue theme in the development – a textural diversion from the
desired thematische Arbeit, which he compared to ‘a Verdi orchestra’; the
movement also apparently gives in to a ‘Rossini crescendo’.15 These com-
parisons are telling: Italian opera was the height of popular entertainment in
the early nineteenth century, held by adherents to the ‘pure’ German style to
be the quintessential music of the Philistines. Kerman seems to concur with
that view to an extent, but also acknowledges elements of theatricality and
parody in Beethoven’s work: events of the development section, he writes,
provide a ‘scandalous comment’ on the ‘academic pretensions’ of the finale’s
fugal opening.16
In more recent discussions of the C major quartet, such as the studies of
Finscher, Gülke, Lini Hübsch, Indorf and Webster, there is more appreci-
ation of the multifaceted and (building on Kerman’s reading) parodic
nature of the quartet’s discourse.17 None of these scholars find the work
especially simple. Finscher confidently dismisses previous positive recep-
tion of the work as misconception: ‘that the C major quartet owes its
popularity to its striking surface, i.e., to a partial misunderstanding, is
obvious’. In his own assessment of Op. 59 No. 3, he refers to Schiller’s
concept of a ‘classic’: a work that is available as a perpetual font of know-
ledge.18 However, if one argues that the C major quartet is a classic in that it
12
Abraham, Beethoven’s Second-Period Quartets, pp. 45 and 54.
13
Ibid., pp. 50–1; Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 141.
14
Riemann, Beethoven’s Streichquartette, pp. 73–4.
15
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 144 and 142. 16 Ibid., p. 144.
17
Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3, pp. 122–60; P. Gülke, ‘Zur musikalischen
Konzeption der Rasumowsky-Quartette op. 59 ’, in P. Gülke, ‘. . . immer das Ganze vor Augen’:
Studien zur Beethoven (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000), pp. 213–45; Hübsch, Ludwig van Beethoven.
Rasumowsky-Quartette, pp. 82–103; Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 285–303; and
Webster, ‘Middle-Period String Quartets’, especially pp. 95–6, 103–16 and 126–9.
18
Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’, p. 160.
Genre, innovation and ‘heroic’ voices in Op. 59 No. 3 127
is open to multiple readings, then the nineteenth-century views need not be

cast aside as misunderstandings.
Indeed, we can enrich our understandings of this work and the other
middle-period quartets by reconsidering the elements that made them so
appealing to nineteenth-century listeners. Writers have already observed that
the C major quartet’s immediate attraction for these audiences relates to its
parade of topics and features familiar from late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century music. These attractions include a harmonically oblique
slow introduction, which harks back to Mozart’s C major String Quartet,
K. 465 or to Haydn’s later symphonies, works that were popular c. 1800; overt
concerto-like gestures in the first movement, familiar from the modish
concertos and quatuors brillants of the French Violin School (and
Beethoven’s own recent exploits in the genre); a folksong-based Andante; a
minuet rather than a scherzo; and a fugal finale. Thus he drew on popular
genres of the day and privileged genres of the recent past. Side by side with the
more traditional or retrospective features, Radcliffe finds elements of ‘aston-
ishing originality’ in Op. 59 No. 3; he notes that ‘the combination of these
seemingly contradictory aspects gives the work an attractively wayward
character of its own’.19 This wayward character contributed to the early
positive reception of the work, as witnessed by the 1807 Allgemeine musikali-
sche Zeitung reviewer’s enthusiasm for the quartet’s ‘Eigentümlichkeit’.
I shall argue that the work’s character derives not so much from combin-
ing the traditional and the original, but rather more specifically from
Beethoven’s new treatment of genre traditions to theatrical ends. In each
movement, recognisable materials specific to given genres – the familiar
hallmarks of concerto, folksong, minuet and fugue – are not just presented
and developed according to genre norms, but are excerpted, staged and
treated in new formal guises and with new processes of musical develop-
ment. This innovative treatment of genre gives the work its mostly subtle
but sometimes more overt tone of parody. Here ‘parody’ should be under-
stood in the broad sense of Greek parodia. Gérard Genette traces the birth of
parody to the ancients’ practice of ‘inverting’ a rhapsody, the meaning and
conventions of the epic being distorted in order to express something new,
proffer critique, and entertain.20 Parody, in this sense, can occur when
elements of a text (or indeed genre convention or textual practice) are lifted
19
P. Radcliffe, Beethoven’s String Quartets (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 72.
20
For a comprehensive discussion of the etymology of parody and an expansive, historically
responsive definition, see G. Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. C.
Newmann and C. Doubinsky (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), especially
pp. 10–30 (p. 14 on inverting a rhapsody).
out of their context; the transformation of the known text results in new
meaning, which may be humorous or more serious, but does not necessarily
result in ridicule.
The subtle vein of parody in Op. 59 No. 3 relates not only to other genres
but also to the internal re-reading of themes, a procedure one also finds in
Op. 59 No. 1. The C major quartet develops further the intimacy, the
inwardness and the ‘breaking of the fourth wall’ found in Op. 59 No. 2,
especially in the slow introduction and the slow movement, where theatrical
fantasies really take flight.
Movement I: Andante con moto – Allegro vivace
The work’s unnerving opening starkly contradicts Riemann’s notion that

the quartet presents no puzzles. Indeed the twenty-nine-bar Introduzione
flaunts its puzzle quality (Ex. 5.1). A diminished seventh chord built on F] is
followed by silence; then the cello creeps down a semitone to form a
dominant seventh, implicitly in B[, resolved like an augmented sixth in A
minor. So it is with the two other available diminished seventh chords,
sounded in bars 9–10 and 15, and resolved to dominant sevenths (but not of
C). Finally, there is a return to the chord of bar 9 (a diminished seventh on
B), which is prolonged through bars 20–8. None of the expected resolutions
is found until the Allegro is under way. Diminuendi in bars 1–2 and 8
emphasise the lack of harmonic direction, and the discourse inches for-
wards in tentative semitone steps. Rhythmically and melodically, as well as
tonally, it leaves us in limbo. Pauses are prevalent and even the trill figure, an
emblem of the cadence that often signals goal-directed musical discourse,
leads nowhere in particular; indeed, the trill tends to reinforce the impres-
sion of fragmented, unformed discourse. Only the steadily climbing register
of the first violin, and the partly chromatic bass descent, give a sense of
shape – of linearity and liminality. By bar 21, the bass has reached its lowest
extreme, and deflects up to B in the process of a gradual re-voicing of the
diminished seventh chord. The violin’s d3 is left dangling in registral space
in bar 24.
In terms of mystification, this slow introduction leaves the off-tonic
openings in other movements from Op. 59 far behind. The most compar-
able Beethovenian puzzle introduction is that of ‘La Malinconia’ in Op. 18
No. 6, but there he at least alluded to an extra-musical idea, which might
help guide the listener. Haydn did this, too, in the ‘Representation of Chaos’
at the beginning of The Creation, which also proceeds to C major. In terms
Movement I: Andante con moto – Allegro vivace 129
of genre, the closest point of reference for the quartet’s opening (aside from
‘La Malinconia’) that was available to listeners was doubtless the introduction
to Mozart’s String Quartet K. 465, also in C major. Its introduction takes
similarly labyrinthine harmonic routes, although with a stronger sense of an
emerging tonal centre, while similarly lacking an apparent programme.21
The import of such an introduction would have been apparent to con-
temporary listeners, or at least to ‘every educated friend of music’, as the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer has it. Mozart’s and Beethoven’s
enigmatic quartet introductions, along with the ‘Representation of Chaos’
and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Op. 80 (1808), could have been understood
as musical texts that represent, interpret and indeed contribute to creating
the new ideas of self-consciousness that emerged c. 1800.22 These ideas were
developed in detail in the writings of Kant, who, reversing the Lockean
21
This movement is not the only one to reference K. 465’s introduction; see also, for example, the
opening movement of Hyacinth Jadin’s String Quartet in E flat, Op. 2 No. 1.
22
See especially M. Brown, ‘Mozart and After: The Revolution in Musical Consciousness’, Critical
Inquiry, 7 (1981), 689–91.
Ex. 5.1 (cont.)

16
23
understanding of the self, had placed self-consciousness prior to external

sensation. Literary texts from Rousseau’s Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire
(1782) to Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817) helped to develop and interpret
these new ideas, representing states of internal pre-consciousness and reverie
(for which the primary dimension is time), prior to cognisance of the external
world (objects and orientations perceived in space).23 The C major musical
works mentioned here, among others, formed a distinct sub-repertoire
c. 1800, which arguably partook of the same cultural work. This music,
especially the ‘Representation of Chaos’ and Choral Fantasy, were interpreted
by some contemporaries as enactments of the process of musical invention
(Erfindung), so that the self whose awakening consciousness was thought to
be portrayed and enacted in them was that of the composer.24
23
On Austen’s invocation of this mode, see A. Pinch, Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of
Emotion, Hume to Austen (University of Stanford Press, 1996), especially Chapter 5, ‘Lost in a
Book: Jane Austen’s Persuasion’, pp. 137–63.
24
On this aspect of the early reception of The Creation, see M. Head, ‘Music with “No Past”?
Archaeologies of Joseph Haydn and The Creation’, 19th-Century Music, 23 (2000), 205–6;
regarding the Choral Fantasy, see Richards, The Free Fantasia, pp. 223–6.
Despite or perhaps because of this ideological context, Mozart’s com-

mencement of a string quartet with a representation of tonal searching and
melodic ‘fumbling’ was a provocative statement indeed.25 For a start, a slow
introduction was more commonly associated with orchestral music.26 Then,
as we have seen, by this stage the string quartet was considered a supreme
vehicle for displaying compositional polish and prowess. An extended delay
in the announcement of the key, combined with a general lack of goal
direction on most levels of the musical discourse, would have cut directly
across the expectations of a ‘true’ quartet as a perfectly complete musical
product. Yet when one considers contemporaries’ simultaneous conception
of the string quartet as an intimate musical work that unfolds in the process
of performance, then Mozart’s invocation of pre-conscious reverie seems
entirely fitting, while at once atypical and daring.27
In Op. 59 No. 3, Beethoven built on the K. 465 opening gambit consid-
erably, creating a double introduction, a framed frame comprising the slow
introduction and two rhapsodic Allegro solos. The ‘resolution’ of the
labyrinthine quest for the tonic, in bar 29, is inconclusive in that it takes
place on a weak beat and leads directly to the seemingly free improvisations
for solo violin; this whole progression is then repeated a tone higher (see
Ex. 5.2). Marx’s interpretation of the work’s wilfulness as heroic striving
helps us to see how Beethoven’s contemporaries might have understood the
drama of this double introduction. The way he personifies the quartet and
suggests a stretching of generic boundaries is striking: ‘[the quartet] does
not disavow its genre . . . but it strives beyond it in a more heroic manner
than any other quartet before it or since’. Here, as in other works depicting
an awakening of self-consciousness c. 1800, the composer was thought to be
represented in the music, this time in the guise of artist/hero. For Marx, and
Helm following him, this quartet is ‘again an image of its creator, that of a
man, who in the darkness of his loneliness looks so deep into the abyss of
existence and so strongly sets himself upright again’. The hero is given a
voice through the first violin, which ‘dares’ to emerge from the realms of
tonal error and fumbling (as Marx puts it), and speaks with a recitative in
25
As witnessed by the substantial literature it raised, including F.-J. Fétis’s notorious ‘revision’ –
doubtless inspired by the idea of the string quartet as ‘perfect composition’. For an alternative
view of the introduction to K. 465, based on a study of how ideas flow from a Hauptsatz, see
M. E. Bonds, Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration (Cambridge,
MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 102–13.
26
Compare Brown, ‘Mozart and After’, 700–1.
27
Slow introductions, albeit less labyrinthine, do appear in other chamber genres – for example, in
Mozart quintets K. 452 and K. 593; Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, Op. 47; Septet Op. 20; and
Quintet Op. 16.
29
quasi-martial rhythm.28 Such rhythms were a hallmark of the ‘heroic’ violin

concerto repertoire of the early nineteenth century (including the finale of
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto), and they are also found in ‘rescue’ operas of
the time (including Fidelio).29
In bars 41–3, the first violin takes up the semitone motion that was
prominent in the slow introduction, and effects a decisive shift upwards in
crescendo, which leads, finally, to a satisfactory resolution of the dominant
seventh of bar 30 (Ex. 5.3). The theatricality here is visible and viscerally
28
Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, pp. 46–7.
29
On this subject, see M. Kawabata, ‘Virtuoso Codes of Violin Performance: Power, Military
Heroism, and Gender (1789–1830)’, 19th-Century Music, 28 (2004), 89–107.
palpable in performance. The violinist hero emerges, brandishing the bow in

a full, triple-stopped tonic chord in bar 43. Bows wielded like swords were also
part of the ‘heroic codes’ of the violin c. 1800. Resolution is registral and
rhythmic, as well as tonal: the sonorous low C is heard in the cello, after which
the violin recaptures c3, resolving and then exceeding the ‘hanging’ d3 of bar
24, and a stable quaver pulse commences. Marx speaks of the ‘brave leader
striving high and managing everyone with victory-proud wilfulness’.30
Scholars note a high polish of surface detail in the Allegro vivace, a topical
play that is reminiscent, sometimes strongly, of Mozart’s quartet style.31
This topical detail need not be dismissed as superficial, as it is by some
writers, either from the perspective of Beethoven’s contemporary listeners
or from ours.32 Topical play was characteristic of the fantasia and the genres
it influenced, and thus it fits with the appearance of free improvisation of the
opening.33 As the movement proceeds, one hears an innovative ‘meta-
dialogue’ with various genres. The concertante character comes to the fore
in the transition (bars 57–76), where the lower instruments share the
passagework and the cello moves into its high register (bars 64ff.). The
referencing of textures familiar from the quatuor brillant and quatuor
concertant, as well as the concerto, would have contributed to the popularity
30
Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 47.
31
See especially Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’, p. 136, n. 27, and 141, n. 32; Helm,
Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 100–1; and Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 140.
32
See, for example, C. Dahlhaus who wants to find the ‘real work’ of the movement in the
development of the semitone idea from the slow introduction (mainly in the development
section): ‘Beethovens “Neuer Weg”’, in Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung
Preußischer Kulturbesitz 1974 (1975), 58; for a critical view see Webster, ‘Middle-Period String
Quartets’, especially pp. 103–14.
33
On this subject, see Sisman, ‘After the Heroic Style’, 76–8.
of this quartet. There is an element of ‘re-reading’ in the way these textures

are cited, too, which is especially apparent in the ‘archaic’ use of a triple
cadential trill in bar 98.34 Then there is Beethoven’s own self-referencing:
the first subject (bars 51–6) contains some uncanny reminders of passages
in the first subject group in the first movement of Op. 59 No. 1 (pitch-wise to
bars 41–8 and rhythmically to bars 357–9; see Exx. 5.4–5.6). The registral
‘bungee jump’ (bars 56–7) – familiar to Beethoven’s listeners from the first
quartet and from contemporary concertos – serves as an important struc-
tural marker, articulating the move to the transition, as it does in the first
movement of Op. 59 No. 1.
The quoting and referencing of textures becomes more pronounced in
the development. Elements of the two introductions and exposition are
referenced in order, starting with the semitone gesture. Finscher finds that
34
Radcliffe points out that this occurs in the same place in the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, Op. 53, and in
the Violin Concerto, Op. 61; see Beethoven’s String Quartets, p. 74.
the essential function of the development will be to ‘synthesise soloistic

development and thematic working’, and he notes a foretaste of this at the
end of the exposition, where the semitone motif is played beneath the first
violin’s ornamental cadential descent (bars 104–5); the semitone motif will
then move into the upper voice as part of the supposed ‘synthesis’ at the end
of the development. But what actually happens sounds more like exacer-
bation and juxtaposition than a synthesis, at least at first. In bar 150, the
semitone idea takes on a life of its own in its new guise as an octave leap,
treated in imitation between the upper and lower voices, the dissonances
recalling those of the slow introduction. A return of the first violin rhapsody
then follows. This renewed ‘“improvisatorische” Suchen nach der Tonika’
(‘improvisational’ search for the tonic) is even more cadenza-like than
before and freely elaborated (registrally and rhythmically), this time above
pianissimo semitone-step chords.35
True, the discourse has become more goal-directed. Trills, now function-
ing more fully to direct the discourse, are interspersed between the first
violin’s rhapsodic phrases, ascending to the tonic for the recapitulation in
bar 191. Yet Marx’s violin hero does not seem to triumph entirely here. As
several writers note, the first movement is inconclusive as to its end, and
more so than the first movements of the two preceding quartets. Lenz
characterises the first movement more as an introduction to that which
follows than as one that satisfies itself.36 The inconclusiveness is achieved
here by several means, perhaps especially the use of register, which is one of
the few respects in which the recapitulation is varied. The unsettling
dissociative effect of the first violin’s ‘bungee jump’ feat (bars 204–5) is
underscored aurally and visually, by the high cello, which enters one octave
above the first violin’s landing note (open G). As Miller observes, within the
second group recapitulation there are three surges of registral ascent in the
first violin before the final ascent in which c4 is finally established as a goal
and sounded together with the low C (bar 250).37 In an unusually short coda
(bars 252–65), there is hardly time to confirm and stabilise this tantalisingly
prepared arrival, although the cello’s low C is sounded four more times, and
the first violin’s c3 ‘resolution’ of the opening Introduzione (bar 43) is
replayed in bar 264.
Movement II: Andante con moto quasi Allegretto
‘The very genre seems strange’, writes Kerman of the second movement.38
Writers have continually observed the A minor Andante’s unusual
35
Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’, pp. 144–5.
36
37
Miller, ‘High Register and Structure’, p. 78. 38 Kerman, The Beethoven String Quartets, p. 145.
Movement II: Andante con moto quasi Allegretto 137
character, both for a string quartet movement and for Beethoven. The
narrative tone of the folk ballad evoked here creates an earthiness that
is quite different from the ‘other worldly’ atmosphere in the slow move-
ments of the first two quartets. Certainly there are subtle links to those
movements, which also feature high-register thematic presentation in
their respective recapitulations, although not involving such peculiar
keys as this Andante. The first two works of Op. 59 contain overt ref-
erences to real Russian folksongs. By contrast, this movement has left
scholars speculating as to models, and proposing the unlikely notion that
Beethoven ‘gave up’ on incorporating pre-existing tunes.39
Mark Ferraguto has conjectured that Beethoven drew on a popular
Russian Lied (‘Ty wospoi, wospoi, mlad Shaworontschek’), which
had been transmitted in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (as ‘Singe,
sing’ ein Lied’ (Sing, sing a song)) in July 1804.40 There are good musical
reasons to make this connection. The song is an A minor Andantino in
compound duple time, which has similarities to the theme of the Andante
con moto from Op. 59 No. 3. This song may well have been of interest to
Beethoven at that point in his career, Ferraguto suggests: its seventeen stanzas
(printed in full in the article) deal with a rescue plot of the kind with which
Beethoven was engaged through 1804 and much of 1805 when composing
Fidelio. A young man (allegedly a thief) sits imprisoned in a cell, begging a
lark to deliver his letters. First he sends a plea for help to his parents; when
that fails, he writes to his faithful lover as follows (stanza 13):
Bist Du, wie vorhin
Mir noch immer hold?
O so rette doch
Deinen Treuesten!
(Are you, as before,
Still my beloved?
O then yet save
Your most faithful!)
In Fidelio, Florestan likewise sends a plea from his cell, via the kind-hearted
gaoler Rocco, to his wife Leonore, little knowing that she is actually present.
39
Kerman, ‘Beethoven, Ludwig van, §15: Middle-period works’, in The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, vol. III, p. 102.
40
C. Schreiber, ‘Etwas über Volkslieder’ (On Folksongs), Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 6
(1804), 714–16; see M. Ferraguto, ‘Of Russian Themes and Rescue Fantasies: New Light on
Beethoven’s Third “Razumovsky” String Quartet’, unpublished conference paper, American
Musicological Society – New England Chapter Meeting, 2012.
Ex. 5.7 Anon. Lied, ‘Ty wospoi, wospoi, mlad Shaworontschek’ (Singe, sing’ ein Lied)
The song appears in an article about folksong written by the philosopher

and poet Christian Schreiber. Schreiber, a pupil of Johann Gottfried Herder,
propagated the notion of folksong as a carrier of the ‘true impression’ of the
special characteristics of a nation. Unlike high art, he argued, this music is
not developed towards ideals, and hence it retains its original character-
istics – ‘Eigentümlichkeiten’ – a term of praise in this context, as it would be
in the 1807 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung review of the C major quartet
from Op. 59. In a seeming paradox, Schreiber connected these elements of
originality with folksong’s capacity to cling to the ‘universeller Charakter’
(universal character) of humankind. Really there is no paradox here. He was
trying to express a capacity of folksong to access the origins of discourse,
affectively mimicking the original passionate cries that Rousseau and his
followers thought served to define and bond humankind. Marx used similar
terms of praise for the Andante from Beethoven’s C major quartet, lauding
it for its ‘urmenschlich’ voice. Schreiber found Russian folksong to be
especially developed in the distinctiveness of its character, connecting this
to Russians’ predisposition to constant singing.
‘Ein ruhiges Andantino’ (A tranquil Andantino) in A minor is then cited
by Schreiber (Ex. 5.7), which bears some striking resemblances to the A
minor Andante from Op. 59 No. 3, although the latter does not remain
calm. It also shows strong similarities to the A minor duet between Rocco
and Leonore in Fidelio, ‘Nur hurtig fort’ (Act II No. 13, later No. 12), also
marked ‘Andante con moto’, which precedes the dungeon dialogue between
Florestan and Rocco (largely unchanged from 1806 to 1814). The chief
musical points of contact between these two Beethoven works and the
folksong, beyond key and time signatures, are harmonic stasis and stepwise
Ex. 5.8 Fidelio, Act II No. 13/12, bars 1–6
circularity. The bass line of the duet is static and makes much use of a
stepwise rising and falling figure, similar to that in the first bar of the
folksong (Ex. 5.8).41 A similar figure pervades the first theme of the quartet,
41
The performance direction in Ex. 5.8 is discussed below. The stage direction here reads: ‘As the
Ritornello commences Rocco begins to work, meanwhile Leonore uses the moments in which
Rocco bends down to observe the prisoners.’
Ex. 5.8 (cont.)
and the bass-line figure in bar 2 of the folksong relates to the cello’s pizzicato
link in bars 5–6 of the quartet movement (Ex. 5.9). The rising third figure in
bar 3 of the folksong bears a resemblance to the more angular motion of the
F minor music that begins in bar 25 of the quartet (Ex. 5.10). Also, both
Beethoven pieces make use of pizzicato in the bass (although not in Ex. 5.8),
which recalls the effect of the typical accompaniment of Russian folksong by
the lute-like balalaika (which Schreiber mentions).
For all its apparent strangeness, the string quartet Andante has been less
well regarded by modern writers than the preceding slow movements in the
Op. 59 set; in particular, it does not exhibit the kind of dynamism expected
of Classical style. Mason typifies this view with his complaints of monotony,
whereas he finds that the first two slow movements of Op. 59 fit better with
the expected ‘heroic’ struggle narrative; the third movement is ‘in a word,
less dramatic’.42 Kerman alights on key sources of the movement’s strange-
ness vis-à-vis Classical style: ‘hypnotic’ repetitions of the melodic material
are greatly intensified by frequent use of pizzicato pedal in the bass, which
‘negate the characteristic sense of rhythmic flux associated with the sonata
dynamic’.43 However, the movement’s drama is more complex than its
opening suggests, especially given its registral and tonal plot detours.
There are several links to the first movement and related intertextual
references, especially with Fidelio, which help with an understanding of
the Andante’s discourse.
42 43
Mason, The Quartets of Beethoven, p. 94. Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 150.
The invocation of the Erzählton here – the mode of lyric narration –

relates to the ‘searching’, fantasia-like discourse of the quartet’s opening,
and to popular aesthetic ideas of the time. In a quest for an original form of
song (or ‘Ursprach’), which might connect one to the roots of the most
passionate and immediate form of utterance, writers such as Rousseau,
James Macpherson (author of the Ossian poem cycle), and then Goethe
and Herder looked to folksong and balladry. Beethoven was not only
acquainted with the work of Herder and especially Goethe, but also played
his part in fuelling this aesthetic and satisfying the voracious appetite
for folksong in the early nineteenth century. He began arranging folksong
for the Scottish publisher George Thomson in late 1809, completing
arrangements of more than 180 folksongs by 1820. In the realm of original
composition, though, his use of this style is rare. Sisman has noted that
the introduction to the Sonata in F sharp, Op. 78, relates to the Erzählton;
the middle movement of the Sonatine in G, Op. 79, is a further case.
Both compositions are from 1809, falling within a period that Sisman
describes as coming ‘after the heroic style’; here she follows others in
noting Beethoven’s increased preoccupation with song and lyricism at that

point.44
In Op. 59 No. 3, which falls firmly within the ‘heroic period’, the
Erzählton is nevertheless evoked immediately, with a simple, accompanied
melody and ballad metre, and is maintained by means of the pulsating
pizzicato. The story that unfolds seems more a melancholy than a heroic
plot; indeed, melancholy is the dominant affect in this movement. However,
a brand of heroism can also be detected here, akin to that of Florestan,
whose quiet resignation renders him, as Lockwood puts it, ‘a hero not for
what he conquers but for what he endures’.45 Leonore herself reveals that
heroism and melancholy are not incompatible: she too shows stoic commit-
ment, through fluctuating joy and pain. The quartet Andante contains
subtle links to Beethoven’s dealings with ‘rescue opera’, and connections
to the music of Rocco, Florestan and especially Leonore.
Beethoven had used pizzicato with poignant effect in the D flat major
song in the slow movement of Op. 59 No. 1, but here it is exploited much
more extensively. Circularity and stasis, and an aura of melancholy brood-
ing, are created through the steady rhythmic motion, melodic repetition and
harmonic progression. Like the first movement, the Andante starts off-
tonic, although less obliquely, with a pedal on the dominant. The arrival
of the tonic in bar 5 is also a departure point: the cello moves up from the
pedal tone to link back to the beginning of the phrase. Thus Beethoven
creates in this musical narration the sense of a natural, cyclical state, like the
changing of the seasons, the ebb and flow of tides, or the phases of the moon.
The melodic use of the augmented second here is a distancing element in
terms of Classical style, but also lends immediacy by suggesting original
(pre-tonal) utterance, and the ‘urmenschlich’ voice that Marx heard; it also
links this movement back to the first, and particularly the Introduzione,
with its emphasis on the semitone.
The voice of the viola, in F minor, gives a hint of the ensuing course of the
drama, with labyrinthine wanderings and fantastical visions: F minor was a
key closely associated with the melancholy temperament, and Kant had
described the degenerative melancholic as ‘ein Phantast’ (a visionary).46 A
codetta with pizzicato tonic pedal (bars 20/21–5) stabilises the tonality, but
the viola immediately leads off with the F minor bridging theme, accom-
panied again by a pizzicato pedal on its dominant (see Ex. 5.10). This theme,
44
Sisman, ‘After the Heroic Style’, 94–6.
45
Lockwood, ‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of Heroism’, p. 31.
46
Discussed in my ‘Haydn’s Melancholy Voice’, especially 79 and 100.
and especially the semitonal stabbing sighs that deepen it, recalls a section in
the Act I finale in Fidelio, also marked ‘Andante con moto’, ‘Wir müssen
gleich zum Werke schreiten’; here Rocco first mentions to Leonore that she
must help him dig the grave of the mysterious prisoner, who she rightly
suspects to be her husband. Not only her semitonal sighs (‘O welch ein
Schmerz’ (O what pain)) but also the downward-spiralling chromaticism
and dips into F minor seem to be strongly related to the F minor passages in
the string quartet Andante (Ex. 5.11).
The first part of the quartet movement’s first section (bars 1–25) is
uniformly low and contained; only in bar 30 does the register start to
climb. The theme that develops in C major in bar 41 is closely related to
the opening melody, a stepwise rising and falling phrase, again suggesting
the unfolding of a simple narrative. This section provides a moment of
major-key brightness in the movement, a sense of illumination enhanced by
the outward registral sweep and semiquaver embellishment, the latter
looking forward to the theme of the minuet. Helm describes this moment
lyrically: ‘the lovely major melody is a friendly, shining star in the dark
night, which brightens and brightens, then must go out again’.47 The vision
is fleeting. In bar 50, the first violin regains the top c4, sounded together with
the cello’s open C; its descent is darkened, though, by A[s. The cello resumes
the pizzicato on the low C and with the inflection of the minor sixth in the
middle voice’s low-register rocking motifs. In Fidelio, C major is the key of
hope and happiness. Marzelline moves into this key in the second part of
her two-part aria ‘O wär’ ich schon mit dir vereint’ (Act I No. 1, later No. 2),
when she projects herself into imagined happiness in marriage with
her beloved Fidelio. Her rising articulated stepwise runs are akin to
those in the Andante’s C major variation of the opening theme. Another
tonally relevant passage occurs in Haydn’s G major String Quartet, Op. 54
No. 1, in the C major second movement, where the first violin surges
upwards to c4 in two semiquaver runs (bars 17–18 and 85–6; compare
Exx. 5.12 and 5.13). The Haydn movement is also an Allegretto in 6/8,
with extensive use of pedals and several other similarities: semiquaver
motifs starting in bar 4 take on a circularity recalling those of Beethoven’s
bars 21ff. (compare Exx. 5.12 and 5.10). And, although it is ostensibly
‘simple’, the Haydn movement contains two strikingly unexpected new
beginnings in A minor (bars 21 and 55), after telling caesurae, which lead
to unexpected tonal complexities.
47
Ex. 5.11 Fidelio, Act I No. 11/10, bars 296–300
In the Beethoven quartet Andante, the happy vision in C major is fleeting

(so too Marzelline’s hopeful C major projections): as in the Haydn move-
ment, the plot becomes decidedly more complex and mysterious. What
might be considered a development now begins (bar 59), led by the cello
with the mournful theme heard in the viola at the start of the transition and
with the ‘Schmerz’ motif impregnated. A broad range of minor keys is
Ex. 5.11 (cont.)
traversed, from F minor down through the circle of fifths to E flat and up as
far as A (bar 92). The keys, sustained notes and semitone shifts that
dominate here are reminiscent of the Introduzione (also marked ‘Andante
con moto’), whose searching discourse is to be recalled yet more clearly in
the third movement’s coda.48
48
Kerman provides a detailed analysis of this section; see The Beethoven Quartets, p. 148.
Ex. 5.12 J. Haydn, String Quartet in G major, Op. 54 No. 1, movement two, bars 15–20
VI
V II
Va
Vc
This referencing of the introduction at key points within the inner move-
ments can be understood as an aspect of inter-movement linkage, but also as
part of the work’s orientation towards the finale, which the preceding
movements thus serve to introduce. In these recurrent searching passages,
one might discern the enactment of a process of finding (perhaps
enlightenment, hope, joy, love or voice), which will be drawn to a conclu-

sion in the finale. In Fidelio, somewhat similar searching music is heard at
the beginning of the Act I finale, as the prisoners gradually emerge into
daylight.49 A brief but more strikingly parallel passage was to be inserted
into Fidelio (1814) just before the Act II Duet, in a section of melodrama as
Rocco and Leonore enter Florestan’s cell and grope around in the darkness.
Leonore says, ‘Es ist unmöglich, seine Züge zu unterscheiden’ (it is impos-
sible to make out his features), a complaint that one might fairly level at the
string quartet’s Introduzione. A diminished seventh on B is left unresolved,
the following dominant seventh registrally suspended and sounded in
diminuendo (Ex. 5.14).
The melodrama in Fidelio moves through E flat and A major – keys that
are prominent in the second half of the string quartet Andante – in a
compound duple metre section labelled ‘Andante con moto’ (see the final
bar of Ex. 5.14). This section recalls the Act I Andante music of Leonore and
Rocco, ‘Wir müssen gleich zum Werke schreiten’. Significant in this melo-
drama are the circular quaver motif and also the plaintive harping on the
flattened sixth scale degree, the pervasive ‘Schmerz’ motif of the opera,
which is also a feature of the string quartet Andante. In the latter, the
element of fantasia latent in the first movement now comes to the fore:
the listener might surmise that the persona, or perhaps personae, depicted
in this unfolding drama have veered off into fantasy. Fantastical imaginings
are suggested by thematic and tonal deviations, highlighted by registral
flights: return of the pizzicato pedal on E in bar 100 brings not a return of
the opening, but a quite unforeseen variation of the theme from bar 41, now
in the tonic major. In Fidelio, A major is the key in which Rocco, Leonore
and Florestan will sing a ‘communion’ trio, partly in hope, partly in pain
(‘Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten’; Act II No. 14, later No. 13), following
the melodrama: Florestan consumes bread and wine as they await death or
rescue. In the quartet, a similar turn in the plot – a moment suggesting release,
but clouded by troubled thoughts – is evoked as the first violin soars upwards
to a3 (bar 110) in crescendo, sinking then to a low-register pianissimo close.
In the opera, Leonore only manages g2 at the climax of the trio, significantly at
the words ‘O mehr, als ich ertragen kann’ (O more than I can bear); but she
will reach an extended a2 in the ensuing quartet with Pizarro, during the
dénouement, where she declares to Florestan: ‘die Liebe wird im Bunde mit
Mute dich befrei’n’ (love together with courage will set you free).
49
Lockwood draws parallels between Fidelio’s chromatic descents and this Introduzione:
‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of Heroism’, p. 31.
Ex. 5.14 Fidelio, Act II No. 12, bars 12–16
A more striking plot twist is to follow in the string quartet Andante, as of

course it does in the opera. In the string quartet, the exploration of
registral space continues with another first violin ascent as the tonality shifts
chromatically to E flat, the most remote key. Over a pizzicato E[ pedal (bar
123–6), b[3 is regained (bar 125). Kerman labels E flat a ‘destructive
tonal region’ in this context; it stands, after all, in tritone relation to A
minor.50 Yet the passage suggests distance more than damage: it under-
scores the remoteness of the movement as a whole, its remove from the
work, the opus and the genre. In the opera, flat keys are associated with
Florestan, and their tonal distance underscores the great difficulties that
keep them apart: he sings in A flat during his central aria while Leonore
is in E. The rising scales and capture of b[3 here in the quartet bring to
mind the relief and release that Florestan imagines in the ecstatic conclusion
to his aria, ‘In des Lebens Frühlingstagen’, hard on the heels of extreme
F minor lamentation. In the opera, Leonore will unite with him (in register,
as in deed), reiterating her top b[2 when she orders Pizarro to ‘Töt’ erst
sein Weib’ (first kill his wife (i.e., revealing her identity)) at the plot climax
(Act II No. 15, later No. 14).
Beethoven’s setting of the string quartet Andante in the middle of the
tonal universe, but in A minor rather than C major, is entirely in keeping
with the unfolding tale: the uniting of the movement’s distanced voices is
imagined – projected in far-removed tonal and registral realms – but
remains unaccomplished, as the searching that was intimated in the quar-
tet’s Introduzione goes on. There are hints, though, that a resolving, eluci-
datory C major might yet shine forth in the larger scheme of things, as it
does in the Act II finale of Fidelio. The string quartet Andante stays
registrally and tonally in touch with the first movement, through repeated
and salient soundings of the cello’s open C. This low C acts as a pivot, as well
as a pedal, first heard as such at the beginning (bar 6a) and the start of the
second phrase (bar 7), which wends its way back to the tonic via D minor.
The waves of registral ascent, too, recall the end of the recapitulation in the
first movement, where they also create a sense of open-endedness, release
and potentially attainable freedom.
The second movement ends, however, with an evocation of melancholy
unrest. Thematic, registral and tonal closure are delayed. Following the b[3
of bar 125, the first violin falls to a[3 and on down to g3 (bars 129–31) in a
long-range descent from the c4 of bar 50. Only now (bar 137) does the
opening theme return. Its rescoring means that the first violin emphasises
the chromatic inflections of the theme in its mid-high register, and the cello
does not sit firmly on the tonic until bar 176. Unrest is compounded by the
return of the F minor music and ‘Schmerz’ motif in bar 181. The first violin
finally settles on the tonic in the opening register in the tiny coda (beginning
in bar 197), but the cello meanders morosely below, with disquieted circu-
larity. Hollow octaves are sounded, just as they are at the end of ‘Nur hurtig
50
fort’ (Exx. 5.15 and 5.16). The stage direction in Fidelio here evokes a
sombre, meditative mood similar to the quartet movement’s ending:
‘Rocco drinks; Florestan revives himself and raises his head, without yet
turning towards Leonore.’
Helm observed that the effect of this movement depends crucially on the
way it is performed: ‘The magic of this A minor Andante is indescribable, if
the performers allow it the proper highly poetic, intimate conception and
performance, which is yet free from all false sentimentality.’51 In discussing
folksong performance, Schreiber also drew the reader’s attention to the
brevity and simplicity of the genre.52 In performing the quartet, players
might keep in mind the direction that Beethoven gave for ‘Nur hurtig fort’
in Fidelio: ‘Dieses Stück wird durchaus sehr leise gespielt, und die sfp und f
müssen nicht zu stark ausgedrückt werden.’ (This piece is to be played very
softly/gently throughout, and the sfp and f must not be too strongly
expressed.) The simple narrative tone of the folksong can then act as a
foil, a backdrop against which flights of fantasy can unfold, dreams of heroic
rescue and jubilant resolution, which are as yet unrealised.
51
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 110–11. 52
Schreiber, ‘Etwas über Volkslieder’, 714.
Ex. 5.16 Fidelio, Act II No. 12, bars 103–5
Movement III: Menuetto grazioso
The tone shifts towards parody and overt theatricality in the second half of
the work, while Beethoven’s bold innovations with genre persist. The third
movement can be heard as a subtle commentary on Classical string quartet
discourse, delivered from within that most decorous of musical settings, the
Movement III: Menuetto grazioso 153
stately minuet. The minuet was strongly associated with the genre’s original
ideal dedicatee: the aristocratic patron. The element of theatrical play in this
movement is achieved delicately as befits this movement type, by phrase
expansion and variation. At the outset there is a semblance of complete
normality, enough to cause Vincent D’Indy to dismiss the entire movement
as a ‘return to the style of 1796’.53 We hear a regular eight-bar phrase,
divided into an antecedent–consequent pair, moving first to the dominant
then to the tonic, and several features that help to integrate the movement
into the quartet as a whole. The semiquaver motion of the opening phrase
relates to that in the second theme of the Andante, and the wavering figure
heard in the second violin in bar 5 might be taken to relate to the deploy-
ment of a similar gesture to much more melancholy ends in the slow
movement (especially in the codetta to the main theme). Meanwhile the
chromatic motion (cello, bars 2–3, and first violin, bar 4) can be heard as a
harbinger of the fugal finale. The close register of the opening will be
‘composed out’, as in the preceding movements.
A gracious playfulness emerges on this movement’s stage. This can be
related to the characteristic of playfulness in the transformation of a model,
which Genette highlights in his definition of parody.54 The second part of
the minuet opens in an orderly fashion, in the same closed register of the
beginning, but on the dominant. Now begins the play with form, in which
the four players are accomplices. The metre is slightly perturbed by the
lower parts’ emphasis of the second beat, and after three bars it is more
thoroughly confounded as the first violin’s semiquaver figure, a decorative
link back to the main theme, is passed down to viola and cello. A little
fugato – a play with traditional contrapuntal technique – then develops, so
that the phrase is extended by two bars and leads to a decorated high-
register statement of the theme in bar 27, reaching f3 in bar 28.55 This
statement is extended by treatment of the closing gesture in rising sequence,
followed by a subtly elided cadence in bars 33–4, in which the first and
second violins’ expected arrival notes are passed down the octave to second
violin and viola. Contrary-motion semiquavers are used to extend the
phrase and lead to a highly decorative cadence (bars 36–8). In the context
of the carefully balanced opening phrases, this cadence seems pointedly
53
V. D’Indy, s.v. ‘Beethoven’, in W. Willson Cobbett (ed.), Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber
Music, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1929), vol. I, p. 96.
54
Genette, Palimpsests, pp. 28–9.
55
On phrase expansion in music of the Classical era, see E. Sisman, ‘Small and Expanded Forms:
Koch’s Model and Haydn’s Music’, Musical Quarterly, 48 (1982), 444–75.
‘overdone’, although dainty. The effect of these phrase enlargements is

enhanced by the swelling and subsiding dynamics in this second section,
as well as the rising and falling register (especially in the outer voices). The
ostensibly simple minuet has been expanded to far exceed its traditional
formal trappings.
Harmonic interest, as opposed to contrapuntal interest, returns in the
trio, which starts in the subdominant and works towards the (local)
dominant in the course of the first phrase. For Indorf, the trio has ‘die
Assoziation eines humorvollen Haydn-Zitates’ (the association of a
humorous citation of Haydn).56 Indeed, at first it might be taken as a
straightforward citation of Haydn’s humour, which in his minuet and trio
movements features witty play with high registers. Beethoven’s bolder
exploitation of both high and low registers is innovative here, however,
and acts in the spirit of parody or transformational re-reading. The three-
quaver figure and the semiquaver link from the minuet’s opening theme
are both taken up here. Registrally, the first part of the trio marks the first
violin’s attainment of a new high point, g3 (bar 47; thus a tone higher than
the minuet), and the cello’s sounding of the low C completes tonic
cadences in bars 47–8 and 53–4. The latter passage deploys a first violin
‘bungee jump’ figure, familiar from the first movement and the first
quartet. The second half then commences quite unexpectedly in A
major, functioning as the dominant of D minor, and combines the
three-quaver figure, turned into an octave leap, with the semiquavers
in the inner voices. Now the violin soars up into the high register, to attain
the c4 high point by leap from a3 several times over, as the cello sounds
the open C (bars 71–3; Ex. 5.17). This dramatic attainment of the
quartet’s outer registral extremes provides a brand of theatricality quite
the opposite of the absorptive discourse of the Andante: it draws
attention to the act of performance and the witty authorial voice behind
the work, rather than seeking to make listeners ‘forget the stage’.57
This effect is reinforced by sforzandi, making the passage Haydnesque
in its wit (see, for example, the Minuet in Haydn’s Op. 20 No. 2, where
the quartet’s same registral limit point is also emphasised) but
Beethovenian in its strength. A more absorptive kind of discourse will
now follow, a hint of it given by the trio’s final trill, which refers to the
opening Introduzione.
56
Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 297.
57
On this brand of wit, see Hunter, ‘Haydn’s London Piano Trios and His Salomon String
Quartets: Private vs. Public?’, especially pp. 114–25.
Movement III: Menuetto grazioso 155
For Beethoven’s contemporaries, this movement’s most innovative and

startling aspect – or most powerful and original feature, in the early
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer’s terms – would most probably
have been the coda. The minuet is generally simple in terms of harmony,
but this is now completely reversed. The coda is in C minor with a
pianissimo reference to the opening of the minuet, the theme sounded,
unnervingly, in the cello. The rising and falling dynamics and particularly
the sustained notes point back to the Introduzione; more markedly, so
does the arrival on the dominant seventh chord at the end of the move-
ment. Finscher notes that this backwards reference was even clearer in a
sketch for the movement that is found in the autograph.58 Beethoven
wrestled a little with this ending, first seeking to retain momentum pend-
ing the ‘perpetuum mobile’ of the finale, then alighting on a three-chord
transition that harks back to bars 26–9 of the Introduzione in terms of
pitch and register (Fig. 5.1a; Ex. 5.18a), and finally settling on a solution
that combined the two (Fig. 5.1b; Ex. 5.18b). The coda thus functions as
a conclusion to and perhaps melancholy commentary on the minuet,
and also as an introduction to the finale. An overt linking of the last two
movements is also found in the first quartet, but the sense in which all
preceding movements in Op. 59 No. 3 build towards the fugue, through
the referencing of Introduzione material and the open-endedness at the
movement level, is new in this work.
58
Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’, p. 151.
5.1a Beethoven, String Quartet in C major, Op. 59 No. 3, movement three, bars 88–92, autograph score,
with two crossed out drafts of the movement’s conclusion (see Exx. 5.18a and 5.18b)
5.1b Beethoven, String Quartet in C major, Op. 59 No. 3, movement three, bars 93–4, autograph score
(see Ex. 5.18b)
Movement IV: Allegro molto
‘Educated friends of music’ of Beethoven’s day would have understood the

learned nature of a fugal finale and its privileged status in the string quartet
repertoire. Traditional fugal quartets such as those of Monn and Gassmann
were appearing in print around this time. However, this finale soon proves
not to involve strict fugue: the closest generic predecessor is Mozart’s String
Quartet K. 387, which combines sonata form and fugue. Even with this work
in mind, contemporaries would have appreciated the extent to which
Beethoven was breaking new ground in the finale – not to mention testing
the capabilities of his performers. With the tempo set to Allegro molto,
semibreve = 84 beats/minute, the movement is very difficult, demanding of
all four players a virtuosity as brilliant as the first movement required of the
first violinist.
Movement IV: Allegro molto 157
Ex. 5.18a Op. 59 No. 3, movement three, second crossed out draft of the movement’s
conclusion (see Fig. 5.1a)
Ex. 5.18b Op. 59 No. 3, movement three, bars 88–94 (see Fig. 5.1b for bars 93–4)
The opening fugal exposition itself, with its extremely long subject heard
first in the viola, would have set Beethoven’s contemporary listeners and
performers a new challenge, not least because the fugue is soon revealed as
something of a pretence. Connoisseurs of Op. 59 might have sensed that this
was not to be a strict fugue when the voices start to enter in the same order
they followed in the witty fugue from the third movement of Op. 59 No. 2. As
the fugue progresses, the texture becomes even more homophonic. When the
first violin enters in bar 31, there are only two real parts since the upper and
lower voice pairs are in octaves. The end of what now seems to be the ‘first
group’ is marked, once again, by expansion to registral extremes – first violin
attains a3 in bar 41, and the cello plunges down to the fortissimo open C to
articulate the transition. In fact, the repeatedly sounded octave Cs (bars 47–
52) mark the first real affirmation of the tonic: the movement’s opening
emphasises scale degree five. A passage of rapid modulation follows, with
intrusions from sforzando dominant and diminished seventh chords remin-
iscent of the Introduzione. All semblance of strict fugue has now fallen away.
The substantial development section is initially based on contrapuntal
elaboration of the main theme. However, the texture becomes more homo-
phonic and more virtuoso, to the disgruntlement of those who, like Kerman,
would have more thematische Arbeit. Following a double fugato (bars 136–
43), the first violin leads off with a sul una corda passage in quavers
accompanied by pulsing crotchets, which at speed provide a considerable
technical challenge. The sul una corda passage is heard in each part in turn.
Thus the technical challenges and visible virtuosity of the first movement
are now shared by all four players.
These difficulties for the players are now capped by cognitive challenges for
the listeners, with a climax of register and sonority. Beethoven deploys double
stops to reinforce the texture, sforzandi, registral extremes, long-held notes,
dissonance and a closely spaced unison, devices that writers c. 1800 connected
to the musical sublime.59 The straining of cognitive faculties as one struggles to
conceptualise such piled-up and incommensurable sonic data, and the ensu-
ing sense of overcoming and release as one finds the experience within one’s
grasp, were crucial to the experience of the sublime that Kant described.60
59
See the comments of C. F. Michaelis, ‘Einige Bemerkungen über das Erhabene der Musik’
(Several Comments on the Musical Sublime), Berlinsche musikalische Zeitung, 1 (1805),
especially 180; trans. P. le Huray and J. Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-
Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 289.
60
E. Sisman has noted how elements of the ‘Jupiter’ finale combine to engender a sense of
incommensurability – an overloading; see Mozart: The ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, No. 41 in C major, K.
551 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 76–9.
Kant’s ‘dynamic sublime’ arises when one makes an aesthetic judgement of an

awe-inspiring natural phenomenon, and one experiences fearfulness without
actually fearing nature (or any object) per se.61 Before Kant had relocated
the sublime within the experiencing subject, Edmund Burke found it in vast,
untamed nature itself, also in war; he described this in experience terms that
are sonic and forceful: ‘The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder or
artillery’, he wrote, ‘awakes a great and awful sensation in the mind.’62 Both
Marx and Helm invoke the Burkean sublime to describe the end of the
development in the finale of Op. 59 No. 3: from bars 144 to 206, they hear
‘shrieks of nature’, the raging ocean, lightning bolts (by their time a catch-
word for the sublime) and rolls of thunder (Ex. 5.19).63 The ‘check to the vital
forces’ and sense of release after this sonic overload – as in the Kantian
‘mathematical sublime’ – might have been felt in bars 207–9, where the
61
See J. Webster’s discussion in ‘The Creation, Haydn’s Late Vocal Works, and the Musical
Sublime’, in Sisman (ed.), Haydn and His World, pp. 59–60.
62
E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
(London: Dodsley, 1757), p. 65.
63
Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 50; Helm, Beethoven Streichquartette, pp. 114–16.
dominant is reached on a fermata, then unison open Gs are sounded in a

diminuendo (Ex. 5.20). Or the listener might have experienced an elevating
sense of superiority to nature herself, and a resistance to fear, as in Kant’s
dynamic sublime.
Several nineteenth-century writers (like Kerman later) perceived a strong
vein of theatricality in all this, even though they took Beethoven’s invoca-
tion of the sublime seriously. The passage led Helm, for instance, to recall
the lead-up to the horn calls in Beethoven’s second Leonore Overture (an
apt comparison in light of the Andante’s apparent intertextuality), and the
battle between the furies and Orpheus in Gluck’s Orfeo.64 A reading of this
section as staged in the manner of opera fits well with a trajectory of
theatricalised ‘heroism’ that can be followed in its two phases. The recapitu-
lation follows the climax of sublimity and is, for almost the first time in the
opus, more or less regular. Not so the coda, which thoroughly makes up for
the short coda in the first movement, stretching to 101 bars (the develop-
ment was 125 bars). Whereas the development had inclined towards homo-
phonic textures, now counterpoint seems to have gained the upper hand: the
first part of the coda, beginning in bar 329, entails a double fugato using a
five-note fragment of the main theme, and the first violin’s climb upwards
with trills to reach a3. The second violin sounds an expressive counterpoint
above the first violin (bars 354–77). However, the first violin’s perpetuum
mobile will soon rise up and become more forceful, and all the other instru-
ments will do likewise to produce rousing homophony. The c4 is finally
achieved, together with the cello’s low C (bar 385), as if to confirm closure.
64
The first violin’s startling ‘bungee jump’ to a unison B[ in bar 386 calls
this registral and tonal resolution into question abruptly. A unison lurch
down to D follows. This disruption now engenders the final part of the coda,
which writers have termed a ‘coda to the coda’, and equally a coda to the
entire opus.65 Counterpoint will soon give way to a massive homophonic
crescendo, which begins in bar 403 and is greatly intensified by the rising
register. In a forceful fortissimo arrival, the outer voices simultaneously re-
sound the highest and lowest notes of the work (bar 423). Heroic codes of
early nineteenth-century stringed instrument performance are again in
evidence: in multiple stopped chords, the upper instruments brandish
their bows like rapiers, and the cello sounds its sonorous open C once
more. Indeed, for Lenz, heroism here is once again palpable. He finds that
the ‘conquest’ is accomplished by all: ‘Here a hero on the violin triumphs,
here four heroes triumph over their worthy mission.’66 In this reading, the
movement is far removed from the realm of intimate quartet ‘conversation’;
indeed, the string quartet’s discourse seems to have become boldly public,
militaristic, even political.
The exact nature of this ‘triumph’, if we accept it as such, bears some
scrutiny, as does what has been achieved in the players’ ‘worthy mission’. A
genre-level reading of Beethoven’s C major quartet, and its fugal finale in
particular, can be supported by reference to Haydn’s Op. 20 No. 2, also in
C. In the literature on Op. 59 No. 3, Mozart’s name appears much more
often than Haydn’s. Yet perhaps the most explicit model for Op. 59 No. 3, in
terms of overall procedures and aesthetic stance, can be found in the Haydn
work, which Beethoven might well have included in his study of Op. 20
c. 1800. Parallels between the two quartets can be drawn in terms of the
carefully calculated use of register – especially the violin’s high c4, and the
cello’s open C – to create cyclic links.67 Also notable is the strategic dialogue
with genres that both composers deploy. Op. 20 No. 2 begins with an
invocation of trio sonata, references opera/theatrical style in the two middle
movements, and concludes with a fugal finale. Thus the work alludes to the
three principal spheres of musical activity in the late eighteenth century –
chamber, theatre and church.
Beethoven went further. He alludes to eighteenth-century genre conven-
tions and locations in order to stage, sometimes highly theatrically, a tran-
scendence of genre. He invokes the intimacy of the chamber profoundly at
65
See, for example, Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’, p. 158; and Indorf, Beethovens
Streichquartette, p. 302.
66
67
For details regarding Op. 20 No. 2, see my ‘Register in Haydn’s String Quartets’, 298–307.
the opening of Op. 59 No. 3, in the fantasia-like discourse of the Introduzione.

He keeps this in play during the next two movements, especially in the
haunting Erzählton of the second movement, where he moves away from
traditional quartet discourse and ‘Classical style’ altogether, and also in the
radically innovative coda to the minuet. The invocation of a state of awaken-
ing consciousness and ‘searching’ in the first two movements then allows
him to enact more powerfully the ‘finding’ of a new compositional voice in
the last two movements of the work: through a parody ‘Haydn’ minuet and a
‘fugal finale’ that gives way, dramatically, to homophony. The drama of the
finale seems less about any ‘synthesis’ of fugue and sonata form, the latter
being in any case difficult to discern amidst the theatrical plotting. The finale’s
plot has arguably more to do with a ‘heroic battle’ with and ‘triumph’ over
strict fugue; if you will, a staged triumph over traditional quartet discourse.
The overt theatricality of the finale is crucial to this reading of the work.
One need not follow nineteenth-century listeners in conflating the com-
poser’s personal life and internal psychology with the music here (thus
reading this music as a direct expression of Beethoven’s heroism), even
though a note in the sketches to the final movement makes such a reading
appealing. Beethoven wrote to himself: ‘Just as you fall here into the whirl-
pool of society, so it is possible to write operas despite all societal hin-
drances – Your deafness can no longer be a secret – also in art.’68 Nor need
one go so far as to argue that the work actually effects a kind of heroic
‘emancipation’ of the string quartet. Taken as a career statement from 1807,
however, Op. 59 No. 3’s closing gesture, together with the work’s other
radical innovations at the genre level, is far removed from the composer’s
humble or self-deprecating comment to Amenda in 1801 that ‘only now
have I learnt how to write quartets properly’. The C major quartet, and
indeed the opus that it concludes, can be read as a triumphant statement of
his capabilities in a most difficult and testing genre, and in the face of
publically acknowledged personal adversity – part of Beethoven’s construc-
tion of himself as music’s hero.
Op. 59 and the ‘opus concept’
The finale of Op. 59 No. 3 has been understood as a finale not just to the
work, but to the entire opus. In recent literature on Op. 59, particularly the
German literature, ‘cyclic integration’ in this set has been discussed
68
Cited in Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, p. 89.
Op. 59 and the ‘opus concept’ 163
extensively.69 On the whole, the three quartets are considered to form an

opus that is particularly well integrated for its time, so that it has become
common to refer to the works as a ‘trilogy’. The viability of the theories of
cyclic integration that have been adduced, and their relation to my genre-
level reading of the work, warrant some exploration.
The most obvious extrinsic connection between the works is their pub-
lication as a set with a sole dedicatee. Beethoven clearly had a multi-work
opus in mind from the outset, mooting the idea of a three-quartet set with
his publisher Breitkopf and Härtel in a letter (by his brother on Beethoven’s
behalf) of 3 July 1806. The works were composed in order in a short period
of time, using an orderly procedure of sketching one work while the
previous one was being written. Internally (in terms of musical features),
the overt use of Russian folksong in the first two quartets, and the folksong
Andante in the third quartet, are the elements of integration most often
cited. Already in Beethoven’s time there was a perception of the quartets of
Op. 59 as a series, in that they were dubbed the ‘Russian Quartets’.
These connections do not constitute cyclic integration in the sense that
was to emerge in music of the nineteenth century; the works are not cyclic in
terms of theme and form as are instrumental works by composers such as
Schumann and Lizst.70 Nonetheless, a host of musical features connect the
three quartets. An array of strikingly audible, visual and visceral ‘Op. 59
gestures’ are deployed, especially the ‘bungee jumps’, trills, rising and scalic
passages, and unisons. These give the three quartets a common sense of
physicality, which is a part of their much-touted exploratory character and
theatricality. Certain melodic intervals, too, become prominent in the
course of each work – the fourth, the sixth and especially the semitone –
these are more a matter of intra- than inter-quartet connection.71
In surveying connective elements in Op. 59, it is important to consider all
musical parameters, not just themes and motifs. Harmonically, we find an
emphasis on Neapolitan tonalities in the set, especially in the first two
quartets, and deep tonal moves within movements (with the notable excep-
tion of the minuet/trio from Op. 59 No. 3, perhaps making up for the way
the outer movements take so long to confirm the tonic). By contrast, the
69
See especially Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’; Gülke, ‘Zur musikalischen
Konzeption der Rasumowsky-Quartette’; and Hübsch, Rasumowsky-Quartette, pp. 103–4.
70
For a definition of cyclic integration in the music of this era, see in particular B. Taylor, ‘Cyclic
Form, Time, and Memory in Mendelssohn’s A-minor Quartet, Op. 13’, Musical Quarterly, 93
(2010), especially 47.
71
See Hübsch, Rasumowsky-Quartette, p. 103. Kerman traces these intervallic connections in detail
in The Beethoven Quartets.
overall key schemes of all the works in the opus are straightforward. Tonally,
there is an emphasis on C as an axis about which the opus turns, and the
goal towards which it progresses: the third quartet is ‘in’ C, and the first and
second quartets both have strong tendencies towards C. This is heard, for
example, at the start of the first movement and in the finale of the second
quartet. The exuberant treatment of register is strongly related, with an
emphasis on C in both the highest and the lowest registers throughout the
opus; c4, in particular, is often attained and sounded and quitted in a
pointed fashion. On an affective level, reflecting contemporary ideas about
key characters, the move towards C could be understood as reaching
towards resolution of the preceding melancholy and processes of becoming,
with their attendant sense of endless onward striving.
In overall style, the works have often been described as ‘symphonic’ or
orchestral and ‘public’ in scale and sometimes texture. These elements are
problematic as ‘hallmarks’ of the opus. First, there are many elements to this
quartet discourse that could be understood as ‘private’, or directed at con-
noisseur listeners, especially in the second quartet. Then, quite a number of
the supposed hallmarks of the set, including textural, registral and formal
elements, are not really new at all.72 They can be found in the quartets of
Mozart and especially Haydn, who, as I have argued, functions as an ‘implied
dedicatee’ for Op. 59. Even the large scale was not wholly new. Nonetheless,
one can argue that Beethoven’s new treatment of these elements distin-
guishes Op. 59. Take, for example, the newly forceful way he deploys registral
extremes, and his potentially parodic treatment of fugue. The cunning
manipulation of counterpoint, and more generally the ‘re-reading’ of his
own and others’ quartet procedures, are more distinctive hallmarks.
Models other than the ‘trilogy’ are pertinent to these works, such as
‘expressive pairing’ whereby one work can be understood as the opposite
of another in terms of expression.73 The first two quartets of Op. 59 have
been especially susceptible to such pairing in the literature, from Helm
onwards, as have Opp. 74 and 95. This approach can lead to overly simple
binary oppositions, which mask important points of contact between the
works involved. In significant ways, the first two works of Op. 59, and Opp.
74 and 95, are not opposites. Consider, for example, the climactic presenta-
tion of themes in the coda in the first two works of Op. 59; and the new
expressive slow movements developed in all three quartets of Op. 59 – these
are all ‘path-breaking’ features of the opus. The first and last quartets of
Op. 59 also exhibit pronounced points of contact, especially in common
72
Webster, ‘Middle-Period String Quartets’. 73
Ibid., pp. 125–6.
Op. 59 and the ‘opus concept’ 165
relationship to Fidelio. And all the middle-period quartets are connected in

terms of theatrical inspiration.
Then, in many respects, the quartets of Op. 59 are highly individualised;
consider the treatment of sonata form, for example. While the works share
an emphasis on the use of sonata forms, the treatment is not the same across
the opus. In the first quartet, the expansion of and breaking away from
sonata forms is radical. The second quartet, however, expands inwards
in terms of expression and the forms tend to be traditional and well
articulated. In the third quartet, sonata forms are vigorously manipulated
once again, most prominently in the outer movements. This individuality
does not undermine the sense of connectedness binding the three works.
Commentators point out that movement-level diversity is a key new com-
positional concern of Beethoven’s in this opus; this is especially obvious in
the case of the third quartet, but the entire opus can be said to exhibit ‘unity
in diversity’, a much-prized aesthetic quality c. 1800.74
The question arises of whether some or all of the common elements in
Op. 59 might add up to a higher-level, overarching ‘opus idea’. The works
are clearly in the same thought universe: do they share a trajectory or orbit?
Gülke pursues this issue in his quest for a ‘conception’ of Op. 59, Finscher in
his perusal of a socio-musical ‘interpretation’ of the set.75 Some of the
categories of comparison that have been adduced in discussions of cyclic
integration in Op. 59 refer to processes that operate across the three works.
For example, one can (and Kerman does) speak of a process of increasing
end-orientation in the opus.76 This can be understood in terms of the tonal
tendency towards C (the key of resolution/hope/happiness), and also of the
function of the coda across the work. While the first movement of Op. 59
No. 1 has an extensive coda, by the third quartet the functional weight of the
coda has shifted clearly to the finale.
A further developmental process in the entire opus is the prevailing
technique of ‘developing variations’, whereby themes are immediately var-
ied and the sense in which any given passage (for example, a ‘second group’)
is new is undermined. Lenz captured this process neatly in his comments on
No. 3: ‘once more a new composer and yet the same hallmark of unending
fantasy’.77 This technique is related melodically to the way movements tend
74
On the opus concept c. 1800, and the musical-rhetorical creation of unity within diversity
therein, see E. Sisman, ‘Six of One: The Opus Concept in the Eighteenth Century’, pp. 79–107.
75
Gülke, ‘Zur musikalischen Konzeption der Rasumowsky-Quartette’; Finscher, ‘Beethovens
Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’.
76
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 134. 77 Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. IV, p. 42.
to begin in medias res, and harmonically to the deployment of tonalities

that ‘hover’ and emerge. This is especially marked in the outer movements
of No. 3, both of which take some time to reach a strong cadence in the
tonic. By these means, then, the sense of the process-orientation of the
works emerges especially clearly in this opus. Process-orientation has been
considered a defining feature of Beethoven’s ‘new path’ in the middle
period.78 The extended process-orientation found in these works, in turn,
can be used to develop our knowledge of melancholy voice, among the
lesser-studied voices of this music.
Finscher sees the increasingly prominent and parodistic treatment of
fugue across the three works as an important aspect of their cyclic integra-
tion, but does not ascribe to it any larger significance with respect to the idea
of string quartets.79 Gülke starts to work in this direction, noting the
dialectic of learned and popular that marked discourse about string quartets
c. 1800; however, he tends to emphasise the ‘synthesising’ function of Op. 59
in this regard, as did the earlier commentators.80 We have seen, however,
that the fugue is hardly ‘synthesised’ at the end of the finale of No. 3.
Sounded as a serious element of composition in the development section
of the first movement of the first quartet, fugue is then treated with
theatrical play in the third movement of the second quartet, and finally
resoundingly trumped by homophony in the finale of the third quartet. This
is especially apparent in the final coda section, where a tentative strand of
polyphony gives way to a tour de force homophonic crescendo.
In a parallel and equally important process, ‘voice’ and the ‘finding of
voice’ are invoked in numerous ways across the opus. This happens in the
process-orientation of the first quartet, the songful rhapsody of the second,
and the use of folksong in both quartets; it is invoked most clearly in the
‘searching’ music, recitatives and Erzählton of the last quartet. In the finale,
with a triumphant coup de théâtre, the compositional persona at last finds
his voice, commanding fugue – the hallowed traditional texture of the ‘true’
string quartet – to retreat. Such a striking ironic reversal would have been
readily apparent to listeners in Beethoven’s day, especially those ‘educated
friends of music’ in his own quartet-playing circle. Thus Beethoven created
a shocking yet delightful end to a radically explorative opus, and a worthy
yet daring tribute to his musical patron Rasumovsky and his illustrious
quartet-writing forebears, above all Haydn.
78
See especially Dahlhaus, ‘Beethovens “Neuer Weg”’.
79
Finscher, ‘Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 59, 3’, pp. 132–4.
80
Gülke, ‘Zur musikalischen Konzeption der Rasumowsky-Quartette’, especially pp. 238–9.
6 ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’: songful impetus
and dualistic voice in the ‘Harp’ Quartet
Of all Beethoven’s quartets, Op. 74, nicknamed ‘Harfenquartett’ (Harp

Quartet), has been the most variously received. Over the course of the
work’s two-hundred-year reception, history writers have equivocated about
its standing within Beethoven’s string quartet oeuvre and its genre status in
general. Meanwhile opinions as to the work’s prevailing tone have undergone
a radical shift. Is the work essentially melancholic, predominantly mirthful,
neither, or both? Nineteenth-century writers tended to consider Op. 74
prevalently serious and sorrowful in tone, but also mixed or dualistic in
character. Today’s listeners may well find this view surprising: later commen-
tators have tended to consider Op. 74 generally light and cheerful, and the
work is no longer described as particularly dualistic. I shall first examine the
reception of Op. 74 in more detail, to develop an understanding of these
changing views, before turning to ways that today’s perceptions of the work
might be broadened.
Reception
A review of the first edition of Op. 74 for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
in 1811 provides a usefully detailed example of the earlier perspective on the
work. The writer found Op. 74 to be ‘more serious than mirthful, more deep
and artful than cheerful and appealing’. The slow movement, in particular,
could be characterised as a ‘dark nocturne’. The reviewer found the work
problematically diverse in its affects: its inward seriousness was disturbed
by whimsical pizzicati in the first movement, and in the third movement
one heard ‘savage national war dances’. With these extremes of affect, and
an apparent lack of connection between musical ideas, the work often fell
far short of the writer’s expectations for the genre: Op. 74 had ‘more the
appearance of a free fantasia than of a well-governed whole’. Alighting on a
particularly troubling spot, the reviewer found the second half of the Adagio
to stray close to the limits of fine art.1
1
Anon., ‘Recension [Op. 74]’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 13 (1811), 350–1. 167
168 Songful impetus and dualistic voice in the ‘Harp’ Quartet
Later nineteenth-century writers would subscribe to this writer’s opinion

as to the essentially earnest character of the work, while accepting, exploring
and even praising a certain dualism that they considered inherent in the
music. Like the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer, Lenz (in 1860)
finds that ‘the overall character of the work is serious’.2 However, Helm
observes that ‘the mood [Stimmung] of the E flat major quartet is one
originally dualistic [eine eigenthümlich dualistische]’.3 Unlike the earlier
reviewer, who seems to have been shocked by the work’s modernism, Lenz
(who had, after all, heard all of Beethoven’s later quartets) considers Op. 74 an
essentially backwards-looking work, caught in a stylistic time warp between
the traditional quartets of Op. 18 and the ‘emancipated’ and ‘personalised’
Op. 59. In his analysis of Op. 74, he sets out the aspects of the work that
he considers to belong to the ‘traditional’ quartet style (especially the form
of the opening Allegro and the tonal conception of the slow movement),
together with those that for him signify the ‘emancipated’ quartet style: the
development of quartet-specific instrumental technique; the use of thematic-
ally independent episodes in the slow movement; the polyphony of the
variation style; and the Presto in general.4
Marx, too, was convinced of the work’s dualistic character, and the marked
presence of sorrowful and melancholy affects, especially in the slow move-
ment. But he turns away from Lenz’s view in a significant respect, seeing
Op. 74 as an essentially futuristic work with strong links to the late quartets.
From the outset, he finds, it initiates the sense of self-abandonment to the
most intimate feelings that would characterise the later works. For Marx the
work opens up not so much the realm of the symphonic/heroic sublime, as
in Hoffmann’s 1810 view of the almost contemporaneous Fifth Symphony,
but a quite different and altogether irresistible dreaming realm where there
are no fixed moods or forms. However, alongside this dreamlike mood or
voice (Stimmung), Marx notes a certain lusty, powerful manliness, especially
in the third-movement Presto. This, he finds, is the persistent but waning
symphonic/heroic style, with its battle images and generally more fixed
moods and forms, which Beethoven was to leave completely behind in the
late quartets.5 Helm largely agrees with Marx, although his analysis is couched
in less poetic terms. He draws on Wagner’s 1870 essay on Beethoven, as
2
3
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 118. Here he also speaks of ‘die zwei gegensätzlichen
Stimmungen’ (the two opposing moods/voices) of the work.
4
Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. IV, pp. 167–78.
5
Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, pp. 311 and 314–16.
Reception 169
well as Marx, praising in the work Beethoven’s apparently new-found

‘Subjektivität’ (subjectivity) in string quartet composition.6
In more recent reception, the terms in which Op. 74 is appraised have
been turned upside-down more thoroughly. In twentieth- and twenty-first-
century writings, the work is often held to be problematically unproblem-
atic, cheerful and something of a ‘retrenchment’ (in Kerman’s terms) after
the vast new expressive and technical territories opened up in Op. 59.
Kerman’s view is in effect the polar opposite from that of the 1811 reviewer:
Op. 74 is ‘an open, unproblematic, lucid work of consolidation’; indeed, it is
‘ostentatiously at peace with itself’.7 Michael Steinberg, too, reads the work
as cheerful in tone and outward-reaching: Op. 74 is ‘genial and inviting of
access’.8 Like Kerman, Webster emphasises poise and polish: ‘The “Harp”
Quartet’, he observes, ‘ends with a plain set of variations exquisitely poised,
perfectly articulated.’9
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers have linked the simple, appeal-
ing tone of Op. 74 (as it is now often described) to changing socio-cultural
circumstances in Beethoven’s Vienna. ‘In 1808’, writes Kerman, ‘[Beethoven]
may have privately made up his mind to take the next opportunity to write,
have played, and publish a quartet that would be pre-eminently “available” to
his essential public. That, in any case, is what he produced within eighteen
months in the E flat Quartet.’10 More recently, Indorf repeats Kerman’s
conjecture that the style of Op. 74 stems from Beethoven’s concern to reach
out to his quartet-listening public in a new way:
The new structurally simpler E-flat major quartet suggests . . . that Beethoven also
sought to open up his chamber music to a broader, prevailingly bourgeois public.
The effects of the Napoleonic conquest left the impression that aristocratic salon
culture no longer had a future.11
Like Kerman, Indorf suggests that the work is more complex than it first
appears; yet both writers ultimately emphasise simplicity of form, motivic
treatment and harmonic working in their analyses.12
6
7
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 156 and 159. See also Kerman and Tyson (with Burnham)
in the New Grove Dictionary, where it is claimed that ‘Nothing about this work is problematic’,
s.v. ‘Beethoven, Ludwig van, §15: Middle-period works’, p. 102.
8
M. Steinberg, ‘Notes on the Quartets’, in Winter and Martin (eds.), The Beethoven Quartet
Companion, p. 197.
9
Webster, ‘Middle-Period String Quartets’, p. 123.
10
11
G. Indorf, ‘Werkbesprechungen’, in M. Moosdorf (ed.), Ludwig van Beethoven: die
Streichquartette (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2007), p. 78.
12
Indorf, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 310–26; Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 158–68.
This emphasis on simplicity in Op. 74 prevails, although Marston’s

detailed critical analysis, focusing on the final movement, reveals complex-
ities in thematic treatment (structural voice-leading) and tonality in partic-
ular.13 Standing in the way of a wider understanding of Op. 74’s complexities
are comparisons of the work to Op. 95, which Beethoven titled ‘quartetto
serioso’. Scholars have tended to represent Op. 74 as a less serious work,
even a ‘quartetto non serioso’, compared with Op. 95.14 A simple opposition
is implicit in discussion of these two works: Op. 74 as a more ‘public’ string
quartet versus Op. 95 as more ‘private’ in its discourse and intended audience.
The terms of comparison of these quartets in twentieth- and twenty-first-
century scholarship are encapsulated in Kerman’s notion that Op. 74 looks
backwards and outwards while Op. 95 looks forwards and inwards.15 The
tendency to appeal to one side of binary oppositions in writing about Op. 74
(and Op. 95) persists, although scholars use sophisticated arguments and
adopt the spirit of critique.16
What is one to make of the divergent critical pronouncements on Op. 74?
Are they, as Drabkin surmised in 2006, unhelpfully ‘fragile’ because fluctu-
ating?17 It seems reasonable to suppose that the fluctuations speak to the
changing aesthetic stances from which listeners have received the work.
These critical views of Op. 74 are to some extent historically determined,
varying over time; but they have also varied quite widely between contem-
poraries. In 1965, for instance, Radcliffe pointed out that even among the
more recent scholars of his time there was a lack of consensus as to the work’s
affect, especially in the case of the slow movement. He speaks of the
Scherzo’s ‘enigmatic’ quality and the finale theme’s ‘curiously hesitant
character’, suggesting that the work’s varied reception is due to its less
clear-cut or distinctive disposition: Op. 74 presents ‘in some ways a
less vividly marked personality than the “Rasumovsky” Quartets’.18 This
13
N. Marston, ‘Analysing Variations: The Finale of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 74’, Music
Analysis, 8 (1989), 303–24.
14
See P. Griffiths, The String Quartet: A History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983), p. 92.
15
16
On the quartet’s ‘backward’ glance (relation to tradition), see N. Marston, ‘“Haydns Geist aus
Beethovens Händen”? Fantasy and Farewell in the Quartet in E flat, Op. 74’, in Kinderman (ed.),
The String Quartets of Beethoven, pp. 109–31; and E. Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 242–6. On forward-looking aspects of the
work, see S. Rumph, Beethoven after Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 101–3. H. Krones is one of the few recent
writers to discuss the work’s ‘inward’ and sorrowful nature: ‘Streichquartett Es-Dur,
“Harfenquartett” op. 74’, in Riethmüller, Dahlhaus and Ringer (eds.), Beethoven:
Interpretationen seiner Werke, vol. I, pp. 585–92.
17
Drabkin, ‘Brought to Book?’, 87. 18 Radcliffe, Beethoven’s String Quartets, pp. 86–7.
Reception 171
view resonates with that of Lenz, who heard Op. 74 as a retreat from the
‘personalised’ works of Op. 59. Yet other nineteenth-century writers did
not find Op. 74 to be less ‘personal’: the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
reviewer, for instance, acknowledged the work to be wholly Beethovenian in
its waywardness.19
The divergent views of Op. 74 arguably reflect the work’s generally multi-
faceted and fundamentally dualistic nature, rather than any lack of person-
ality. Certainly the 1811 reviewer was provoked by the work’s complexities
and various voices, which were considered flaws, failures on Beethoven’s part
to meet expectations for string quartet composition. The work’s dualisms
clearly both provoked and moved nineteenth-century listeners. However, this
dualistic character, and the work’s complexities more generally, seem to
have been largely lost from view as newer aesthetic and analytical paradigms
took hold in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In emphasising
either side of any of the various binary oppositions, modern analysts have
missed opportunities to reveal and reinterpret the tensions that Beethoven
wove into the work.
One can probe these tensions further, and approach them with a positive
line of questioning: in which senses does the quartet look both forwards
and backwards, and both inwards and outwards; how might it be under-
stood as both sorrowful and joyful; and in what senses is the work both
‘public’ and ‘private’? Appropriate aesthetic and analytical frameworks are
needed to begin to answer such questions. For analytical purposes, in the
following discussion of Op. 74 I emphasise the ‘secondary’ parameters of
texture, timbre and register. To date, analysts of this work have tended not
to foreground these parameters, despite evidence that timbre, in particular,
is in this case at least as important as the so-called ‘primary’ parameters of
melody, harmony and rhythm.
Regarding aesthetic frameworks, Marston and Sisman have discussed
nineteenth-century ideas of ‘fantasia’ and the ‘characteristic’ in musical
works; both provide useful hermeneutic windows on Beethoven’s works
of this era, and those of 1809 in particular.20 But Op. 74’s characters have
proved altogether harder to pin down than those of Beethoven’s contempor-
aneous piano sonatas, which Sisman considers in detail. In revisiting
nineteenth-century standpoints on Op. 74, broad and potentially dualistic
historical conceptions of this work’s Stimmungen (moods/voices) are espe-
cially useful for understanding its aesthetic world. There is a strong emphasis
19
Anon., ‘Recension [Op. 74]’, 351.
20
Marston, ‘“Haydns Geist aus Beethovens Händen”?’; Sisman, ‘After the Heroic Style’.
on lyricism in Op. 74 overall, and nineteenth-century ideas of songful

unfolding are especially helpful in clarifying the aesthetics of the slow move-
ment in particular. Contemporary conceptions of melancholy as a dualistic
temperament engendering ‘pleasing pain’ are also highly relevant, along with
contemporary ideas of the heroic that emphasise constancy, endurance and
resignation, and can involve reflection, passivity and lament.21
The work is, I maintain, at once ‘freudvoll und leidvoll’ (joyful and
sorrowful) in its overall affect, like Klärchen from Goethe and Beethoven’s
Egmont. Indeed, in this chapter and Chapter 7, I argue that both Op. 74 and
Op. 95, despite their overtly different characters, show links and parallels to
various ‘voices’ and aspects of drama in Egmont. The connections are subtle
and slight in the case of Op. 74: Beethoven had only just begun sketching
ideas for Egmont during the composition of the quartet. In fact, the
influence may have worked more in the opposite direction, from chamber
to theatre, the work on Op. 74 helping him to develop ideas for Egmont.
Contexts of composition
The year in which Op. 74 was composed, 1809, has frequently been singled
out as a turning point in Beethoven’s life and career. For Georgio Pestelli and
Rumph, the changes that Beethoven experienced in that year – politically,
personally and musically – were so significant as to be period-defining.22
These scholars take 1809 as the beginning of Beethoven’s second and final
creative period. The more typical ‘three period’ schema is usually parsed so
that 1809 falls squarely within the second or middle period, which is typically
considered to have lasted until c. 1812.23 Thus 1809 is accorded only secon-
dary importance. Let us keep both approaches to 1809 in mind. If the events
and changes of that year are considered from Beethoven’s immediate per-
spective, rather than with two hundred years’ hindsight, they can be under-
stood not only as caesurae and turning points engendering a new direction
for the composer, but also as bends, seeming dead ends and detours in a maze
of experience, giving rise to a fresh sense of uncertainty.
21
Here I draw on the understanding of ‘heroic’ in Beethoven’s day developed by Lockwood,
‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of Heroism’, pp. 36–44; and Head, ‘Beethoven Heroine’,
especially 101–6.
22
Rumph, Beethoven after Napoleon, pp. 92–3; and G. Pestelli, The Age of Mozart and Beethoven,
trans. E. Cross (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 240. Similar, too, is the periodisation
implicit in Sisman, ‘After the Heroic Style’.
23
See Kerman and Tyson (with Burnham), s.v. ‘Beethoven, Ludwig van, §11: The “three periods”’,
p. 95.
Contexts of composition 173
An annuity granted to Beethoven in 1809 by three Viennese princes –

Lobkowitz, Kinsky and Archduke Rudolph – meant that he would continue
to reside and work in Vienna. This should have meant that Beethoven was
about to enjoy some financial and artistic freedom. However, passages from
his correspondence of that year, such as the following excerpt from a letter
to his Leipzig publisher Gottfried Härtel, reveal that the invading French
troops stood firmly and frustratingly in the way of this freedom. Rapid
inflation ate into the expected worth of Beethoven’s annuity, and so he
would have to remain in occupied Vienna rather than seeking peace and
inspiration in the country, as was his wont:
Heaven knows what is going to happen – normally I should now be having a change
of scene and air – the levies are beginning this very day – what a destructive, disorderly
life I see and hear around me, nothing but drums, cannons, and human misery in
every form – My present condition now compels me to be stingy with you again.24
Perhaps the most crucial turning point was the changing of the guard in
the Viennese musical world. With the deaths of Haydn and Albrechtsberger
that year, Beethoven was poised to take over as heir to the Viennese composi-
tional tradition. This was both an endpoint to be lamented – the real end of
the ‘old school’ of composition as Beethoven knew and studied it – and a
beginning. Beethoven’s intensive studies of earlier music at this time, and
particularly counterpoint, suggest that tradition now felt like a burden to
be borne, or at least a force to be reckoned with. Marston invokes Harold
Bloom’s notion of the ‘anxiety of influence’ to describe Beethoven’s likely
state of mind at this juncture – acutely aware of the weight of precedent as
he turned back to the string quartet, which by now was considered one of
the most elevated of musical genres.25
We can date the composition of Op. 74 to the period between May and
September 1808; but most of the work was probably done in August and
September.26 In a letter to Breitkopf of 26 July, Beethoven complains further
of the disruption and noise caused by the French invasion: ‘since May 4th
[when Archduke Rudolph departed for Hungary] I have produced very little
coherent work, at most a fragment here or there’.27 In Landsberg 5, a
lengthy series of ‘fragments here and there’ precede the more coherent
sketching of Op. 74. The fragments include sketches for original composi-
tions and excerpts from the composition treatises of Fux, Albrechtsberger
24
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, vol. II, p. 71.
25
Marston, ‘“Haydns Geist aus Beethovens Händen”?’, pp. 125 and 129.
26
See Brenneis, Ein Skizzenbuch, vol. II, p. 49. 27 Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, vol. II, p. 71.
and Kirnberger. Beethoven was evidently preparing to instruct Archduke

Rudolph in counterpoint: the lessons commenced around the end of January
1810. He seems to have written out various excerpts, including counterpoint
by C. P. E. and W. F. Bach, in order to internalise more thoroughly the
language of traditional compositional practice and instruction. In a short
note to himself on page 50, he observes: ‘the best way to become practised
in composition, about which one speaks or thinks, is to write it out’.28 The
contrapuntal practice left its mark on Op. 74.
E flat major loomed large in Beethoven’s key choices in 1809. He com-
posed works in this key in the three major genres to which he now turned: the
Fifth Piano Concerto, the ‘Lebewohl’ Piano Sonata, Op. 81a, and the String
Quartet Op. 74. The music for Egmont, for which he received the commission
that year, also contains three lengthy numbers in E flat: the second and fourth
entr’acte music, and Egmont’s melodrama. Why this emphasis on a single
key, which is unprecedented in Beethoven’s oeuvre, and why specifically
E flat major? Theorists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
associated this key with rather a mixed bag of affects. The more serious
emotions predominate, but they are not easily classifiable as straightfor-
wardly painful or sorrowful: E flat major can be pathetic, gloomy or solemn,
but also noble and even heroic; in eighteenth-century opera, it has a marked
association with ombra.29 The key was also recurrently associated with love
and devotion. Schubart and others connected the three flats to the Holy
Trinity.30 E. T. A. Hoffmann nicely captures the duality of the key in his
observation that it calls up the sound of horns ‘voll Lust und Wehmuth’ (full
of pleasure and melancholy), and Gardiner finds that it is ‘less decided in its
character than some of the others’, which could be understood as a virtue.31
Beethoven seems to have found in E flat major a flexible key that under-
scored primarily serious emotions and permitted a certain duality of affect.
Sustained E flat sonorities are used in both the finale of the Ninth Symphony
and the Credo of the Missa Solemnis to invoke sublime mystery, a simulta-
neous sense of ‘eternity and expectation’ associated with the presence of the
28
Brenneis, Ein Skizzenbuch, vol. I, p. 50; vol. II, p. 100.
29
For an overview, see C. McClelland, Ombra: Supernatural Music in the Eighteenth Century
(Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2012), especially Chapter 2, ‘Tonality’, pp. 23–46.
30
Schubart, Ideen, p. 377.
31
E. T. A. Hoffmann, Fantasiestücke, vol. II, p. 325; trans. M. Clarke, in D. Charlton (ed.), E. T. A.
Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: ‘Kreisleriana’, ‘The Poet and the Composer’, Music Criticism
(Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 134; W. Gardiner (ed.), in Stendhal [M.-H. Beyle], The
Lives of Haydn and Mozart, with Observations on Metastasio, and on the Present State of Music in
France and Italy, trans. L. A. C. Bombet, 2nd edn (London: Murray, 1818), p. 100.
Contexts of composition 175
deity.32 E flat major could be used to portray a complex psyche or situation,

so it was a key suitable for the dream scene (melodrama) in Egmont, and the
complexities and dualities of love in general.33 The song texts that Beethoven
set in this key share a general theme of pain related either to love or to war. In
songs in this key, he uses shifts towards and prolongations of subdominant
regions to convey moments of particular poignancy and deep feeling. In
the 1809 song ‘Als die Geliebte sich trennen wollte’ (When the beloved
wanted to depart), WoO 132, for example, tonal shifts towards the flat side
underscore key words designating subjective engagement, identification
and experience in the text: ‘Bewusst sein’, ‘wer liebt’, ‘vergessen’ (to be aware,
he/she who loves, to forget).
Beethoven’s particular interest in song and voice at this point in his career
was also important for the conception of Op. 74. Despite changing aesthetic
values in the early decades of the nineteenth century, large-scale vocal works
and vocally inspired compositions were still highly privileged. Haydn had
placed his vocal works ahead of instrumental works in public statements
about his oeuvre, recognised his own skill in vocal music, and lamented that
he had not written more of it.34 In 1815, Beethoven showed a similar desire
to associate himself with the ‘nobility’ of the voice. He placed the following
dedication from the Odyssey at the top of the score of his setting of Goethe’s
Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt, Op. 112:
Alle sterbliche Menschen der Erde nehmen die Sänger
Billig mit Achtung auf und Ehrfurcht, selber die Muse
Lehrt sie den hohen Gesang, und waltet über die Sänger.
(All mortals upon earth treat singers
Freely with attention and respect; the Muse herself
Teaches them noble song, and rules over singers.)
As Rumph points out, with this inscription Beethoven positions himself in the
august company of Homer and Goethe.35 Demodokos, to whom Odysseus
addresses himself here, was the blind harpist-singer traditionally identified
with Homer.
32
See the discussion in W. Kinderman, ‘Beethoven’s Symbol for the Deity in the Missa Solemnis
and the Ninth Symphony’, 19th-Century Music, 9 (1985), especially 113–15.
33
The association of E flat major with dreams was not new: examples include Alessandro Scarlatti’s
use of the key for the dream about a ghost in Act II, Scene 9, in his Massimo Puppieno (1695); and
E flat is associated with the dreaming state, and with the moon, in Haydn’s Il mondo della luna.
34
G. A. Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1810),
p. 118; trans. V. Gotwals as Joseph Haydn: Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Genius (Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), p. 63.
35
Rumph, Beethoven after Napoleon, p. 98.
Beethoven’s interest in and output of vocal music intensified c. 1809. The

songs of Op. 75 were published, and he had begun work on the setting of
Scottish folksongs for George Thomson, sending off a first batch of forty-
five in July. The study, by means of singing, of vocal and instrumental music
of the past had also become particularly important to Beethoven at this time.
In a letter of 26 July that year, he made a request of Breitkopf and Härtel:
I had begun to have a little singing party at my rooms every week – but that accursed
war put a stop to everything – With this in view and in any case for many other
reasons I should be delighted if you would send me by degrees most of the scores
you have, I mean, those of Haydn, Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Emanuel Bach
and so forth.36
The purpose of this party seems to have been twofold: Beethoven goes on
to mention both ‘real enjoyment’ and ‘the purpose of study’ with regard to
Emanuel Bach’s works in particular. Next to a quartet sketch following
those of Op. 74 in Landsberg 5, Beethoven made the notes ‘Tomaselli’ and
‘quartetti alle Wochen’ (quartets every week). Possibly Giuseppe Tomaselli,
a prominent Viennese singing teacher and lead singer of the Hofkapelle, was
present at or invited to the singing parties, which might well also have
afforded an opportunity to play string quartets every week. The following
year he requested, among other works, Bach’s Mass in B minor and the
scores of Mozart’s Requiem, Clemenza di Tito, Così fan tutte, Le nozze di
Figaro, Don Giovanni – ‘as my little parties at home are being resumed’.37
Beethoven would have considered the study of this music of the past –
vocal or instrumental – to be important for the development of his own style.
Song or ‘songful ideas’ were thought fundamental to compositional inspira-
tion, and were deemed crucial to the outstanding instrumental music pro-
duced by composers such as C. P. E. Bach and Haydn. In his 1810 biography
of Haydn, Georg August Griesinger reports that song was essential to Haydn’s
inventio (process of compositional invention) in vocal and instrumental
music, and that the composer insisted that ‘fließender Gesang’ (fluent song)
was a prerequisite for all good music.38 In 1801, J. F. K. Triest had noted the
songful basis of Haydn’s instrumental music, described C. P. E. Bach’s
compositional process in terms similar to those of Griesinger, and praised
Mozart’s facility as a vocal composer in the highest terms. Regarding Bach,
Triest observed: ‘What was stirring in [C. P. E. Bach] was a kind of aesthetic
idea, i.e. one that combines concepts and emotion, and that does not
36
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, vol. II, p. 72; trans. Rumph, Beethoven after Napoleon, p. 97.
37
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, vol. II, p. 236.
38
Griesinger, Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn, p. 113.
Movement I: melancholy song or mechanical instrument? 177
allow itself to be expressed in words, although it comes very close to the

specific emotion that song can depict for us, and of which it is, as it were, the
archetype.’39 In line with these comments, Beethoven made the following
note in an instruction book for Archduke Rudolph: ‘Fine song was my guide;
I strove to write as fluently as possible, and I trusted myself to be answerable
for it before the judge of common sense and pure taste.’40
In this context, Beethoven’s vocally based study of his predecessors’ vocal
and instrumental works could be expected to leave traces on works such as
Op. 74, although not in any simple way. ‘Voice’ in this work does not merely
connote beautiful, songlike melodies, even though one certainly finds them.
Rather, as it is in the music of Haydn and C. P. E. Bach, ‘voice’ and ‘song’
should be understood broadly as aesthetic ideas fundamental to Beethoven’s
initial inventio and his manner of developing musical ideas in the quartet,
from the level of the phrase to that of the work. The fact that Beethoven had
turned so purposefully to Mozart’s operas suggests that skilled character-
isation and dramatic plotting were in the foreground of his compositional
thinking at this juncture, and not necessarily just in his work on vocal music
or works for the theatre.
Movement I: melancholy song or mechanical instrument?
The work’s fundamentally songful nature is apparent from the start. The
opening bars, marked sotto voce in all parts, immediately create a sense of
voice, a speaking, perhaps singing, and certainly questioning voice. The first
gesture bears melodic affinities (the falling minor sixth; Ex. 6.1) to Beethoven’s
setting of the phrases ‘wann/wo/wie denkst du mein?’ (when/where/how do
you think of me?) in his D major Lied ‘Andenken’ (Memory) (WoO 136,
composed 1808; Ex. 6.2).41 Songful the opening of Op. 74 may be, simple it is
not. Tonally, the discourse is immediately equivocal. There is a direct move
towards subdominant regions: the cello’s second note and the violin’s fourth
is D[, an inflection that colours several passages in the remainder of the
movement and each of the following movements, notably the finale. One
39
J. K. F. Triest, ‘Bemerkungen über die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschland im achtzehnten
Jahrhundert’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 3 (1801), 300; trans. Susan Gillespie as ‘Remarks
on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century’, in Sisman (ed.),
Haydn and His World, p. 346. (Italics original.)
40
Quoted in F. Kerst, Beethoven im eigenen Wort (Leipzig: Schuster and Loeffler, 1904), p. 45.
41
Marx was the first to identify the rhetorical likeness of this phrase to the phrase ‘Denkst du
mein’, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 312.
Ex. 6.1 Op. 74, movement one, bars 1–4
Ex. 6.2 ‘Andenken’, WoO 136, bars 16–18
might relate this chromatic shading to the recurrent C] that casts its shadow
across the Third Symphony.42 Perhaps more pertinent is the C–D[–C motion
in Fidelio, which is associated with Leonore’s pain (the ‘Schmerz’ motif)
and Florestan’s melancholy memories. In Egmont, Beethoven will incorporate
D[–C motion into Klärchen’s Lied ‘Die Trommel gerühret!’ (The drum
beats), as she registers her interior sensations at the prospect (both exciting
and disquieting) of carrying out heroic deeds. And D[s significantly darken
the discourse in the Andante agitato that precedes her suicide. The D[–C
motion in Op. 74 is similarly pervasive and unsettling.
Subtly disquieting, too, is the registral interchange between the first and
second violins (see bars 4–6 and 10), confounding the sense of a single voice.
The tentative, searching nature of the music is reinforced by the forte triple-
stopped secondary dominant seventh chord in bar 13, and again with more
emphasis in bar 17 where the D[ inflection of the first violin is projected
42
See Rumph, Beethoven after Napoleon, p. 102.
up an octave; these chords suggest a gruffly refuting interlocutor. More

direction in the discourse is found in bar 18, where there is an upward
chromatic transformation of the opening idea in the first violin, then the
cello moves to the dominant from the depths. The slow chromatic ascent to
the dominant, and the abrupt shift in all musical parameters at the tempo
change, connect the opening of Op. 74 to ‘La Malinconia’ from the finale of
Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18 No. 5. The voices invoked in Op. 74,
though, are more gentle and subdued than those of ‘La Malinconia’, with its
more extreme dynamic, registral and tonal shifts.
The fundamentally dual character of Op. 74 is soon apparent. As in ‘La
Malinconia’, the earnest, equivocal, searching discourse of the opening
Adagio is not thoroughly answered or resolved as the movement progresses;
the tensions apparent in this opening are prolonged and exacerbated. The
upward E flat major chordal gesture at the beginning of the Allegro might
seem to revise the tentative opening utterance, restating this gesture in a
much more tonally, registrally and rhythmically stable form. But the ensu-
ing melody contrasts emphatically with the articulated chordal motif,
being smooth, songful and tinted again with D[ (bar 28). Lenz suggests
that the ‘artistic soul’s awareness in the songful motif of the first Allegro’ is
‘laughing wistfully, not cheerfully’.43
Modern-day listeners are inclined to hear this musical discourse as suave,
charming, polished and poised, but certain listeners of Beethoven’s day
heard in it an intrusive and increasingly wayward compositional voice. To
the 1811 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer’s ear, the earnest tone
that Beethoven set in the slow introduction was disrupted by the launige
(whimsical) pizzicato. In bar 35, a sequence of harp-like arpeggio flourishes
commences, which recurs in various guises across the entire work. More
generally problematic for the early listeners was the seeming lack of melodic
relationship between ideas, which led the reviewer to liken the work to free
fantasia. Certainly there are melodic connections to be found throughout
the first movement of Op. 74. The pizzicato passage itself, comprising triads
that move up through the voices of the quartet in bars 35–42, relates back
to the staccato triad at the opening of the Allegro. But these connections are
somewhat hidden, like those in free fantasias of the time, and can easily be
missed as the listener is swept along from songful lyricism to seemingly
oppositional launige play with distinctly instrumental (harp-like) sounds.
In 1805, Carl Friedrich Michaelis had described and praised the free fantasia
as exemplary of a serious, earnest kind of musical humour in which ‘the
43
impressions conflict strangely with each other and in which the imagination
cannot quite enjoy free play’.44 The witty play with sound itself at this point
in the exposition can be heard as part of an artful sequence of impressions
that ‘conflict strangely’ with each other, and draw attention to the wayward
compositional voice behind the work.
In this movement, as in the work as a whole, the parameters of texture,
register and rhythm are crucial to the action, a drama that is real, visceral
and visible to the listener/viewer. Registral disjunction in the cello and viola
underscores the haunting allusion to the opening Adagio in bars 43–7,
where D[s intrude once more. This passage constitutes a transition to the
dominant, similarly abrupt to that in the analogous place in the first move-
ment of the ‘Eroica’ (similar tonal moves, same key). The forte chords on the
secondary dominant of B[ (bars 43 and 45) project the discourse onwards,
and perhaps revise the arresting or refuting chords of bars 13 and 17.
Registral expansion proceeds rapidly in the exposition by means of the
sweeping pizzicato arpeggios and a quickening of rhythmic pace as semi-
quaver runs surge upwards through all parts (bars 52–5).
The treatment of quartet space is just as exciting and dramatic as that
in Op. 59, with its highly visual ‘bungee jumps’ and other registral antics
involving all the parts. Consider the two-octave leap in the first violin in bar 57
from the new high point of top B[, and the simultaneous chromatic plunge
to the low D in the cello. Kerman argues that the development section entails
little ‘real action’, being tonally static.45 True, there is much emphasis on
C major; yet in rhythmic and registral terms the action persists. Registral
expansion is completed within the development with a dramatic move out-
wards to c4 in the first violin and low C in the cello in bar 92. The second violin
also soars to a new high point here (g3), overlapping the first violin.
The exchange of musical material between voices, a feature of the work
more generally, takes on a quasi-mechanical quality as the movement pro-
gresses; this contrasts with the lyrical voices heard in the exposition and adds
considerably to the sense of whimsical play and Haydnesque wit.46 Having
been wound up registrally and rhythmically, the ‘quartet instrument’ now
44
C. F. Michaelis, ‘Ueber das Humoristische oder Launige in der musikalischen Komposition’,
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 9 (1807), 727; trans. le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics in
the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries, p. 291.
45
46
On this subject, see J. M. Levy, ‘“Something Mechanical Encrusted on the Living”: A Source of
Musical Wit and Humor’, in W. J. Allenbrook, J. Levy and W. P. Mahrt (eds.), Convention in
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music: Essays in Honor of Leonard G. Ratner (Stuyvesant,
NY: Pendragon Press, 1992), pp. 225–56. Not surprisingly, Levy draws numerous examples from
Haydn’s string quartets.
proceeds to wind down, step by step, at first through a graduated descent in

the first violin. The cello hits bottom C (the lower limit of quartet space)
repeatedly in bars 108–9 and 113, which contributes to the machine-like
quality of the discourse. Early listeners might have perceived this as ‘straying
close to the limits of fine art’ (in the 1811 reviewer’s terms). There is a marked
darkening in bar 114, where C[s are sounded in the first violin, and the
texture dwindles to a thread, reminiscent of the semiquaver figure first heard
in bar 9. The retransition is characterised by a spectacular registral and
rhythmic build-up (from crotchets to triplet crotchets to quavers to triplet
quavers). The three-octave pizzicato arpeggios are sounded over dominant
harmony (bars 125–38; Ex. 6.3). The effect is both visually and aurally
striking, and will echo through ensuing movements.
The extensive coda beginning in bar 204 proves to be Beethoven’s most
strikingly wayward departure from convention. One first hears fragmentation
of the idea from the end of the exposition (see bars 70–3), then mysterious,
dark, low-register chords heading to C minor (bars 210–14); this intrusion
leads back to a rhythmically and texturally displaced and fragmented version
of the songlike idea from bar 28. One might compare this to Beethoven’s ‘La
Malinconia’, where the music from the slow introduction returns to haunt the
ensuing lively dance. An extended first violin cadenza follows, and thus another
striking textural juxtaposition. The violinist’s showy, quasi-mechanical arpeg-
giation is woven together first with pizzicato arpeggios in the lower voices, then
with the songlike idea, which is introduced in the middle voices in bar 232.
Thus the movement’s apparently conflicting impressions – mechanical or
‘instrumental’, and songful – are artfully juxtaposed in counterpoint. And as
if to reinforce the still contrary nature of the discourse, the ‘harp’ idea is heard
in contrary motion (first pizzicato then with bow) as the movement concludes.
If the ‘quartet instrument’ heard in this movement mimics a harp – the
quartet was nicknamed the ‘Harp’ by mid-nineteenth-century listeners –
then Beethoven would seem to invoke, perhaps even playfully parody, the
rather mechanical, constrained nature of the single harp. This increasingly
popular domestic instrument had a limited capacity to modulate from its
home key of E flat, like the first movement of Op. 74. This limitation was
solved by Pleyel when he patented his double harp in 1810. Whether or not
listeners at the time made this connection, the witty play with technique and
sound in this movement would have been familiar to those who had heard
the ‘ornamental’ or ‘picturesque’ style of Haydn’s late quartets and London
Symphonies, which contemporaries both praised and criticised.47 In Op. 74,
47
On Haydn and the musical picturesque, see Richards, The Free Fantasia, pp. 109–36.

Movement II: a dark nocturne or songful sonic tableau 183
Beethoven matches his forebear in whimsicality and wit, and gives voice to
the more serious brand of musical humour that writers associated with the
free fantasia.
Movement II: a dark nocturne or songful sonic tableau
For the more conservative listeners of the time, such an extensive and mixed
exposé of musical humour in that most hallowed of genres, the string quartet,
was all too shocking. The serious humour of the free fantasia, which the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1811 reviewer recognised in Op. 74, would
have seemed just as audacious as the wittier brand. Free fantasias and works
that invoked fantasia were understood in Beethoven’s day to quarrel with
traditional musical forms and rules, and to generally encroach on genre
expectations. This is reflected in the 1811 reviewer’s verdict that the fantasia
character of the work detracted from one’s sense of the quartet as a unified
whole. Amadeus Wendt registers his disapproval yet more strongly in an
article for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1815, in which he views
incursions into fantasia in Beethoven’s instrumental music as a threat to the
very idea of the self-contained, enduring artwork:
Musical fantasies are usually forgiven the sins against form and rule, when a great
spirit governs them . . . But to transfer this characteristic of the fantasy to other
pieces of music, and so to make musical fantasy rule in the region of the musical
world, can only lead to gross errors. Extravagant wealth of ideas and an inexhaust-
ible originality can reveal themselves there, but clarity, comprehensibility and
order, through which the artwork is the work not just of a temporary mood, but
of lasting pleasure, will often be lacking. It is here that I speak of Beethoven’s gross
errors.48
Dating from around forty years later, Lenz’s account of the work offers a
much more positive reading of the fantasia elements, and a more affirmative
assessment of Op. 74. He finds that Beethoven’s originality is obscured, but
that it runs deep. The scherzo, especially, dwells ‘in the shaft of the free idea’,
and he implies that the other movements exhibit praiseworthy elements
of lebendige Phantasie (living fantasy), although not so consistently as
the scherzo. Approving Beethoven’s original treatment of form in Op. 74,
48
A. Wendt, ‘Gedanken über die neuere Tonkunst, und van Beethovens Musik, namentlich dessen
Fidelio’ (Thoughts about Recent Musical Art, and van Beethoven’s Music, Specifically his Fidelio),
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 17 (1815), 385–6; trans. Richards, The Free Fantasia, p. 207.
(Italics original.)
he characterises the work as more ‘the frame than the picture’, observing:
‘frames of the great masters to maintain their pictures are equally appre-
ciated; thus we see in Op. 74 a frame that does more for the freedom of the
idea than the first six quartet paintings of Beethoven’.49
For the 1811 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer, this play with
frames – the manipulation of formal conventions – was precisely the prob-
lem, rather than a creditable innovation: the slow movement of Op. 74, in
particular, ran too close to the borders of fine art. The originality of this
movement becomes more apparent, and both perspectives more readily
understood, when one focuses on the seemingly ‘transitional’ or episodic
passages, which would traditionally have provided ‘framing’. The complaint
can be reinterpreted as a virtue when one fully appreciates (as did Lenz)
the radical and independent dramatic treatment of these passages, and when
one distinguishes (as did Marx), once again, two Grundstimmungen (funda-
mental voices): one more charming and graceful, the other more wistful.50
The Adagio theme clearly invokes beautiful, songful utterance, as do
a number of Haydn’s slow movements from his earliest string quartets
onwards.51 The lower voices are marked mezza voce, as at the opening of
the first movement, and the first violin is designated cantabile. Chapter 3
refers to features of the F minor Adagio molto e mesto from Op. 59 No. 1
that connect it with this A flat major movement, especially the tonal
emphasis on D flat and the expressive breaking down of beautiful song.
Schubart’s understanding of A flat major as ‘the key of the grave’ seems
fitting, if overstated: ‘Death, grave, putrefaction, judgement, eternity’, he
found, ‘lie within its range.’52 One is reminded of the resigned A flat major
aria of Florestan, sung from the dungeon, a setting that Egmont will aptly
liken to the grave.53
The theme, heard first in the high register, is stepwise and legato, dwelling
in and around D[ in bars 2–7 (Ex. 6.4). This recurrent neighbour-note
inflection is particularly pronounced in bar 7, where the first violin’s D[ jars
against the viola’s E\ in the diminished seventh chord. Like many of the slow
movements in Haydn’s string quartets, the inner parts contribute equally to
the discourse, even if the main theme remains in the first violin: chromatic
49
50
51
On this subject, see my ‘Instrumental Arias or Sonic Tableaux: Voice in Haydn’s Early String
Quartets’.
52
Schubart, Ideen, p. 378. (Italics original.)
53
W. Kayser (ed.), Dramatische Dichtungen und Epen II. Goethes Werke, 14 vols. (Hamburg: Wegner,
1953), vol. IV, p. 438.
Ex. 6.4 Op. 74, movement two, bars 1–9
motion in bar 3 of the viola and second violin, like the D[ inflections,
connect the opening back to the first movement’s introduction. The care-
fully marked swells, sforzati and diminuendi, meanwhile, give the opening
a shapely fluidity of motion.
Recalling several of Haydn’s cantabile slow movements, the Adagio from
Op. 74 unfolds as a series of artfully varied reprises of the opening twenty-
four-bar theme, heard in bars 64–86 and 115–37. These variations link
this movement’s form to that of aria as it was described in the eighteenth
century. Rousseau, in particular, had portrayed the aria as a kind of sonic
tableau, entailing varied views of a single melodic idea.54 He considered
this kind of vocal utterance to be the most moving musical discourse, and
indeed the most deeply felt discourse altogether. Particularly poignant in
this Adagio, however, is the way song is undone. The fluidity of the opening
theme makes the second invocation of ‘voice’ in the first episode (beginning
54
See my ‘Instrumental Arias’, 352–4.
at the end of bar 24) seem all the more troubled and faltering, more wistful
than graceful. Time seems to be suspended, space constrained: beneath the
first violin’s recitative-like statement, the cello sits on a tonic pedal in its
mid-register (Ex. 6.5).55 A striking move to flattened regions follows in
bar 30, where C[ is temporarily tonicised. Kerman describes the motifs
that follow in bars 34–9 as ‘rather abstract dramatic gestures’. But they are
recognisable as invocations of voice: the use of falling suspensions is partic-
ularly reminiscent of operatic recitative or arioso. For Kerman, the new
four-bar phrase at bar 45 ‘serves as a transition rather than as a genuine lyric
member’.56 Here he misses the dramatic point of this discourse: the voice
falters, fails to continue coherently, and thus poignantly fails to effect any
kind of transition.
55
In Ex. 6.5 the slurred semiquavers in bar 30 are very likely to have been played with a subtle
articulation of the second note in each pair. Here editorial dots show the import of Beethoven’s
portato notation. Several early editions contain strokes on these notes, in the inner parts.
56
The beautiful song of the opening returns in bar 64 in a still more enchant-
ing form, after a seemingly spontaneous Eingang (lead-in) in the first violin.
Here Beethoven moves beyond his predecessors in the extent to which he
applies ornamental diminution to all voices, continuing the process of pro-
gressive diminution from the first movement’s harp-like passages.57 ‘Harp’
effects are in evidence here, too: the lower voices add to the first violin’s
variation of the theme with arpeggiation spanning the quartet’s sound space,
recalling the harp-like motif of the opening movement. The second violin
contributes to and shares the theme with the first violin in bars 72–7.
Beethoven’s varied voicing of the theme reaches a high point of inventiveness
in the third variation, with an imaginative re-inscription of the work’s dualistic
voices. Here the first violin plays the first eight-bar phrase of the theme legato
in the low register (bars 115–22) while the second violin weaves a staccato
counterpoint above it. The first violin then combines this counterpoint with
the legato melody, projecting it up the octave after two bars, and the second
violin introduces a further, registrally wide-ranging commentary on the
theme.
Such varied views of a unified, lyrical musical subject attract and maintain
the listener’s attention. But the ‘episodes’ of this movement arguably accom-
plish a deeper affective feat, the third step in the rhetorical process described
by eighteenth-century theorists such as Diderot and Rousseau. This is where
the listener might be moved to a sublime state, identifying most strongly
with the voices within the work, to the point of transcending the staged
nature of the work and experiencing a merger of the self with the (musical)
parts, characters or voices.58 In early nineteenth-century terms (those of
Hoffmann, for example), this would be the point where the listener is utterly
engaged or entranced by the performance.59 The listener had to be prepared
to make the necessary investment of emotion and imagination to experience
this ‘chamber sublime’, leaving traditional conceptions of formal unfolding
at the door. Beethoven elevates traditionally transitional sections to a
much greater importance for the movement’s plot, as he did in the first
movement’s striking pizzicato ‘transitions’. This manipulation probably
contributed to the 1811 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reviewer’s com-
plaints about the second half of the Adagio. He failed to understand how
the movement’s plot depicts a dual process: thematic statements exemplify
57
Although he perhaps takes his cue from the variations movement in Mozart’s String Quartet in
D minor, K. 421.
58
I make a similar argument with regard to the instrumental recitatives in Haydn’s String Quartet
Op. 17 No. 5. See my ‘Instrumental Arias’, 365.
59
See Johnson, ‘“Labyrinthine Pathways and Bright Rings of Light”’, 77.

107
lyrical unfolding, while the episodes dramatise the breakdown of beautiful,

songful utterance.
The D flat aria, which develops in bar 87, is hardly a ‘cursory turn to the
major subdominant’, or a mere ‘second episode’, as Kerman thought.60 This
supremely moving song had been prepared in haunting passages in this
tonal region from the work’s slow introduction onwards. The eight-bar
theme is self-contained, modulating to its own dominant before bifurcating
into a deeply touching duet between cello and first violin, of the kind
Schubert would deploy in the slow movement of his Lied-based String
Quartet in D minor, ‘Death and the Maiden’, D. 810. At the start of this
duet (bar 95), Beethoven repeats the espressivo marking, which had been
used twice in the first ‘episode’; the marking appears again at the faltering,
darkening discourse of bars 106–9 (see Ex. 6.6).61 The passage at bars 103–5
repeats material from the first ‘episode’, now in A flat minor. This key
had funereal associations for Beethoven, which he could treat with more
than a touch of theatricality. This can be heard in the heavily textured,
pervasively dotted third movement of the A flat major Sonata, Op. 26, a
Marcia Funebre with the subtitle ‘sulla morte d’un Eroe’ (on the death of
a hero). In the Op. 74 Adagio, the brief drama that plays out in this deep
flat region is more absorbing and disturbing. Following constrained,
mid-register declamation, one hears a fortissimo unison intrusion (bars
110–11; see Ex. 6.6); this is reminiscent of moments in the ‘operatic’ slow
60
61
Beethoven only gave the espressivo marking in the outer voices, although the cello marking is
slightly ambiguous as it is positioned close to the viola’s line; some early editions, such as that
published in 1810 by Clementi, contain the marking in the viola.
movements from Haydn’s string quartets, and is similarly ominous to the

opening fortissimo unisons of the Egmont Overture.62
The sense of impending tragedy is heightened at the end of the movement
and taken to its logical conclusion. The third statement of the main theme
does not resolve in bar 137, but is halted in the high register over a dominant
chord. The A flat major quasi-recitative from bars 25–8 is now heard again,
fading away after four bars ‘like a recollection’, as Kerman puts it.63 This
section can be described as the beginning of a codetta, where the structural
cadence is broken off at the last moment. Following a delicate perfect
cadence in bars 146–7, soft, splintered voices muster and another harp-
like arpeggiation takes the discourse back into the high register, where D[ is
sounded hauntingly against the viola’s high F[ (bars 152–4; Ex. 6.7). This
diminished seventh is resolved in upper registral space in bar 155, and then
in lower octaves (bars 157, 159 and 164–6). Despite this registral resolution,
the ending is wonderfully poignant, tonally and rhythmically suggesting
persistent pain but ultimately gentle resignation. C[s from the first episode
intrude in the first violin before the significantly belated structural cadence
(bars 163–4) is sounded. Then the quartet seems to ‘breathe its last’: delicate,
punctuated, homorhythmic quavers gently fade away, espressivo morendo.
A full realisation of the dramatic and dualistic character of this movement
arguably depends strongly on the performance. In the slow movements from
Op. 59, Beethoven provides notational hints as to affective and effective
realisation, which are frequently misunderstood today. The opening theme
is copiously and intricately slurred, indicating to the performers the fluid and
62
See especially Haydn’s String Quartets Op. 17 No. 5 and Op. 20 No. 2.
63
rhetorically inflected utterance the composer sought. The espressivo markings

in the episodes, however, suggest a more hesitant, broken voice in these
passages.64 Today’s performers are inclined to read the espressivo as an
indication for intensified vibrato. But Lenz was probably much closer to
readings of Beethoven’s day when he observed that these markings in the
episodes have to do with performers’ careful attention to timing – to tempo
rubato – so that the punctuated homorhythmic chords, or the violin–cello
duet, sound in no way mechanical.65
Movements III–IV: ‘freudvoll und leidvoll’
Lenz noted the similarity of the high-register passage in bars 152–3 of the
Adagio to a passage in the Andante of the Fifth Symphony (bars 27–9),
along with the generally similar melodic style of the two movements (the
symphonic Andante, which is also an A flat Andante in 3/8, includes a
sequence of elaborate variations). However, it is in the Presto from Op. 74
that listeners since the nineteenth century have found the most striking
relationships to the Fifth Symphony. Particularly pronounced are the driv-
ing, three-quaver up-beat motif; the choice of C minor/major; and the move
to the submediant for a long transitional passage, which ends poised on
the dominant and leads directly to the finale. There is also the sheer length
of this movement, which was unprecedented for a quartet scherzo and
‘symphonic’ in scale, although short in terms of performance time. The
seventy-seven-bar Presto in C minor and ninety-two-bar trio are both
repeated, before a concluding statement of the Presto and the fifty-two-
bar transition. Marx was prompted to think in symphonic terms when he
heard this movement. The dual character of Op. 74 as a whole revealed itself
most clearly to him here: vestiges of the heroic style, with its unambiguous
form and moods, sound markedly different from the dreaming realm
invoked by much of the rest of the quartet.66
Comparisons of Op. 74 with the Fifth Symphony would have come fairly
readily to listeners of Beethoven’s time. Following the first performance of
the symphony in 1808, Breitkopf und Härtel published the original edition
in orchestral parts in April 1809, and a version for four hands by Friedrich
Schneider, which appeared in July that year, was to prove enormously
64
Marx’s terms were ‘schüchtern’, ‘beklommen’ (shy, apprehensive): Beethoven: Leben und
Schaffen, vol. II, p. 314.
65
Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. IV, p. 173. 66 See n. 5.
Movements III–IV: ‘freudvoll und leidvoll’ 191
Ex. 6.8 Op. 74, movement three, bars 78–95
lucrative for the publisher. Beethoven’s references to the Fifth Symphony

in Op. 74, especially in the Presto, suggest that he was ready to draw on its
burgeoning status and popularity. His self-referencing of the work can be
understood as part of a process of self-assertion as a musical genius, a worthy
heir to Haydn and Albrechtsberger. His deployment of counterpoint in this
movement, in particular, can be interpreted in this light. Clearly he had the
contrapuntal tradition in mind: just before various contrapuntal sketches for
the trio from Op. 74 in the sketchbook Landsberg 5 is a sketched fugal theme
for a quintet to commemorate J. S. Bach.67 Kerman notes that the trio of Op.
74 begins with a ‘gauche double counterpoint’ (Ex. 6.8), which assumes
further voices and begins to parody textbook third and fourth species.68
This material is heard in inversion in what could be considered as a tour de
force in contrapuntal parody, a confidently voiced, rather cheeky allusion to
tradition. The penultimate movement of the Fifth Symphony also features
‘textbook’ double counterpoint, complete with farcical ‘fumbling’ and ‘false
starts’ in the basses. Small wonder Lenz was so taken with the ‘living fantasy’
here: with overt theatricality, Beethoven takes his leave of ‘tote Schablone’
(dead templates), as Lenz might have described textbook fugue.69
67
Brenneis, Ein Skizzenbuch, vol. I, p. 75; vol. II, p. 127.
68
69
The Presto, like the slow movement, references tonal and timbral aspects
of the first movement. There is a large-scale progression of C to D[ to C
underlying bars 1–30, underscored in the forte low-register unisons of bars
12–16; in this way this previously latent, disquieting tonal motion is now
projected more palpably into the foreground. The octaves that filter down-
wards through the voices in the Presto (bars 34–5, 40–1 and so forth) also
recall the first and second movements, and the harp-like arpeggiation in
particular.
For a broader understanding of the role and meaning of this movement
within the work as a whole, one can look ahead to the finale, with which the
Presto is connected. Recent writers have been inclined to view the final
movement as an anticlimax, given the much more striking progression from
darkness to light and triumph in the third and fourth movements of the Fifth
Symphony.70 By comparison, Op. 74’s finale has been heard as a retreat,
retrenchment, or revision of the heroic style, at odds with the clearly teleo-
logical course of the usual heroic narrative. However, in a broader context, this
work as a whole, and especially the last movement, can be read as enacting its
own kind of heroism and its own kind of transition, more personal in scope
and Romantic in spirit.
Beethoven’s use of ideas from Goethe’s Egmont is relevant here. In 1809,
he was attracted by a proposal to write incidental music for the play. The
plot concerns the sixteenth-century Flemish warrior Count Egmont’s battle
for the freedom of his people against Spanish invaders, led by the despotic
Duke of Alba. Egmont’s lone companion in his quest is his beloved mistress
Klärchen, who ultimately commits suicide when she fails to save Egmont
from a death sentence. The story deals with a very public invasion of
Brussels, but equally with the private, internal wars of feelings on the part
of Count Egmont and Klärchen. In Beethoven’s setting, Klärchen is the
central character: only she sings, and Head has argued that her two trans-
formational songs, and her ultimate transfiguration into music itself, give
the plot an ultimately positive trajectory, despite the tragedy. Meanwhile,
the dualities her character embodies engender the tensions on which the
entire plot turns:
Through Klärchen, Egmont achieves its distinctive doubleness as a text engaged at

once with Enlightenment themes of society and the individual, identity and free-
dom, despotism and democracy; and at the same time with early idealist topics of an
70
See L. Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900 (University of California Press, 1990),
pp. 23 and 49–71; cited by J. Kerman, ‘Close Readings of the Heard Kind’, 19th-Century Music,
17 (1994), 215, n. 10.
otherworldly realm in which liberty, heroism, and music find their most intense and
purest expression.71
Beethoven’s own approach to the work might be encapsulated in the injunc-

tion to ‘think globally, act locally’. To concentrate on the character of Klärchen
was to bring the focus of the larger political narrative down to a personal,
private level, implying that acting for what one believes to be right ultimately
means knowing and being true to one’s heart. A crucial text for Beethoven
was Klärchen’s Lied, ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’.72 The poem advocates a full
experience of life and by implication love, entailing extremes of both pleasure
and pain. It concludes with the declaration, at once challenging and comfort-
ing, that happiness belongs to those who continue to love despite and because
of these dualisms:
Freudvoll/Und leidvoll/Gedankenvoll sein/Langen und bangen/In schwebender

Pein/Himmelhoch jauchzend/Zum Tode betrübt;/Glücklich allein/Ist die Seele,
die liebt.
(Joyful/And tearful/With care-filled brain/Longing and fearful/In suspenseful pain/

Now on top of the world/Now cast down from above;/Happy alone/Is the soul in
love.)
Goethe’s text is high-flown in its rhetoric and also down to earth, suggesting
Klärchen’s doubleness as lowly burgher’s daughter but also heroine.
Beethoven’s setting of this Lied in Egmont, like the Goethe text, is dualistic
but transcendent, moving from ‘domestic’ stage song to ‘public’ operatic
aria.73 Finely nuanced diminution comes to the fore as the voice dialogues
with winds and strings, then merges with them in accompanied recitative.
The dualistic turns from pleasure to pain in Goethe’s text for Klärchen’s
Lied would probably have had much personal resonance for the composer
in 1809: amidst other problems, his difficult love affair with Thérèse von
Brunsvik was about to be painfully curtailed. In any case, the Lied text
was starting to play through his mind: side by side with the crafting of the
theme from the finale of Op. 74 one finds two sketches for an F major setting
of ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’ in the sketchbook Landsberg 5. The two Lied
sketches bear little relation to either the later A major setting of Klärchen’s
Lied in Egmont or sketches for the Op. 74 finale theme, except for the
71
Head, ‘Beethoven Heroine’, 132.
72
On the centrality of this text for Beethoven, see also Helmut Hell, ‘Textgebundenheit in den
instrumentalen Stücken von Beethovens Egmont-Musik’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, 6 (2007),
58–71.
73
Head, ‘Beethoven Heroine’, 120.
Ex. 6.9 Op. 74, movement four, bars 106–9 (Variation 5)
prevalent melodic outlining of thirds.74 The incorporation of two distinct

‘voices’ in the final variation set in Op. 74 might suggest inspiration from
the Lied sketching, since this early incarnation seems to have been con-
ceived as a duet. More important as a source of inspiration for the quartet
variations, however, is the invocation of duality and transcendence in
Goethe’s text itself.
Freudvoll und leidvoll: the variations in the finale of Op. 74 are paired,
and the duality is couched in similar terms to that encountered in the first
movement and echoed and intensified in the Adagio–Presto movement
sequence. The odd- and even-numbered variations contrast increasingly
dissociated versions of the theme, which are marked forte, with increasingly
lyrical versions of the theme, marked sempre dolce e piano.75 Beethoven
also gives differential treatment to the move to the mediant (the secondary
dominant V/vi) at the mid-point of the theme in each variation. The medial
secondary dominant is entirely absent in Variation 6 (see Ex. 6.10, below),
which contributes to the ‘smoothing’ effect that takes place on the level of
style and gesture in the even-numbered variations more generally. The odd-
numbered variations, however, become increasingly dissociated, mainly in
texture and register; the arpeggiated character of Variations 1 and 5 (see
Ex. 6.9) and the ‘ping pong’ octaves in bars 71–2 in Variation 3 suggest new
and highly inventive developments of the ‘harp’ idea. By contrast, the voices
of the second, fourth and sixth variations are registrally and rhythmically
74
Tyson points out that this song may have been the first number that Beethoven wrote for
Egmont, while noting that the connection between these sketches and Egmont is unclear; see
D. Johnson, A. Tyson and R. Winter (eds.), The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction,
Inventory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), p. 198.
75
For a detailed analysis, see Marston, ‘Analysing Variations’.
contained; gently swirling, largely stepwise melodic lines and extensive

slurring suggest a sinking into soft, sweet melancholy song.
I have observed that the movement has not seemed open to scholarly
interpretation in terms of symphonic/heroic teleological musical narratives.
To be sure, there is little sense here of power, struggle and teleological drive;
but the movement can be understood in terms of an altogether different
kind of heroism. The finale, like the characters Egmont and Klärchen,
exhibits constancy through dualistic turbulence, endurance and ultimately
fundamental transformation. It might be interpreted as enacting a kind of
quest, a challenging process of discovery. Lenz emphasises the movement’s
questing character when he speaks of its maze-like quality, and the guiding
‘goldener Fäden’ (golden threads) of the main theme.76 Increasingly elaborate
variations were entirely to be expected, and were a standard way of generating
onward drive in an otherwise potentially static form.77 Unusual here is the sense
of growing dissociation: the increasing polarisation of the odd and even varia-
tions lends mystery to the experience as the listener progresses through the
movement, as if one is in an auditory maze.
The quest-like aspect of this music can be illuminated further via the
quartet’s nineteenth-century nickname: ‘Harp’ Quartet is not such a silly
title as recent scholars have assumed, although it does not originate
with Beethoven.78 The harp was consistently associated with the mysterious
aspects of music in nineteenth-century thought and iconography. Novalis
(Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg) linked the instrument to
the dreaming state, to the realm of fantasies and fairy tales.79 The frontispiece
to Hoffmann’s extended fantastic text, Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier, for
example, shows a mysterious image incorporating a sphinx, the figure of
Isis, and a troubadour who plays a harp. Hoffmann annotated this as follows:
‘Do the mysteries of music then not speak to you through the sounds of
the harp, which ring out at sunrise from the ancient German troubadour
before the enigmatic image of the Isis-headed sphinx?’80
76
77
On this topic, see N. Marston, ‘“The Sense of an Ending”: Goal-directedness in Beethoven’s
Music’, in Stanley (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, p. 90.
78
For criticism of the nickname, see in particular Marston, ‘Analysing Variations’, 322; and
R. Simpson, ‘The Chamber Music for Strings’, in D. Arnold and N. Fortune (eds.), The Beethoven
Companion (London: Faber, 1971), p. 260.
79
A. W. Schlegel and L. Tieck (eds.), Novalis Schriften, 2 vols. (Berlin: Buchhandlung der
Realschule, 1802), vol. II, p. 518.
80
Letter to Hoffmann’s publisher, C. F. Kunz, 8 September 1813, in F. Schnapp (ed.),
E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel. 3 vols, (Munich: Winkler, 1967), vol. I, p. 413; trans. Charlton,
E. T. A. Hofmann’s Musical Writings, p. 30. (Italics original.)
In the nineteenth century, a new spirit of discovery sought to penetrate

realms previously considered unknowable, or beyond the limits of human
reason. These realms were thought to be partly accessible through experiences
of dreaming states, fantastic images (including musical images), and the
experience of untamed nature. Annette Richards connects Beethoven’s fan-
tasias with the new generation’s quest to ‘unveil Isis’, not only by exploring
and uncovering the mysteries of the natural world, but also by turning this
quest inwards, to an exploration of self.81 This quest was not for the faint-
hearted. Keats’s melancholy poet of 1819, for example, wants to discover
‘veiled melancholy’ herself, ‘in the very temple of delight’, and thus to go on
experiencing fully the dualities of life and love with their extremes of pleasure
and pain, like the poetic persona in Goethe’s ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’. In
Hoffmann’s Fantasiestücke, and in Ernst Julius Hähnel’s 1845 designs for
the ‘fantasia’ panel for the Bonn Beethoven monument, Beethoven himself is
figured as the artist/hero who can unveil the mysteries of music. The harp is
the emblem of musical mystery and Beethoven, as harpist, is the archetypal
purveyor and decoder.
How does Beethoven, as decoder and purveyor, play out the mystery at
the end of the ‘Harp’ Quartet? The typical technique of inserting a final
reprise of the main theme brings a strong sense of closure to the end of a set
of variations. Beethoven’s final reprises are almost all non-literal, involving
various degrees of variation and transformation, which can contribute to a
sense of culmination. In this movement he carries out a procedure more
typical of the late variations, in which, as Kerman describes it, the theme
‘seems transformed or probed to its fundamentals, rather than merely
varied’.82 By the fifth variation the theme is only remotely discernible in
the harp-like first violin arpeggios, which are heard against rising articulated
thirds in the lower voices – in itself a disorienting contrast, especially
combined with the first violin’s slurred syncopation (see Ex. 6.9). In the
sixth variation, the sublimation of the theme continues. Falling thirds have
now all but disappeared, so that the registral space is nearly flattened in the
inner parts: the ‘guiding (melodic) thread’ is literally threadlike. Beethoven
has taken care to notate these parts so that the slurs are placed slightly
differently in the three upper parts during the variation, adding to the effect
of smoothing. If the theme is transformed almost out of existence, so too is
its harmony, which is almost reduced to a pedal. The medial cadence is now
81
Richards, The Free Fantasia, pp. 221–3.
82
J. Kerman, The New Grove Beethoven (London: Macmillan, 1983), p. 124.
Ex. 6.10 Op. 74, movement four, bars 128–31 (Variation 6)
harmonised with a tonic triad, completing the smoothing effect in tonal

terms (Ex. 6.10).
The listener who has followed Beethoven’s ‘golden thread’ through the
variations to this point might expect the tale to end with integration and
synthesis. D[ seems, after all, to have been thoroughly ‘unveiled’ in bars 130–1
through the smoothing transformations: no longer the haunting neighbour
note of the preceding movements, this tone is now revealed as the flattened
seventh and dwelt upon as such. However, the full musical ‘discovery’ of
Op. 74 will not be achieved by the faint-hearted: the dual discourse persists
and is heightened progressively as the movement concludes. The pace had
quickened in the sixth variation, and, against smoothing on other levels, the
cello insists on triplets beneath the upper voices’ homorhythmic quavers.
Here again Lenz notes that the realisation of the effect requires careful
attention to performance: the listener must remain challenged by the rhyth-
mic (and indeed registral) dissociation of the cello part.83
With ever-quickening rhythmic units, the coda (beginning in bar 142)
enhances one’s experience of contrariness. Sisman notes that the gradual
speeding-up of the rhythmic pulse mirrors the treatment of the harp-like
passages in the first movement, and bears comparison to the diminution
in the Adagio.84 Fluctuating dynamics, legato against staccato, two against
three, and contrary motion texture all contribute to the listener’s sense of
heightened duality in the musical discourse in the coda’s ‘sub-variations’,
as Marston terms them.85 Thus the coda provides a dissociating rather than
synthesising culmination of the work’s dualism. Even the troubling D[
83
84
Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation, p. 246. 85
Marston, ‘Analysing Variations’, 316.
returns, though now in neighbour-note guise (bars 163 and 167), as one waits
for a satisfactory structural cadence in the low register, and a conclusive
phrase ending on the tonic in the upper voice, rather than on the third scale
degree that has been typical so far in the movement. Beethoven gives us the
perfect authentic cadence in the low register at the last minute (bars 192–3).
Yet, when the final word is given, the voicing of the work remains unresolved
melodically speaking: the first violin softly but significantly intones the falling
third with which the movement opened, cadencing on the third of the tonic
chord.
Despite the drive implicit in the increasing rhythmic units, then, the
‘Harp’ Quartet finishes quietly and ambiguously. Certainly there is none
of the teleological, confirmatory cadential blare one hears at the end of
Op. 59 No. 3, the Fifth Symphony and Egmont (the Siegessinfonie
(Victory Symphony)). But the movement need not therefore be read as a
retreat from or critique of the heroic paradigm. On the one hand, the heroic
was understood as a style or topos c. 1800 – a collection of musical, verbal,
or visual signs for celebrating achievement, and for confirming civic and
social identity, which were culturally and temporally contingent.86 This
‘heroic style’ could itself be quoted and highlighted, perhaps in a spirit of
critique, but also to garner praise. Beethoven arguably did this in the Presto
in Op. 74, constructing himself as musical ‘hero’ by referencing his increas-
ingly famous Fifth Symphony, which was soon to be compellingly associ-
ated with sublime power and might by Hoffmann, in particular.87 The finale
of Op. 74, on the other hand, might be read as an interiorisation of the
heroic, which does not necessarily undercut the heroic signs of the Presto.
Rather, the open-ended ‘dual’ variations (dual in affect, not tonality) bring
the focus down to a more personal level, suggesting the challenging, heroic
quest of inner exploration – a quest that, the Romantics knew, would always
remain incomplete.
The harp would also figure prominently in Egmont, as an emblem of
unveiling that leads to quietly heroic self-discovery in Egmont’s E flat major
dream. The dream takes place in the final scene, after he has been sentenced
to death. As he falls into slumber, he delivers an apostrophe to Sleep. Sleep,
clothed in E flat harmonies, is a metaphor for music, which in turn stands
for inner freedom. In sleep, says the half-slumbering Egmont, ‘ungehindert
fließt der Kreis innerer Harmonien’ (the circle of inner harmonies flows
freely). He personifies sleep, showing the dreaming state to be a realm of
fantastical images, transcending the limits of human reason: ‘Süßer Schlaf! . . .
86
Compare Head, ‘Beethoven Heroine’, 131. 87
Hoffmann, ‘Beethovens Instrumentalmusik’.
Ex. 6.11 Egmont, Op. 84, No. 8 (Melodrama), bars 21–2 (strings)
Du lösest die Knoten der strengen Gedanken, vermischest alle Bilder der
Freude und des Schmerzes’ (Sweet Sleep! . . . Thou looseth the knots of strict
thoughts, mixeth all the images of pleasure and pain). In a theatrical produc-
tion of Egmont, listeners ‘see’ these mixed images in D major depictions –
wind and brass music, threaded through with arpeggiated gestures in the
strings, which at first are muted (Ex. 6.11). The sonic images become clearer
as the accompanimental musical gestures become more harp-like: the strings
remove their mutes and play pizzicato arpeggios (Ex. 6.12). This dream music
depicts Egmont’s recollection of his military successes, which will lead to his
death, but it also looks towards the transcendent freedom he has earned. The
harp music is linked to the allegorical figure of Liberty, who, in the guise of
Klärchen, appears resting on a cloud in heavenly garb. Thus sonic and visual
images combine to suggest (to Egmont, and to the audience) that Egmont’s
victories have not been in vain: as she crowns him with a laurel wreath, she
tells him that he will die for the freedom of his people.
Egmont’s melodrama might at first seem to be the most antiheroic
moment in the plot. After all, the hero is lulled to sleep without struggle,
force, or energy. But precisely this moment epitomises the quiet heroism of
constancy and faith, sustained in the face of insuperable constraints. This
was a brand of heroism well understood by Beethoven at this point in his
career, one thoroughly in tune with early Romantic thought, and one with a
Ex. 6.12 Egmont, Op. 84, No. 8 (Melodrama), bars 44–5
long history in Christian ideas. In Beethoven’s ‘harp’ music, and especially

the ‘Harp’ Quartet, he opens an experiential window on the heroism implied
by the voyage towards self-understanding. In Egmont, he opens this window
wider, revealing to the audience in more sonic and visual detail the rewards
of another mysterious and transcendent voyage of discovery.
While today’s listeners may consider Op. 74 to be a work ‘inviting of
access’, it was hardly pre-eminently ‘available’ to Beethoven’s essential
public, as Kerman suggests. For Beethoven’s listeners, Op. 74’s dualistic

voices – heard in the fantasia-like handling of material and form, and
heightened through persistent investigation of the sonic and visual world
of the string quartet – took the work well beyond the traditions of the genre.
His most appreciative listeners in 1809 would have been those prepared to
undertake the personal challenge posed by the work’s new and demanding
musical maze. The challenge today is to try to rediscover and re-engage with
the work’s dualistic voices, although now they may seem to us highly subtle,
rather than shocking near-violations of the imperatives and boundaries of
fine art.
7 ‘The quick-witted brevity of the genuine
dramatist’: Op. 95 and the idea of the fragment
In contrast to the mixed reception of Op. 74, critical reception of the String
Quartet in F minor Op. 95, has been strikingly consistent. The main themes
in the discourse about this work are Beethoven’s concision and excision of
musical material; path-breaking deviations from traditional forms; and the
work’s tragic and violent tone, which are often connected to his turbulent
personal life in 1810. Kerman’s summation of the work as one that looks
forwards and inwards captures these views in nuce.1 Not all critics have been
ready to praise this work unreservedly; nevertheless the terms that have been
variously applied to value or undermine it have remained remarkably con-
stant. Given this consensus, it may seem perverse to try to argue a new
point of view. However, my contention that the work looks ‘sideways and
outwards’ is not intended in contradiction of these views, but rather in the
hope of enlarging them. I shall maintain that Op. 95 represents Beethoven’s
keenness to ‘reach out’ to engage with an important aesthetic idea of his
time, though one largely limited to an audience of connoisseurs: the idea of
the fragment.
Compositional and aesthetic context
Two groups of metaphors are especially prominent in writings about Op.

95: the language of battle and physical wounding, and figures of theatre.
Both these clusters of imagery provide us with windows on ways in which
this work has been experienced. The battle imagery is present from the very
first extensive writings on this work, especially Helm’s commentary.2 It is
particularly dominant in Kerman’s analysis: for him the quartet is no
less than a ‘radical private war on every fibre of rhetoric and feeling that
Beethoven knew or could invent’.3 The battle metaphors help us to under-
stand the immediacy and physicality of this quartet, the fact that its
meanings arise from kinaesthetic as well as auditory cues. The theatrical
1 2
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 156. Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 146–7.
3
202 Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 169.
Compositional and aesthetic context 203
metaphors, however, suggest a certain perceived distance from the listener,

and an assessment of its rhetoric as decidedly artful – intentionally selective,
heightened, multi-voiced, sometimes ironic. Helm’s comment that Beethoven
speaks with the ‘schlagfertige Kürze des echten Dramatikers’ (quick-witted
brevity of the genuine dramatist) is echoed throughout subsequent accounts
of Op. 95.4 The opening gestures of the work are described as theatrical, and
several writers liken the final coda in the fourth movement to opera buffa.
Kerman, for instance, hears shades of Mozart’s Don Giovanni here, specific-
ally ‘Questo è il fin di chi fa mal’ from the final scene.5
Both metaphor groups relate to the immediate context for Op. 95: the
only other major work that Beethoven composed in 1810 was the incidental
music to Goethe’s Egmont, also in F minor, a comparatively unusual key for
the time. The two works were completed in close succession. Egmont was
premiered on 24 May 1810, but the version with Beethoven’s incidental
music was not staged until the fourth performance, on 15 June. As regards
the F minor quartet, despite evidence suggesting a later completion date,
Beethoven’s inscription of October 1810 on the autograph remains the
most likely terminus ante quem, at least for the bulk of the musical text.
Beethoven’s Egmont music exhibits similarities to Op. 95 not only of key,
but also of rhetoric and dramatic conception.
References to Gluck also recur in the discourse about Op. 95, reflecting
the spirit, rather than the letter, of the work’s theatricality.6 Gluck’s operas
were published and well known in Vienna. In 1810, Beethoven was in the
process of collecting and studying Mozart’s operas, which had been influ-
enced by Gluck’s. Both composers sought to create realistic dramas in which
human passions could be expressed vividly. These dramatic aims seem to
translate well to the instrumental realm of Op. 95, especially Gluck’s and
Mozart’s use of fluid and multi-layered forms, which permit expressive
interruptions. Mason captures the impassioned effect of these interruptions
in his account of the coda from the first movement of Op. 95: ‘As its opening
notes are insisted upon by the viola (measure 140) with the half-frantic
monotony of an obsession, the violins interject syncopated cries of pain and
the cello interrupts with fierce dissonances’ (see Ex. 7.1).7
4
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 143. Helm’s phrase takes account of both the battle
imagery (‘schlagfertig’) and the figure of theatre (‘Dramatiker’), neatly combining the two most
prominent metaphors in the discourse about this work.
5
6
See, for example, Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, pp. 143 and 152.
7
Mason, The Quartets of Beethoven, p. 147.
204 Op. 95 and the idea of the fragment
Radical reforms were afoot in the theatre c. 1800. Ludwig Tieck’s com-
edies, in particular, dealt in parody, incongruous juxtaposition, interruption
and radical plot reversal; he worked with Viennese folk drama c. 1808.8
Musical representation, too, was renegotiated and hotly and freshly debated
around this time. Awareness of the related literature and controversies
grew in Vienna.9 Franz Christoph Horn was an early champion of instru-
mental music as the most Romantic of the arts; for Horn, this meant that the
music was abstract and ineffable. In his ‘Musikalische Fragmente’ (Musical
Fragments) (1802) he declares:
As every art endeavours to express the infinite within the limits of the finite, it
is easy to see that a genuine and perfect work of art cannot really be compre-
hended in an intellectual manner . . . [Music] is pure incomprehensibility [reine
Unbegreiflichkeit] . . . As soon as it leaves the sphere of the abstract, as soon as it
8
On connections between Beethoven’s and Tieck’s aesthetics, see especially R. M. Longyear,
‘Beethoven and Romantic Irony’, Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), especially 651–2.
9
On relevant debates within literature and philosophy in Beethoven’s Vienna, see Botstein, ‘The
Patrons and Publics of the Quartets’, pp. 100–5.
stoops down to sorry, narrow intellectual comprehensibility . . . it ceases to be

music and becomes in effect a parody of itself.10
Beethoven did not necessarily side entirely with this view; in fact, he seems
to have viewed self-parody – or at least extensive genre manipulation – as an
acceptable mode for a string quartet, on the evidence of Op. 95.
Horn did allow for a certain kind of ‘invisible illustration’ in music, which
he found par excellence in the operas of Mozart, especially Don Giovanni.
There seems nothing ‘invisible’, however, about the illustration that derailed
Helm from his blow-by-blow account of themes and keys in Op. 95. Enthused
by the visions and feelings evoked during the second theme group of the
finale, he writes: ‘Here we find ourselves no longer in the chamber music
salon, but rather in the midst of an exciting dramatic scene; we believe that
we see a fiery hero, who, as soon as he has planted his flag on the tower of the
enemy’s castle, is straight away fatally wounded by an arrow.’11 Such imagina-
tive outbursts might strike today’s reader as entirely too subjective, or (follow-
ing Horn) too concrete. But Helm claims that he was not attempting to
interpret the finale, but to characterise a music that involuntarily inspires
the listener to construct poetic pictures. Thus he describes a kind of
musical experience that moves away from the cerebral realm and perhaps
‘transcends the intellect’ in Horn’s sense. Annotating the score of his
Sixth Symphony (1808), Beethoven took care to defend himself against
the charge of simple musical pictorialism, noting that the work was ‘mehr
Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei’ (more expression of feeling than
painting), but a kind of painting nonetheless. The more vivid sections of
Op. 95 can be understood in the same way.
Still more pertinent to this work is contemporary philosopher August
Wilhelm Schlegel’s contention that modern poetry strives ‘to reconcile the
two worlds, the spiritual and the sensual, and to merge them inextricably’.12 As
we shall see, in Op. 95 Beethoven seems to evoke two such worlds, but not to
wholly resolve or synthesise them. Schlegel clarifies the nature of the ‘recon-
ciliation’ to which he refers, asserting that it is only attempted, not achieved.
While Schlegel considers that ‘Other kinds of poetry are complete and can now
be fully and critically analysed,’ he argues that Romantic poetry is forever ‘im
Werden’ (in process).13 He is speaking here of poetry, but Schlegel makes it
10
F. C. Horn, ‘Musikalische Fragmente’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 4 (1802), 417 and 419.
11
12
Schlegel, Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, vol. I, p. 25.
13
116th Athenäum Fragment, Behler (ed.), Schriften und Fragmente, p. 94; trans. le Huray and
Day, Music and Aesthetics, p. 246.
clear that music, and especially pure instrumental music, could aspire not only
to poetry, but also to Romantic philosophy itself, which, because of its spec-
ulative nature, is ever evolving. In his fragment on ‘The philosophical nature of
music’ he observes: ‘He who has a sense for the wonderful affinities of all arts
and sciences will not find unlikely a certain tendency of all pure instrumental
music to philosophy itself.’14
It is not certain how much Beethoven would have had known about
such aesthetic ideas in 1810. Longyear claims that ‘Beethoven, for his part,
knew of Friedrich Schlegel only as a translator of Shakespeare . . . the names
of Fichte and Tieck are absent from his conversation books and letters.’15
But this is to fail to take account of what was ‘in the air’ in cultivated Vienna
in 1810 – what was playing at the theatres and which topics would have
engaged people in salon conversations. Beethoven was intrigued by the
tension between eighteenth-century Viennese religious and philosophical
traditions and the new wave of German Romanticism and idealism.16
Evidence of this interest can be gleaned from various sources, including
the texts he chose to set (such as Egmont), the books he owned, the cultured
Viennese with whom he chose to associate, and from the very nature of his
musical works.
The spirit of early Romanticism is apparent from Beethoven’s early cham-
ber music onwards.17 His conscious participation in the early Romantic
Zeitgeist was especially possible in the case of the middle and late quartets.
They were composed at a time when the literary works of the north German
Romantics achieved eminence and notoriety in Vienna. Certainly Beethoven
would have known of the general tone and thrust of these writers’ works.
He owned a complete set of the Viennese journal Prometheus, edited by
Franz Karl Leopold Freiherr von Seckendorf, which reproduced poems and
essays by the likes of August Wilhelm von Schlegel and generally helped to
propagate the Romantics’ views. The Viennese could read opposing views in
Joseph Schreyvogel’s Sonntagsblatt (1807–14). Tieck visited Vienna in 1808,
and that same year Schlegel gave his celebrated fifteen-lecture series, ‘On
Dramatic Art and Literature’, to a public that included many of the Beethoven
circle. In these lectures, Schlegel elaborated on the above-mentioned key
14
A. W. von Schlegel and K. W. F. von Schlegel (eds.), Das Athenaeum, vol. I (Jena, 1798),
part II, 144. On the connection between poetry and philosophy, and the idea that Romantic
poetry aspires to the condition of philosophy, see the 115th Lyceum Fragment and 46th
Fragment in Ideen (1800): Behler (ed.), Schriften und Fragmente, pp. 87 and 108.
15
Longyear, ‘Beethoven and Romantic Irony’, 664.
16
Botstein, ‘The Patrons and Publics of the Quartets’, p. 101.
17
C. Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven und seine Zeit (Laaber, 1987), pp. 94–9.
concept for the early Romantics: that Romantic (‘modern’) art is fundamen-
tally incomplete. He proposed that modern art is understood most perfectly
by those who understand the reason behind its apparent ‘imperfections’;
in other words, it would be truly understood only by an intellectual elite.
Comparing modern art and poetry with that of the ancients, he wrote:
Greek art and poetry is original unconscious unity of form and subject; in any
modern art and poetry that has remained true to its own spirit, a fusion is sought
of these two natural opposites. The Greeks solved their problem to perfection; but
the moderns’ pursuit of the infinite can only be partially realised; and because they
give the appearance of imperfection, their products are in greater danger of being
misjudged.18
What kind of modern artwork did Schlegel have in mind when writing this?
The early Romantics considered the literary fragment to be exemplary. This
literary form had a long and distinguished history, but flourished especially
with the German literary Romantic movement. It was used by writers such
as Horn, the Schlegel brothers and Novalis to set down their ideas on a
whole range of topics, including music. This provocative, suggestive form of
expression was intended to open up intellectual space, prompting the
reader to further thought. For Friedrich Schlegel, to read is ‘to satisfy the
philological drive’; it is a task of unfolding layers of meaning.19 He points out
that the fragment must be, in a sense, complete: ‘A fragment, like a little
artwork, must be fully separate from the surrounding works and complete/
perfect [vollendet] in itself, like a hedgehog.’20 His choice of analogy also
suggests that the fragment can be ‘prickly’ – built to repel or attack and
difficult to comprehend. The ideal fragment must contain all that is suffi-
cient, but only that which is necessary: ‘In true prose, everything must be
underlined.’21 The ‘incompleteness’ of the fragment arises from the fact that
there is intellectual work left for the reader to do. Consider Schlegel’s 47th
Lyceum Fragment, for example, which aptly deals with the idea of the
infinite. By suggesting an intellectual task, it invites the reader to go on
developing this idea him or herself: ‘He who wants something infinite does
not know what he wants. However, this sentence cannot be reversed.’22 Even
more laconic and potentially harder work for the reader is the 336th
Athenäum Fragment: ‘Reason is mechanical, wit is chemical, and genius is
organic spirit.’23
18
Schlegel, Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, p. 25. See also Chapter 3, n. 18.
19
391st Athenäum Fragment, Behler (ed.), Schriften und Fragmente, p. 103.
20
206th Athenäum Fragment, ibid., p. 95. 21 395th Athenäum Fragment, ibid., p. 103.
22
47th Lyceum Fragment, ibid., p. 84. 23 336th Athenäum Fragment, ibid., p. 102.
Long before the twentieth-century reader response theories of Roland

Barthes, the fragment was an artistic form that allowed readers c. 1800 a
significant role in constructing the meaning of the artwork.24 However,
this ‘birth of the reader’ (to use Barthes’s phrase) also entailed the ‘death of
the author’, at least as readers in Beethoven’s day understood the concept. A
shift in the understanding of textual production and reception was closely
related to the development of Romantic irony, a key topic in Schlegel’s
fragments. On the one hand, irony was to be understood as a literary/artistic
device, comparable to wit, which Schlegel describes as ‘logical sociability’.25
It is the capacity to make unlikely connections. Romantic irony, on the other
hand, ‘is the form of the paradox’; it arises through the artist’s incongruous
associations.26 This brand of irony comes into its own when it operates at
the level of the artwork – overturning traditional ideas of authorship and
reception. In Schlegel’s succinct formulation, Romantic irony entails the
artistic expression of a ‘clear consciousness of eternal agility, of infinitely full
chaos’.27 An artist can invoke this kind of irony by a capricious appearance
of self-annihilation, playing with the contradictions of form and practice,
introducing the fortuitous and the unusual, and generally flirting with
endless caprice.28
Op. 95, I shall argue, can be understood as a musical parallel to the literary
fragment. It is structurally fragmentary on various levels – from that of the
musical phrase to that of the musical work. Moreover, it implies an enlarged
role for the ‘reader’/listener. The work’s fragmentary nature does not result
simply from the breakdown or chaotic dissolution of traditional forms, but
from their artful rearrangement, which engenders Romantic irony. Nor
does Beethoven’s supreme concision and formal play disappoint those who
seek coherence, since there are a host of cleverly concealed thematic and
tonal links throughout the work. The fact that they are concealed means,
however, that the work can be more readily appreciated as a process than as
a product, and one that prompts further intellectual work. As an artwork
that can in Friedrich Schlegel’s terms ‘forever only become’, and that seems
to flaunt the fact that it ‘can never achieve a definite form’, this string quartet
constitutes a prime example of Romantic art, taking to a new limit the
tendencies seen in the earlier middle-period quartets.
24
See R. Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, Image – Music – Text (London: Fontana, 1977),
pp. 142–8.
25
56th Lyceum Fragment, Behler (ed.), Schriften und Fragmente, p. 84.
26
48th Lyceum Fragment, ibid. 27 46th Fragment in Ideen, ibid., p. 108.
28
See also Longyear, ‘Beethoven and Romantic Irony’, 649.
Beethoven’s title for the work, ‘Quartett[o] serioso’, captures the idea that
this work will not always adhere to generic expectations, that it requires
qualification. This is one of the very few quartets to which Beethoven gave
a title, which suggests that he was trying to guard against misinterpretation,
or at least indicate an appropriate frame of reference. Perhaps, like
A. W. Schlegel, he did not wish his ‘modern artwork’ to be understood as
imperfect. After all, Beethoven had a strong ideological precedent with which
to contend: the ‘true’ string quartet was to be a most perfect and finished form
of composition. Op. 95 can be understood to invoke Romantic irony in its
highest form, as described by the likes of the Schlegels and their contempor-
ary Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter), to whom Beethoven was
compared.29 As a work ‘quite contrary to the usual manner’, to cite Marx,
the F minor quartet can be considered ironic insofar as it rejects the kinds of
compositional ‘finish’ traditional in the string quartet, and equally the genial
quartet ‘conversation’ that was so inviting for listeners and performers.30 Like
Schlegel’s hedgehog, the work is prickly – defensive and difficult to access – in
its aesthetic stance, but it is nonetheless complete and perfect in its own way.
The ideal string quartet c. 1800 would be expected to embrace Kenner und
Liebhaber: it was to be ‘universal’ in its appeal and to offer much entertain-
ment value as well as serious listening challenges. With his title, Beethoven
declares that his work will be at the challenging end of the spectrum. The
immediate audience for this work would have been quartet players in
Beethoven’s circle. The work was not performed in public until 1814, and
was not published until 1816. The dedicatee, Zmeskall, was a Hungarian civil
servant and one of Beethoven’s closest friends in Vienna. He was a cellist
and played in the chamber music concerts arranged by Prince Lichnowsky.
Zmeskall was also a composer who specialised in string quartets, and was
prominent and well connected in Viennese musical life, giving concerts himself
from time to time. These concerts included rehearsals of some of Beethoven’s
newest works and the more challenging chamber music; for example,
during a visit to Vienna in 1808–9 Johann Friedrich Reichardt heard ‘a
difficult quintet’ by Beethoven (probably Op. 16 or 29) at Zmeskall’s, and
‘a great Beethoven fantasia’ (probably the Sonata Op. 27 No. 2).31 As a
string quartet ‘insider’ and Beethoven connoisseur, Zmeskall can be seen
29
On Beethoven’s connections to Jean Paul, see especially C. Raab, s.v. ‘Jean Paul [Johann Paul
Friedrich Richter]’, in H. von Loesch and C. Raab (eds.), Das Beethoven-Lexikon (Laaber, 2008),
pp. 358–9.
30
31
P. Clive, s.v. ‘Zmeskall von Domanovecz, Nikolaus’, Beethoven and His World: A Biographical
Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 405.
as an ‘ideal reader’ for Op. 95, one who would understand the masterful
irony of its ‘imperfections’.
Movement I: Allegro con brio
The opening five bars announce the work’s economy of speech, and aptly
set the stage for the entire quartet, a drama constructed of subtly linked
fragments. Harmonically, the two phrases function as tonic ‘statement’ with
dominant ‘response’ (Ex. 7.2). Motion around a pivot note in each phrase
contributes to one’s sense of the statements as paired. The opening low-
register unison turn figure circles from tonic to dominant and back; the
mid-register dotted idea moves likewise, now with leaps. The length of
the second motif is one bar more than expected – hardly a regular ‘answer’.
The two phrases contrast in texture, rhythm and register, and the caesurae
between the phrases emphasises their abrupt, laconic, independent character.
The effect is rather like a non sequitur, or, in Indorf’s apt formulation, ‘short
quotations’.32
Immediately the listener is in a different world from that of traditional
quartet ‘conversation’, as often in these middle-period quartets. It is useful
here, though, to marry the conversation metaphor with the theatrical
metaphor: the movement can be considered as discourse – if oftentimes
oddly abrupt and volatile – among characters on an imagined stage. With
an astonishing flourish, the cello introduces Neapolitan tonality: it does
not ‘progress’ from the imperfect cadence in bar 5, but rather lurches up a
tritone after a pause, holding forth with the opening idea starting on G[ (see
the similar procedure in the preceding minor-key quartet, Op. 59 No. 2).
This striking swerve intensifies the sense of motivic discontinuity. The upper
parts join in the Neapolitan move, but with lyrical voices (bars 6–17). Lyric
interruption this may be (Kerman); it is nonetheless filled with foreboding,
and essentially developmental.33 The first violin moves in awkward leaps,
dwelling on the semitone D[–C (see Ex. 7.2). This interval, which is also
prominent in Op. 74, encapsulates the tension between the two main key
centres in this movement, D flat major and F minor; this tension is a driving
force in the movement. All voices declaim the turn figure in unison (bars
18–20) in a ‘transition’ that does not modulate in any conventional sense, but
eerily echoes the rising chromatic line of the viola in bars 15–17 (C–D[–D\),
now a fourth above (F–G[–G\), ending on scale degree five.
32
Indorf, ‘Werkbesprechungen’, p. 83. The ‘Appassionata’ Sonata is an earlier instance.
33
Movement I: Allegro con brio 211
Beethoven’s play with roles or voices here and elsewhere in the work was
certainly not new to the sphere of the string quartet in 1810. New in Op. 95
is the frequent abrupt shifting, and the way the four musical personae mix
up their lines, registers and roles so that the themes tangle and interpene-
trate, developing well in advance of ‘development’ sections. On the one
hand, this mixing contributes to an impression of fluidity, creating a large-
scale continuity that is related to Beethoven’s development of part-writing
in Op. 74; on the other hand, in the first movement of Op. 95, this mixing of
voices, together with the pithy motifs, continually shifting textures and
striking tonal swerves, contributes to an overriding sense of the movement
as a series of kaleidoscopic, fragmentary utterances. Like the literary fragment,
this construction leaves a good deal of the intellectual work – of making
connections and discovering meanings – to the ‘reader’; expectations, espe-
cially of traditional formal unfolding, are continually overturned.
An unnerving shift occurs, for example, at the turn to the second group
of themes in bar 21, a disjunction of register, dynamics, texture and key.
The unison debouching on C in bar 21 leaves one only to speculate about
the next tonal move. The first violin leaps upwards, piano and solo, to
re-introduce G[ as the fourth scale degree of D flat major. One might hear
this as ‘quite contrary to the usual manner’, but Donald Francis Tovey has
shown that the dramatic nature of Beethoven’s sonata forms depends on a
delicate balancing of connection and disjunction.34 This apparently abrupt
shift had in fact been subtly prepared in both melodic and tonal terms in the
‘lyric interruption’, and the new key will have long-range implications; in
its immediate context it is nonetheless destabilising. All parts – not least the
viola, whose voice overlaps with the second violin – now share in developing
a new spacious, legato sound-world of triplets. How rapidly this utterly
different soundscape is attained is remarkable. The effect is ethereal, unreal:
the first violin moves rapidly up to new registral heights and the discourse
remains ungrounded by a low-register cadence, or indeed by any strong
cadential affirmation of the new key.
What follows in the second group might be taken for a melodramatic
series of failed attempts by the protagonists to effect tonal ‘grounding’ in
this D flat realm: with larger-than-life gestures and emotional swings, the
quartet of personae seem to try to steer the quartet’s discourse in the right
direction. Cello and viola play chords utilising their lowest strings as the
dominant of D flat is sounded, forte, and the opening semiquaver turn
motif returns (bars 34–7). This results not in a firm close, but in an
apparently impulsive semitone lurch upwards, another impetuous fortis-
simo unison two-octave A major scale (V of D), and a leap to D\ (bar 39).
After an awkward silence, all the voices switch to a lamenting motif. The
cello, apparently influenced by the inner voices’ wavering, moves from a D[
pedal to a D[–E[ mumble; then all voices unite with another striking semitonal
swerve upwards and fortissimo unison scale in D (bars 49–50), Neapolitan of
34
See D. F. Tovey, ‘Some Aspects of Beethoven’s Art Forms’, Music and Letters, 8 (1927),
especially 134–5 and 152.
Ex. 7.3 Egmont, No. 1 ‘Die Trommel gerühret!’, bars 79–82 (second violin)
D[. D[ remains unconfirmed as tonic, but has been substantially present;

thus, despite bewildering changes of course, the connoisseur might discern
the tonal links.
The semitonal shifts in this music are akin to those in Egmont. For
example, in a fleeting shift in the recapitulation of the F minor overture
(bars 235–9), D major shines forth with similar unexpected radiance
(although with different musical material and dynamics).35 Closer to the
sound world of the quartet is the D[–C wavering in the strings during
Klärchen’s F minor Lied ‘Die Trommel gerühret!’; this wavering evokes the
beating of her heart as she imagines being a battle-ready hero, like Egmont,
and fades to a murmur at the end of the movement as she returns to reality
(Ex. 7.3). In the quartet’s first movement, the four protagonists subside
again into ostinato lament (bars 51–3), and the hushed low-register waver-
ing returns now on D[–E[ (bar 55 and 57; Ex. 7.4). Notable too are the
brevity of the exposition and the absence of a repeat.
The development section also runs quite contrary to its expected course,
being involved at least as much with timbral development as motivic or
tonal development; it is taken up with visual and visceral as well as auditory
building of a scene. A new readerly space is thus opened: this fragmentary
scena seems almost to demand vivid narration. As Kerman puts it, the
passage ‘wants to sound like the storm in the Sixth Symphony’ (also in
F minor).36 Writers such as Helm, Mason and Kerman invoke ‘battles’ and
‘cries of sorrow’, which are evoked by such means as up-beat figures parried
back and forth, sforzato stabs involving the opening turn figure, and swel-
ling bariolage in the first violin (this string crossing and the motivic ‘parries’
are the most visual effects here). Thus the brief twenty-two-bar scene
develops both the semiquaver motif and the dotted figure from the opening.
The D[–C tension resurfaces in a barbed exchange between the outer voices
(bars 75–6; Ex. 7.5).
This pictorial excursus would have allowed listeners to make fleeting
connections to popular contemporary orchestral battle and storm depictions,
35
Ong compares semitonal shifts in the two works, ‘Aspects of the Genesis’, p. 133.
36

and perhaps the vivid F minor passages from Klärchen’s ‘Die Trommel
gerühret!’. The quartet protagonists might ‘want to sound’ like an orchestra;
however, their exciting hermeneutic window is soon closed, and with it ours.
The little ‘battle’ had commenced with an altered version of the opening idea
and an unprepared shift to F major (bar 60; see Ex. 7.4). This sudden lurch
into the scene is echoed by an equally destabilising exit. A semitone shift
upwards in the bass, rather than a prepared cadence, brings the recapitulation
of the opening idea in bar 82. The effect is not unlike the shifting between
different discourses – musical, verbal, visual – in a play such as Egmont, which
incorporates Zwischenakte (musical interludes) and melodrama.
In a structural sense, as well as in the phrase-level terseness, the work
might be heard to cut a figure ‘quite contrary to the usual manner’, again
with the proviso that it was usual for Beethoven to explore new directions in
his sonata forms in these middle-period works. He had already extensively
explored the nature of ‘transitions’ in Op. 74 in a new way, using quartet
colours and effects that draw attention to these articulation points emphatic-
ally by extending and highlighting them. In Op. 95, he moves in the other
direction, towards extreme concision. This is most clearly evident in the
‘recapitulation’, in which hardly any of the first group material is reiterated;
instead, there is a cut to the second subject area by the fifth bar (bar 86). This
recapitulation also fails to deliver as expected, in that the second group
material is recapitulated in its original key. The protagonists seem only to
‘remember’ about the tonic in bar 93, where the tonic major replaces D[.
This tonal manoeuvre allows the first violin to articulate d[3–c3 at the crucial
moment, so that the ‘sore’ semitonal motion from bars 6–9 is highlighted
once again (bar 92). The underlying tonal and affective tension is more
exacerbated than ‘healed’ here: the major key and new registral reach inten-
sify the contrast between this music and the gruff low-register unisons of the
F minor realm. The first violin soars up to reach c4 (bars 99–100), the work’s
high point, next to be deployed in the finale.
The movement, and indeed the entire work, embodies the stark tonal
and affective oppositions encapsulated in the pervasive D[–C motion. Here
F minor is gritty, palpable: Beethoven exploits the resonance of open strings
for scale degree five, ‘tense’ intervals, rhythmic interplay and accents; they
combine to create the sense of violence, ‘battle cries’ and wounding that
listeners have heard and felt. D flat major, however, is ethereal and other-
worldly, as it is in the first and third movements of Op. 59 No. 1; the spiritual
quality is enhanced by the high register. The juxtaposition of these two realms
might recall, more broadly, the aesthetic project of the early Romantics,
and particularly A. W. Schlegel’s notion that ‘modern poetry endeavours to
reconcile the two worlds, the spiritual and the sensual’.
There is no full reconciliation of these opposite worlds in the movement.
Like Romantic poetry, it remains ‘open’ and unresolved on several levels.
As in the ‘exposition’, cadential confirmation in the second group (‘recap-
itulation’) is undercut by unison scale passages. Kerman hears the second of
these, in G minor (bar 118–19), as ‘an iron resolution to the Neapolitan
sounds earlier’.37 True, the connoisseur with the benefit of long-range
auditory memory can make the subtle connections: the G[ of the exposition
is resolved upwards (compare the pervasive F–G[–G\ tonal motions in the
cello, bars 6–9, 19–20, and continued in first violin in bars 60–4). Locally,
and in terms of affect, however, the stark G minor unison scale functions
more like an ironic reversal of the smooth, soothing F major triplets than
iron resolution. Again, the formal drama depends on a balancing of con-
nection and disjunction. Both fortissimo interruptions bring a return of
the d[3–c3 motion, softly and hauntingly repeated in the first violin (bars
110–11 and 121–2).
More discursive ploys are also used here, which accord with early
nineteenth-century ideas of the fragment. The coda’s opening is, as Steinberg
observes, ‘a neat and witty elision’ – and one that rhymes with the shift into
the development (compare bars 58–60 with 127–9; see Exx. 7.4 and 7.6).38
Indeed, it is ‘witty’ in the Schlegelian sense, permitting of unlikely associations.
The voicing of the D[ chord in bar 129, with the F prominently placed in the
top voice, helps the listener to make a connection between the movement’s two
most prominent but hitherto seemingly unrelated tonal areas.
37
Ibid. 38
Steinberg, ‘Notes on the Quartets’, p. 208.
Movement II: Allegretto ma non troppo 217
The coda is striking for its developmental rather than stabilising effect.
Helm aptly likens its opening to Beethoven’s overture to Heinrich Joseph
von Collin’s tragedy Coriolan (1807), which similarly deploys long-held
sforzato chords and upward-driving quaver motion; both share an
‘unrelenting, death-defying energy’.39 The F minor ‘battle’ music returns,
newly dramatised by means of the first violin’s diminished seventh
descending quaver arpeggios, the cellist’s frequent sounding of the resonant
bottom C string, the inner voices’ stabbing syncopation and a constellation
of sforzati. All this excitement dies abruptly down to murmurs, the D[–C
wavering persisting in the low register to the last.
Movement II: Allegretto ma non troppo
The blatant overturning of structure and function and lack of closure are
intensified in the second movement, which is hardly a D major answer to
39
F minor problems. The movement raises far more questions than it answers.
D major is, first of all, strikingly removed from F minor. Beethoven scarcely
ever used such distant key relationships between movements.40 True, we
‘know’ this key from the first movement, as the Neapolitan of the subme-
diant; this is nonetheless an extremely difficult relationship for listeners
to grasp (unless Liberty’s music in Egmont rings in one’s ears, as it was
possibly ringing in Beethoven’s). There are, however, more palpable links to
be found between the movements. The Allegretto opens with a solo stepwise
scale downwards from D in the cello, circling back up to scale degree five
from F]; this creates a subtle but audible connection to the opening unison
‘quotation’ in the first movement (where the pivot tone is the enharmonic
equivalent, G[), in its stepwise circularity. This motif appears in various
tonal guises between sections of the movement. Halting and open-ended
itself, though, it does as much to emphasise the fragmentary character of
the movement’s larger sections as it does to bind them and suggest their
interrelation.
The first main section, a fully voiced yet mezza voce song in D, shows a
marked ambivalence of tonality and melody, and is pointedly open-ended.
Like the lyrical sections of the opening movement, it is chromatically shaded.
B[ neighbour notes are introduced almost immediately (bar 7) and are
sounded most expressively in the viola’s mid-register turn motif (bars
13–14); these inflections point towards (but do not confirm) D minor, the
key most commonly associated with melancholy.41 The melodic character is
at once flowing and hesitant, a paradoxical quality that results from the
slight modal ambivalence (the F\s that would be needed to make this truly
modally ambivalent are absent). This flowing but hesitant character also
results from the slow syncopations and suspensions, and the turning motif
in the inner voices, which eventually takes hold in the upper voice as the
third phrase concludes (bars 17–21). The second violin derails the expected
final cadence with double stops creating dissonance in bars 23–4 and 27–8,
in between which the viola softly and hauntingly insists on the tonic
(compare Op. 59 No. 1, movement one, bars 85–8). The plagal close, with
the third of the chord in the top voice (bars 33–4) is an after-effect following
40
There are exceptions, such as the Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 37. For Haydn examples, see
his String Quartet in G minor, Op. 74 No. 3, and E flat Sonata, Hob. XVI:52.
41
For example, in 1828 and 1835, respectively, Seidel and G. Schilling described D minor as the
ideal key for ‘the affecting sounds, which portray so excellently Klärchen’s dying’ in Egmont.
Seidel, Charinomos, vol. II, p. 110, n. 148; G. Schilling (ed.), s. v. ‘D-Moll’, Encyclopädie der
gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften, oder Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst (Stuttgart:
Köhler, 1835), vol. II, p. 433.
Movement II: Allegretto ma non troppo 219
the soft perfect cadence in bars 32–3, which underlines the sense of hesitancy
and subtly undermines the closure.
The melancholy voice of the viola now comes into its own, commencing a
chromatic, downwardly winding subject in bar 34 that is almost overloaded
with melancholy signs. The passage is strongly reminiscent of the viola’s
lament in the Andante con moto from Op. 59 No. 3 (same instrument, same
point in the form), which chillingly suggests confinement and hints at the
downward-spiralling experience of degenerative melancholia. The viola’s
grief-laden complaint (and F\) was not wholly unexpected, but the two
fugal expositions that now follow seem largely unmotivated by the preceding
discourse. ‘What is the function of the fugues in op. 95?’, we might ask with
Kerman. Momentous preparation for a transformation of the opening song
is the answer that he provides.42
Certainly there is a good deal of preparation in this movement. However,
‘attempted’ and evaded closure is also vividly dramatised, imbuing the move-
ment with a fundamentally questioning air. This leaves the listener perplexed:
where will it all lead, and is there, in fact, a compositional filo (thread) to
follow?43 Each of the movement’s musical parts – the scale fragment, the
beautiful melody and the fugue – seems to call its own function into question,
so that the process of seeking (and not necessarily finding) seems to be
the governing aesthetic idea. Take the first fugue, for instance. Following
the fourth entry of the subject, the fugue quickly runs into an inextricable
flat-side tonal quagmire – which is apt given the melancholy subject –
culminating in a stretto (bars 54–9) and a pedal point on V of A flat (bars
60–2), far removed from the home tonic. The search for function seems to
have failed to such an extent that a deus ex machina is needed. The re-
appearance of the introductory stepwise scale fragment, now in the guise of a
modulating episode in A flat, effects the necessary rescue. After the rapidly
reached tonal crisis of the fugue, these sinking scale steps and ethereal upper-
voice suspensions, which slowly circle around to the home dominant, are, as
Kerman notes, positively uncanny.44
Kerman emphasises the neutralising, rationalising function of the move-
ment’s second fugue, which begins in bar 77. However, the sense of insta-
bility is retained and indeed intensified so that the fugue remains open and
in need of resolution. This fugue commences after an abrupt shift: the viola
42
Kerman, ‘Close Readings of the Heard Kind’, 214.
43
On the concept of il filo in composition c. 1800, and Beethoven works that call into question their
own musical coherence, see R. Kramer, ‘Between Cavatina and Ouverture: Opus 130 and the
Voices of Narrative’, Beethoven Forum, 1 (1992), 178–9.
44
Kerman, ‘Close Readings of the Heard Kind’, 216.
leaps up a tritone to a long pianissimo B[ (cf. Op. 59 No. 1, movement one,

bars 184–5ff.). The other voices then enter with the subject in the same order
as before, giving the semblance of a ground plan. However, our expectations
are not wholly met. The distance between entries is shortened to three
bars, the violin immediately complicates the viola’s statement with a nervous
staccato semiquaver countersubject, and the cello distorts its entry to sound a
tritone. What follows are, to be sure, ‘workmanlike’ procedures of inversion
(led by the viola in bars 87 and 91), as Kerman puts it.45 Arguably more
important here, though, is the destabilising diminution. The quartet protag-
onists seem to struggle, faltering under the weighty task of constructing a
fugue. A process of fragmentation is set in motion, bringing stretto entries
ever closer (bars 95–104) until a sequential circle of fifths ensues, based on
a fragment of the theme that is further pierced by sforzato accents. True,
the cello has shifted, rationally, from the dominant to a tonic pedal (bars
106–11), and we hear the first and only resolution of the D in the top voice
(bars 111–12). But subtle connection and sleight of hand, rather than overtly
logical linkage, is the game here. There follows another neat elision of
breathtaking concision: the cadential arrival turns out to be the departure
point for the opening scale figure, which now functions as the beginning of a
recapitulation.
The movement is ordinarily parsed as a palindrome, ABBA', with an
extensive coda at the end of the restatement of the transformed opening
melody. In the closest readings, by Helm and Kerman, the coda is understood
as the main site for resolution. However, it is difficult to define a coda in this
movement in the conventional sense; what we hear instead is an intensifica-
tion of ‘attempts to resolve’, which have become the main topic of the move-
ment. The transformed A theme becomes all the more pointedly open-ended
on its return, and seems all the more in need of fulfilment. Transposed into
the upper register and now marked dolce, it sounds ethereal, like the lyrical
second subject group in the first movement. The cello now takes the viola’s
function of conveying the melancholy inner voice (bars 124–37), in its
extreme high register, making the discourse seem even less grounded. An
attempt is made to draw the theme to a close, but there is no structural
cadence in sight. Closure is dramatically denied, as it was in the first statement
of the theme. As if, paradoxically, to confirm this denial, the tonic is twice
again played off against dissonances (bars 134–5 and 138–9).
In the ‘coda’ this avoidance of closure is even more pointedly drama-
tised. First the viola intervenes with the fugue theme at the point of cadence
45
Ibid., 213.
Pause: enter the narrating voice 221
(bars 143–4). Following a stretto, the first violin’s tritone entry subsides
into sighs (bars 149–51), which Kerman hears as ‘the last passionate outburst
in the movement’.46 The cello, though, is not to be outdone in pathos.
Hitting bottom C against the first violin’s B[ (bar 149), it then soars upwards
for a searing rendition of the opening melody, taking over the viola’s role
and register. Cadences now become more delicate, more poetic and more
poignant. The cello’s registral reaching seems to have pushed the first violin
upwards yet further, to g3 over a dominant pedal, followed by a gentle
downward fall (bars 165–6); repeated at the lower octave, this figure lends a
sense of gentle resignation to the deceptive cadence in bars 167–8. Following
further elided cadences in bars 171–2 and 175–6, the first violin recommences
its stratospheric ascent and finally reaches a3 (bar 180). Over the prolonged
dominant pedal, the final programmatic touches are added to this drama of
apparently unending preparation: a written-out cadenza and trill, and a final
‘re-hearing’ of the opening fragmentary scale passage, espressivo, on the steps
A–G]–G\ in the top voice, which is then repeated an octave lower (bars 184–
5, 186–7). This scale fragment will remain, poetically speaking, incomplete.
Two D major chords are now sounded softly in a hushed low register, with
the third, F], in the top voice. These tonic chords prove to be more transi-
tional than conclusive: pivot-note octave Ds are heard, followed by a desta-
bilising pivot chord, a diminished seventh on B\ (see Ex. 7.7).
Pause: enter the narrating voice
Indorf observes that ‘Beethoven had scarcely ended a slow movement in a

more “speaking” fashion’.47 Yet we may well ask whether and where this
particular utterance ends, and also who is speaking at this juncture. With
quick-witted brevity, Beethoven begins the third movement with the same
diminished seventh on which the preceding movement ended, which is then
resolved to C minor. The sense of connectedness is clear in his autograph
score, if less so in subsequent editions: uncharacteristically, Beethoven started
the third movement immediately after the second, on the same page and with
only a single bar line between the diminished seventh and the key change.
The use of a single sonority to effect a transformation and transition
between two movements has a precedent in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in
F minor, Op. 57, the ‘Appassionata’. In Op. 95, the sustained diminished
seventh, although softly sounded, also calls to mind the stentorian octave
46
Ibid., 215. 47
Indorf, ‘Werkbesprechungen’, p. 84.
Gs at the end of the Cavatina of Op. 130 and the beginning of the ‘Overtura’
in Op. 133, when the Große Fuge is taken as the finale. The linking dimin-
ished seventh in Op. 95 stands similarly between two quite different musics –
the former intensely lyrical, the latter overwhelmingly ‘instrumental’ in
conception. At this juncture, as in the case of the Große Fuge, a strikingly
forceful shift makes a pithy statement: in Op. 95, a single chord summarises
Movement III: Allegro assai vivace ma serioso 223
the lack of resolution that had been so poignantly drawn out in the Allegretto.
One is jolted out of a world of hushed lyricism by a sonority that demands
the resolution that had so poetically been denied, and deferred, and
denied again.
Kramer argues that a new authorial voice enters the discourse with the
G octaves that begin the Große Fuge. He aligns that work with the finales of
the Ninth Symphony and ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata: ‘in each case the work is
shown enacting its own composition, contemplating itself in a way that
demands a new mode of textual understanding’.48 The Große Fuge’s open-
ing octaves draw attention sharply, almost rudely, to the theatrical frame –
interrupting the self-sufficiency of the woeful soliloquy that is hauntingly
delivered in the Cavatina, proving it to be all an act. The Op. 95 ‘linking’
diminished seventh arguably functions similarly: the questioning discourse
that characterises the Allegretto, and especially its conclusion, is itself
abruptly called into question in one gesture. The listener might experience
a similar shift in the understanding or consciousness of agency: a new
discursive voice or narrative mode is heard – one that is ironic in the
Romantics’ sense of the word – which intrudes into the plot and calls our
attention to its artifice. Such moments of ironic interposition, or parabasis, are
notable in the works of the Schlegels, Tieck and their literary contemporaries.
Movement III: Allegro assai vivace ma serioso
Although the diminished seventh resolves to C minor as the third move-

ment begins, F minor will soon prove to be the tonic. This movement flaunts
fragmentariness even more blatantly than the first two. It begins in medias
res, and the ensuing scherzo consists of only one part, rather than the
customary two. The opening diminished seventh is sounded once more at
the repeat of the first section, reinforcing the sense of infinitely continuing
cycles. Downbeats in bars 1 and 3 sound like up-beats, given the harmonic
and textural emphasis on the second beat; and pauses between the two
opening fragmentary utterances further confound one’s sense of metre.
These pauses recall the opening bars of the first movement, and the motif’s
dotted gait recalls the second of the first movement’s opening fragments.
To be sure, it is typical for a scherzo movement to deploy metrical
play, but the serious nature of the game here is captured in Beethoven’s
48
Kramer, ‘Between Cavatina and Ouverture’, 169.
qualification of the movement title: ‘vivace ma serioso’ (my italics). Shifting

metrical emphases contribute to one’s physical and aural sense that this
music cannot be contained or wholly comprehended, but is forever in
process. The cadence in bars 7–8, for example, is strikingly undercut by
the cello’s downbeat B[. The tonic is delayed until the following bar’s down-
beat, which also serves to begin the next phrase. By the next cleverly elided
cadence, in bars 15–16, the tonality has shifted to F minor, and one wonders
whether the tonic has finally been reached. And by bar 25, the metre has
begun to settle into a regular accentuation of the second beat of each bar. But
tonally one is plunged, fortissimo, into D flat, an unexpected turn that none-
theless recalls the most prominent modulation of the first movement.
Neapolitan relations, too, become prominent once more: the trio starts
in G flat. As in the preceding two movements, lyricism, aided by the choice
of key, brings an ethereal quality.49 A cantus firmus unfolds in the lower
instruments, ‘as from another world’, Helm notes.50 Thus the movement insists
upon the juxtaposition of realms – one more spiritual, the other more earthly.
The sense of otherworldliness here is partly due to the striking modulations:
the movement migrates almost to the opposite pole of the harmonic spectrum,
to D major, and then to B minor, which at least provides a pivot note for the
return of the scherzo’s pivot chord. The disembodied character of this music
also arises from registral overlapping of parts and particularly from the high
cello line. This effect is most readily perceptible in live performance; the spatial
dissociation of lines and voices is then more apparent as cello and viola lines
and roles merge and swap in bars 53–61, and when the inner voice of the
second violin soars above the first violin in bars 66–73. Higher registers require
one to play in higher positions on the fingerboard or on upper strings, which is
visually apparent.
As they were in the first movement, the cuts are drastic in the recapitu-
lation, rendering the fragmentary nature of both the scherzo and the trio
even more emphatic. The recapitulated trio begins with the D major section,
and then proceeds to modulate anew, through G major and C minor to
F minor, thus again remaining tonally open-ended. The final statement of
the opening section is a mere fragment of a fragment; it is to be played ‘più
Allegro’, and the statement’s first seventeen bars are excised, so that the
scherzo is cut by one-third of its original length.
49
No open strings are available in G flat; the key does not favour the natural resonances of
stringed instruments, but rather leads to a slightly muted timbre.
50
Movement IV: Larghetto espressivo – Allegretto agitato – Allegro 225
Movement IV: Larghetto espressivo – Allegretto

agitato – Allegro
Discussions of the final movement, and of the work in general, have centred
on the concluding lively F major Allegro. This is my focal point, too. So
strikingly different in almost all parameters from everything that has gone
before, this Allegro seemed to Marx to be at least a gesture towards breaking the
four-movement plan, which would be more decisively undertaken in the late
quartets.51 Helm also speculated about a ‘fifth movement’ here.52 Conversely,
Livingstone, in his 1979 article on the function of this final coda, is concerned
to show its connectedness, pointing out a host of links, largely in terms of
intervals, between the coda and the rest of the work.53 He argues that the coda
functions as a coda not so much to the final movement as to the entire quartet,
and that it addresses and resolves the lack of resolution throughout the work.
Certainly one can understand this coda as a ‘work-level’ conclusion. But
can such a sudden and striking turn, in which there is reversal on many
levels, really effect the kind of comprehensive resolution needed to redress
such a lack? For Kerman, the answer is no, and his reading of the coda (and
indeed the work) is essentially negative. Seeking to ‘save face’ for Beethoven,
he finds some motivic connections between the preceding movements
and the coda: he points out that the F–G[–G\ motif of the opening move-
ment is revived here. But he speculates that Beethoven had ‘perhaps never
engaged so directly with the darker emotional forces’ and was possibly
‘overwhelmed’, asking: ‘Was Beethoven “serious” in calling a piece with
such an ending “Quartetto serioso”?’54 Longyear answers this question with
‘no’, but his reading is essentially positive: ‘Beethoven, in ending Opus 95,
destroys the illusion of seriousness which has hitherto prevailed in an opera
buffa-like conclusion.’ Without going into any detail, he claims that this
finale is something of a locus classicus of Romantic irony.55
Both writers seem to narrowly miss the point: that this coda lasting a couple
of glistening, pithy seconds is not only ‘perfectly astonishing’ (Kerman), but
51
Marx, Leben und Schaffen, vol. II, p. 319. The four-movement plan had arguably already been
jeopardised by the ‘run on’ finale in Op. 59 No. 1, and by the ‘link’ between Op. 95’s middle two
movements.
52
53
E. Livingstone, ‘The Final Coda in Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Minor, Opus 95’, in
J. C. Graue (ed.), Essays on Music for Charles Warren Fox (Rochester, NY: Eastman School of
Music Press, 1979), pp. 132–44.
54
55
Longyear, ‘Beethoven and Romantic Irony’, 649.
also perfectly fitting. A large-scale resolution – such as might be found in a

more overtly connected coda – would have been inappropriate on aesthetic
grounds. Beethoven deploys many strategies of large-scale connection in this
work, but the overriding impression is one of disjunction, of concise and
fragmentary musical discourse – a point supported by the fact that the links
Livingstone noted remained largely unmentioned until 1979.56 This further
fragment (rather than coda) sums up the work wonderfully – and unnerv-
ingly. It effects an ironic reversal, to be sure, but (pace Longyear) the overall
effect is to underline the serious nature of the discourse. This is another
moment in the quartet in which a single chord effects a sharp narrative frame
shift, a change in almost all musical parameters, serving here to call into
question the whole project of concluding a work – and indeed a string quartet,
supposedly a paragon of compositional ‘completeness’ and excellence.
A broader frame of reference is useful for further interpretation of the
quartet’s F major conclusion. Helm was the first to liken this section, which
he termed ‘a second finale’, to the Siegessinfonie in F major that concludes
the F minor overture to Egmont.57 The connection can be supported with
circumstantial evidence: Beethoven was well under way with sketches for
Egmont as he was developing ideas for Op. 95, both of which appear in the
sketchbook Landsberg 11.58 One sketch for Egmont, for the ‘Minore’ of a
march in the third Zwischenakt, was reworked and included in the first
movement of Op. 95. Indeed, several passages in each of the Zwischenakte
from Egmont show more or less overt melodic affinities with themes from
Op. 95. The most striking of these is the Andante agitato in E flat from the
fourth Zwischenakt, which relates to the two main motivic ideas in the first
theme group of Op. 95’s Allegretto agitato finale (see Exx. 7.8 and 7.9); both
are in compound duple time. The designation ‘agitato’ in the Egmont score
marks the crucial turn of the drama at this point: the Spanish invaders, led
by the Duke of Alba, have now occupied Brussels and the Duke has
forbidden public conversation. The tension is captured in both Egmont
and the quartet in the lurching motifs, which are played off between the
parts, creating an aura of whispered, worried exchanges.
Seow-Chin Ong notes the lightning speed with which the transformation
of mode takes place in both Op. 95 and the overture to Egmont; this, she
argues, gives rise to an aesthetic of negation and confrontation.59 Furthermore,
56
J. Daverio makes relevant comments on Schumann’s strategies of large-scale connection, where
the aesthetic point of departure for a given work is the fragment; see his Nineteenth-Century
Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New York: Schirmer, 1993), p. 58.
57
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 161. 58 Ong, ‘Aspects of the Genesis’, pp. 135–7.
59
Ibid., 133.
Ex. 7.8 Egmont, Andante agitato in E flat from the fourth Zwischenakt, bars 20–4
(strings)
the quartet and the incidental music for Egmont share a striking use of D major
as a tonal/affective opposite to F minor. There is an extensive passage in
D major as Liberty speaks to Egmont during the melodrama, telling him that
his people will eventually be free. Floating and ethereal, with muted strings,
pizzicato bass and softly intoned wind and brass chords, this music contrasts
starkly with the ensuing blare of the full-voiced F major Siegessinfonie, which
follows. The latter music is diegetic: Alba commands that it be performed
to cover the public speech that Egmont delivers as he stands on the scaffold.
Ong notes that the juxtaposition of these two musics – the D major music
of Liberty and the F major Siegessinfonie – creates a ‘rarefied disjuncture
defining two different planes of activity, one spiritual and the other more
earthly’.60
As we have seen, Beethoven creates similar moments of disjunction at
various key points in the string quartet. The D flat major music, with its
ethereal, high-register scoring and lack of harmonic grounding, creates
something of a polar opposite to the F minor realm. D major itself appears
as a fleeting and illusive key in the quartet. In the first movement, it figures
as a Neapolitan digression from D flat; in the second movement, the melody
of the lyrical main theme sits ambivalently ‘on D’; and in the third move-
ment, D major is one of the main keys through which the trio’s otherworldly
song passes. Beethoven recalls D flat and high-register ethereality following
the very brief development section in the finale, where the cello plays once
again in its highest register, pianissimo (bars 67–73). The second group is
soon recapitulated in F minor (starting in bar 78); its syncopated stabs recall
the ‘battle’ music of the first movement and create a stark contrast to the
preceding section. In this work, as in the Egmont Overture, D flat is heard
once more, and with first violin ‘sighs’ (compare bars 108–10 in the quartet
with bars 263–6 in the overture); a single pivot chord soon launches the F
major coda, a remarkably sudden event in both works (Exx. 7.10 and 7.11).
The Siegessinfonie itself is related to the final coda of the quartet in
its faster tempo (Allegro con brio in Egmont, Allegro in Op. 95); the
build-up of texture by means of polyphonic voices (compare bars 15ff. in
the Siegessinfonie with bars 156ff. in the quartet); and the striking registral
reach up to c4 (bars 27–8 in the Siegessinfonie, bars 150 and 171 in the
quartet, in conjunction with the low C). As a result of Beethoven’s careful
building up of register and dynamics, this striking attainment of the highest
point in the quartet (last heard in the first movement) stands out as a moment
similarly triumphant to that in Egmont (see also Overture, bars 319ff.). Robert
Simpson hears the quartet coda as a representation of the private elated
thoughts of Egmont as the Siegessinfonie drowns his final speech.61 This is
60
Ibid.
61
Simpson, ‘The Chamber Music’, p. 262; this is similar to Watson’s reading: Beethoven’s Chamber
Music, p. 192.
Ex. 7.10 Egmont, Overture, bars 279–88
a plausible reading, although the orchestra is directed to play after Egmont’s

final words. But why not understand this passage as a more direct, if mini-
ature, parallel to the Siegessinfonie? Despite its smaller proportions, one might
still experience from the quartet coda something of the sense of collective,
projected rejoicing: in the play, the Sieg (victory) is the future triumph of the
Netherlands.
In the quartet coda fragment, as in the case of the Siegessinfonie, another
level of listening and interpretation is suggested. To be sure, the coda fragment
Ex. 7.10 (cont.)
plays out the tierce de picardie of bar 132, which certainly takes the chill off
the F minor air, and suggests transcendence. The continual stream of closing
gestures makes a striking contrast to the incessant cadential deferrals, denials
or elisions of the preceding movements.62 But the dramatic disjuncture here –
the breathtaking change of affect – also prompts questions, opening up an
intellectual space in which the listener can ponder the poignancy and irony.
62
Head discusses this aspect of the ‘Victory Symphony’ in ‘Beethoven Heroine’, 131.
‘Never to be performed in public’? 231
Rephrasing the question stated above, with the parallels to Egmont in mind,
the listener might ask: could any chord, cadence, or concluding procession
ever eclipse the preceding implicitly tragic discourse?63 In the end, it is the
asking of such a question that is centrally important to the work’s aesthetic,
rather than the answering.
‘Never to be performed in public’?
Writers have emphasised Op. 95’s ‘private’ rhetoric, arguing that the work
should be heard as an early nineteenth-century example of musica reservata,
music destined for a small audience of connoisseurs.64 This does indeed
seem to be the import of Beethoven’s letter to George Smart of 7 October
1816. Beethoven wrote to Smart complaining that the works that he had
handed over to the London musician Charles Neate had not, as he had
expected, been given to the Philharmonic Society for a benefit concert in
his own name. The works in question were: Symphony No. 7; the Cantata
Der glorreiche Augenblick, Op. 136; Fidelio, Op. 72; the Chorus Meeresstille und
Glückliche Fahrt, Op. 112; Op. 95; and the Cello Sonata Op. 102. Beethoven
wrote to give Smart the authority to retrieve the works from Neate in order to
select some of them, put on the benefit concert, and offer them to publishers.
Of the quartet, Beethoven writes: ‘N.B. The Quartett is written for a small circle
63
Compare Kinderman, who concludes that ‘in the coda of the quartet the dramatic tensions are
not resolved but are forgotten and seemingly transcended’, Beethoven, p. 171.
64
Fischer, ‘“Never to be Performed in Public”’.
of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public. Should you wish

for some quartetts for public performance I would compose them to this
purpose occasionally.’65
Given this apparently unambiguous statement from Beethoven regarding
the audience for Op. 95, how are we to understand the fact that it was
performed in a public Prater matinee in May 1814, and what are we to
make of Gustav Mahler’s orchestral arrangement for public performance in
1899? First, it is important to recognise that, in his letter to Smart, Beethoven
speaks foremost of his desire for financial gain from his works and in the
context of the English market. He was not necessarily trying to set in concrete,
for all times and places, the ‘right’ audience for the work. Beethoven had
given the collection of as yet unpublished works to Neate during his visit to
Vienna in 1815–16, with the primary aim of securing English publishers for
them. The composer recognised the importance of the English music
market, declaring in his letter to Smart: ‘I should like to receive regular orders
from England for great compositions.’66 Indeed, he had busied himself with
market research and was thus able to observe to Smart that his Seventh
Symphony (presumably – it is not clear) had received an enthusiastic report
in the Morning Chronicle, and that two of his recent overtures had been well
received: Op. 115, the Overture ‘Zur Namensfeier’, was praised by Neate
himself; and Op. 117, the overture from König Stephan, received approbation
from the original Hungarian audience.67
Possibly the reception of Op. 95 at the Prater concert in 1814 was not as
favourable as Beethoven expected, making him less willing to put the work
forward. Even if it had gone well, Beethoven (an astute businessman) might
have wished to take the precaution of offering to Smart only those works
he thought were guaranteed to please the larger and broader London public.
Before the advent of copyright, the more or less simultaneous sales of
unpublished manuscript to publishers in multiple locations was the main
way for a composer to pursue some profit from his music. Public concerts
acted as a kind of ‘shop front’ or advertising trailer for the published wares.
Beethoven would have been keenly aware that a rousing major-key sym-
phony (such as the Seventh), or a cantata with a text that was politically
stirring and sublime (such as Op. 136), would win him the most favour with
this most important London market, which was strongly oriented towards
the music of Handel and Haydn. Just as the complexities of Mozart’s music
65
Brandenburg (ed.), Briefe, vol. III, p. 306. This letter was penned for Beethoven by Johann von
Häring. By ‘occasionally’, Beethoven/Häring might well have meant what we would now express
as ‘especially’.
66
Ibid. 67 Ibid, vol. III, p. 307, n. 7 and 8.
‘Never to be performed in public’? 233
took a while to win favour in England, a Beethoven work strongly geared

towards new German aesthetics would have been a tricky product to
market there.
Mahler, however, seems to have had the ‘marketing’ of Op. 95 to a broad
audience in mind when he orchestrated the work for public performance
in Vienna on 15 January 1899. This was to have been part of his project of
orchestrating all Beethoven’s string quartets, launching a ‘completely new
era of concert literature’.68 We have seen that Op. 95 contains its share of
more ‘public’ gestures and orchestral elements. There are the unisons
and ‘battle’ music of the first movement, the scherzo sections of the third
movement, and much of the finale, especially the F major coda, which
translate well into the orchestral arrangement. Mahler also took care with
the more delicate passages: he tried to ensure that the fifth voice, the added
bass, did not muddy the texture (for example, by the use of pizzicato).
He also scored the more intricate passages of the finale for solo violin
(bars 43–50 and 93–7).
Mahler’s arrangement of the work for string orchestra can be read as a
reception document that speaks to his own aesthetics, and, to an extent, to
the views of his time. He saw his task as one of enabling listeners’ ‘intimate
contact with the music’, given changing concert conditions, and the inability
of quartet performers to project the four parts with the requisite power
in the new, larger concert halls.69 He also found the loss of intimacy to be
intrinsic – a product of Beethoven’s development of the genre. He sensed a
latent orchestral character in Beethoven’s later quartets (including Op. 95),
which had yet to be wholly unleashed. This character, according to Mahler,
is fully realised ‘in the powerful composition of the last Beethoven quartets,
which have long ceased to be conceived with four miserable little men in mind,
and which, according to the conception, would already have had an altogether
different dimension and simply demanded a small string orchestra’.70
It is easy to dismiss Mahler’s views as misbegotten, as did Helm in the
second (1910) edition of his Beethovens Streichquartette.71 Helm often
urged his readers to experience the works as quartets in live performance;
68
G. Mahler, ‘Ein Beethoven’sches Quartett für Streichorchester’, Die Wage. Eine Wiener
Wochenschrift, 2 (1899), 50.
69
Ibid.
70
Reported by N. Bauer-Lechner (1898) in H. Killian, Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von
Natalie Bauer-Lechner (Hamburg: Wagner, 1984), p. 125. (Italics original.) See also W. Birtel,
‘“Eine ideale Darstellung des Quartetts”. Zu Gustav Mahlers Bearbeitung des Streichquartetts
d-Moll D 810 von Schubert’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 149 (1988), 13.
71
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 142. Helm notes: ‘dieses Werk konnte eben nur Quartett
sein und nichts Anderes’ (this work could simply only be a quartet and nothing else).
he did so, for example, when trying to define the ‘indescribably beautiful and
noble melodic expression’ at the delicate conclusion to the second move-
ment in Op. 95.72 He captures the sense in which the string quartet was still,
in the late nineteenth century, considered to be an ideal chamber genre in
that the musical message could transcend the medium. This idea was
disseminated earlier; for example, in the 1810 article ‘On Quartet Music’ for
the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, where Petiscus claims that quartet music
can ‘fuse . . . the fullness and completeness of an ensemble with the delicacy
and expression of the solo’.73 This sentiment was reiterated, with more
emphasis now on compositional–technical elements, in the 1865 edition
of Koch’s Lexikon. The composition of string quartets, the editor argues, is
‘more drawing than painting’, and quartet composition is to orchestral com-
position what the ‘ingeniously worked-out etching’ is to the full painting.74
In actually scoring the work for orchestra, Mahler undermined the sense in
which the string quartet represented, in nineteenth-century thought, the
epitome of the artistic fragment: it was thought of as a genre that suggests
more than it states, and thus demands intimate (engaged, proximal, multi-
valent) listening, and intellectual work to fill out its plot.
Mahler, however, was in the business of renegotiation: his orchestration
of Op. 95 was an attempt to rekindle not only ‘intimacy’ but also the work’s
irony for a new audience, rather than lose them in temporal and contextual
translation. Indeed, he arguably heightens the irony; for example, with his
solo deployment of the violin for the passage beginning in bar 93 in the
finale’s recapitulation. Here the painful stabs and chromatic runs in the solo
violin create a lone cry, which is then engulfed by the blare of the tutti
F major coda. In Mahler’s day, the work’s irony would perhaps have been
best understood by those elite listeners who appreciated the sharp irony
of his own symphonies: a late nineteenth-century Viennese intelligentsia
fed on writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, rather than the Schlegel
brothers, Novalis and Tieck. Such listeners may well have appreciated keen
poignancy, confrontation, even negation in the coda, while these aspects
would have been lost on the more conservative Viennese public of the time.
It remains, then, an ironic but understandable historical fact that Op. 95,
supposedly ‘never to be performed in public’, was the only one of Beethoven’s
string quartets for which Mahler completed and performed an orchestral
version.
72
Ibid., p. 151. 73 Petiscus, ‘Ueber Quartettmusik’, 519–20.
74
A. von Dommer (ed.), s.v. ‘Streichquartett’, Musikalisches Lexikon, p. 804.
8 A tale of heroic emancipation? Reception
narratives for the middle-period quartets
In this chapter, I consider various important agents in the reception history

of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets. I draw on the work of William
Weber, who considers the role of composers, scholars and performers
respectively in the reception of musical works and the associated processes
of canon formation.1 This review of reception is not intended to be com-
prehensive, but brings together reception threads traced in Chapters 3–7 by
examining key trends and turning points in these works’ ‘after-life’. The
main focus is on scholars’, especially German scholars’, reception of the
quartets, along with critique of the persistent narrative about Beethoven’s
‘heroic emancipation’ of the genre.
Schumann and Mendelssohn: re-hearing Beethoven’s

dramatic voices
Schumann and Mendelssohn played key roles in the early reception of

Beethoven’s quartets. Both composers revered Beethoven’s chamber
music, and took time to work up to composing string quartets given his
daunting precedent.2 Schumann annotated his copies of Op. 59 Nos. 1–2
and Op. 74, among other Beethoven quartets, and followed Beethoven’s
example by making an intensive study of fugue at the start of his ‘chamber
music year’, 1842. Studying these composers’ involvement with the middle-
period quartets affords a glimpse into the pedagogical canon associated with
chamber music in the nineteenth century, in which Beethoven’s quartets
were central. It also offers a view of these works that does not depend on
paradigms of ‘heroism’ or ideals of ‘true’ string quartets.
1
W. Weber, ‘The History of Musical Canon’, in N. Cook and M. Everist (eds.), Rethinking Music
(Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 339–41.
2
In a diary entry of 9 June 1839, Schumann writes the following regarding string quartet
composition: ‘er fehlt mir doch der Muth, doch auch die Ruhe zu solcher Arbeit’ (I lack the
courage as well as the repose for such work), H. Kohlhase (ed.), Three Quartets for Two Violins,
Viola and Violoncello op. 41. Robert Schumann: New Edition of the Complete Works, Series II,
Group I, vol. I (Mainz: Schott, 2006), p. 136. 235
236 Reception narratives for the middle-period quartets
Scholars have emphasised ways in which Schumann and Mendelssohn

celebrated and emulated Beethoven’s late quartets, but have not generally
recognised the importance of the middle-period quartets to these com-
posers’ conceptions of chamber music.3 ‘Conceptions’ is the crucial word
here: both composers took up techniques and strategies found in the
middle-period quartets and presented them in a fresh light, engaging
listeners and performers in what John Daverio terms an ‘imaginative
dialogue with the tradition’.4 Schumann decried younger composers’ use
of all too overt allusions to earlier composers’ works. Like Mendelssohn, his
‘imaginative dialogue’ with Beethoven’s middle-period quartets involved
their songful aspects in particular, and their dramatic modes in general.
Dahlhaus observes that in their chamber music these two composers
developed a new tone: the lyrical and non-developmental tendency that
characterises Beethoven’s music from the ‘Harp’ Quartet to the ‘Archduke’
Trio.5 But these composers’ interests in affects and procedures from Op. 59
are also pertinent here. Schumann’s E flat Piano Quartet, Op. 47, for
example, has a hymn-like slow introduction that bears a relation to the
Introduzione from Op. 59 No. 3 in its creation of harmonic mystery and
registral suspense, which are resolved in the ensuing Allegro. Schumann’s
Allegro theme moves from scale degree three to a strongly accented scale
degree four just like Beethoven’s, where scale degree two is a lower auxiliary
(Ex. 8.1; for Op. 59 No. 3, see Exx. 5.1 and 5.2), and is followed by an
unaccompanied line (piano not violin) with some similarity to Beethoven’s
in its intervals (but not the dotted rhythm). As in Beethoven’s opening
Allegro, the chordal and solo gestures are then repeated a tone higher.6 As
3
Key writings on Mendelssohn include J. Godwin, ‘Early Mendelssohn and Late Beethoven’, Music
and Letters, 55 (1974), 272–85; U. Golomb, ‘Mendelssohn’s Creative Response to Late Beethoven:
Polyphony and Thematic Identity in Mendelssohn’s Quartet in A-major [sic] Op. 13’, Ad
Parnassum, 4 (2006), 101–19; S. E. Hefling, ‘The Austro-Germanic Quartet Tradition in the
Nineteenth Century’, in Stowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet,
pp. 235–9; W. Konold, ‘Mendelssohn und der späte Beethoven’, in J. Fischer (ed.), Münchner
Beethoven-Studien (Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1992), pp. 183–91; F. Krummacher,
‘Synthesis des Disparaten: zu Beethovens späten Quartetten und ihrer frühen Rezeption’, Archiv
für Musikwissenschaft, 37 (1980), 99–134; and B. Taylor, ‘Cyclic Form, Time, and Memory’,
45–89. On Schumann, see Hefling, ‘The Austro-Germanic Quartet Tradition in the Nineteenth
Century’, pp. 239–43, and see below.
4
J. Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a ‘New Poetic Age’ (Oxford University Press, 1997),
pp. 265–66.
5
C. Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to His Music, trans. M. Whittall (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1991), p. 203.
6
B. Bischoff also mentions Op. 59 No. 3 in this connection. See Monument für Beethoven. Die
Entwicklung der Beethoven-Rezeption Robert Schumanns (Cologne: Dohr, 1994), p. 404, n. 132.
Schumann and Mendelssohn: re-hearing Beethoven’s dramatic voices 237
Ex. 8.1 R. Schumann, Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, movement one, bars 1–20
the movement unfolds, Schumann refers back to the slow introduction to

articulate structure, like Beethoven but more prominently.
The relationship of Op. 47 to Beethoven’s Op. 74 is equally apparent. The
articulated chords and running quavers of Op. 47’s opening Allegro recall
those in the Allegro first movement of Op. 74, as does the questioning shape
of the melody, numerous pauses and strong articulation of D flat in the slow
introduction. The second movement from Op. 47 relates to the third move-
ment of Op. 74 in terms of time signature (3/4) and five-part scherzo
structure (an innovative feature in Op. 74). The first trio introduces coun-
terpoint, like Beethoven’s but with free lyricism rather than a parody of
strictness. In the second trio of Op. 47, Schumann went further than
Ex. 8.1 (cont.)
Beethoven in witty rhythmic waywardness. Beethoven labelled his trio to be

played as if in 6/8 (see Ex. 6.8); Schumann uses thick chordal textures,
syncopation and sforzandi to create a consistent hypermetrical displace-
ment, which contrasts markedly with the driving scherzo and the flowing,
songful aspect of the work in general.
Perhaps Schumann’s most expressive ‘re-hearing’ of Beethoven’s middle-
period quartets – and of the pathetic dramatic voices deployed there –
occurs in the Andante cantabile of Op. 47. This movement begins in medias
res and takes to a new limit the poignant lyricism of the flat-keyed slow
movements of Beethoven’s Opp. 59 No. 1 and 74. Schumann builds exten-
sively on the lyrical violin and cello ‘duets’ in the central sections of those
Ex. 8.2 R. Schumann, Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, movement three, bars 48–51
movements, reversing Beethoven’s formal procedures in that the duets

occupy the outer sections, and the central section is a hymn-like accom-
panied theme in the first violin. Sounded from deep flat tonal regions (G flat
major; see Ex. 8.2), this song can be regarded as a sweetly melancholic
inversion of the Op. 74 opening cantabile theme (compare Ex. 6.4).7
Schumann’s decision to begin the last movement of Op. 47 with a lively
fugato places his piano quartet in a tradition that includes the finale of Op.
59 No. 3.8 Again, this is an imaginative re-reading on Schumann’s part: in
both movements the viola leads with the theme, but Beethoven’s themes are
soft and light, Schumann’s forte and strident.
More generally, Schumann used procedures for undermining traditional
sonata form schemes similar to those explored by Beethoven in the middle-
period quartets. In the A major String Quartet, Op. 41 No. 3, for example,
Schumann exploits various devices to weaken one’s sense of the tonic. The
slow introduction starts in medias res, as in Op. 59 No. 3, then moves
towards the tonic, a process characteristic of Op. 59’s themes and especially
those of Op. 59 No. 2. As in Op. 59 No. 2, the tonic’s identity is undermined
by the strong tonicisation of other keys. Like Beethoven, Schumann tends to
avoid a straightforward double thematic return; for example, in the first
7
The songful influence of the middle-period quartets becomes yet more apparent when one
considers that Op. 59 No. 1 provided a model for Schumann’s use of the Russian theme in his
piano four hands ‘Gespenster Märchen’, Op. 85 No. 2. See T. Frimmel, ‘Beethovenspuren bei
Robert Schumann’, in Beethoven-Forschung, 9 (1923), 20–1.
8
Daverio, Robert Schumann, pp. 260–1.
movement of Op. 41 No. 3, where the recapitulation begins with the second
theme. That movement ends ambiguously, too: softly, and with the third in
the top voice, as in the finale of Op. 74.9 Thus Schumann, like Beethoven,
underscores form as a process.
Mendelssohn also seems to have been inspired by the process-orientation
of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets and their dialectical turns – elements
that link these works to Romantic conceptions of drama. He too built upon
Beethoven’s use of the slow introduction and its connection to the
work as a whole. The concordances between the Adagio introduction to
Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E flat major, Op. 12, and Beethoven’s Poco
Adagio introduction to Op. 74 include among others the subdominant-
directed opening chord and the three-quaver rhythmic formula.10 The slow
introduction to Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13, also shares
the speech-like opening phrase and three-quaver-note up-beat gesture with
the slow introduction to Op. 74. More significantly, there is a likeness of
procedure and aesthetic: the speech-like statements in Op. 13 build outwards
from confined registral space, leading to a dominant seventh (this is also true
of Op. 12, but with less registral expansion); the ensuing Allegro then
commences likewise with a chordal flourish and provides resolution on
several levels – tonal, textural and registral – but not all.
Like Schumann, Mendelssohn showed a fascination with Beethoven’s
more tragic dramatic mode, and placed a similar emphasis on lyrical
unfolding. He received a manuscript of Beethoven’s F minor quartet for
his nineteenth birthday, which editor and friend August Wilhelm Julius
Rietz had made for him. In the F major slow movement from Op. 13, Adagio
non lento, he paid a fleeting tribute to the sweetly lamenting (F minor)
Larghetto espressivo introduction to the finale of Op. 95 (Ex. 8.3). To be
sure, he developed the dotted up-beat arch of the opening phrase into
something warmer and more reassuring than its counterpart in Op. 95
(Ex. 8.4), akin to the expressive treatment of first violin appoggiaturas and
low cello register at the conclusion of the Adagio’s opening theme in Op. 74
(Ex. 8.5). These movements also share detailed attention to articulation and
dynamics. An anguished voice returns in the Presto finale of Op. 13, whose
speech-like statements (here terse recitative) with abruptly juxtaposed
tremolandi and rushing non ligato scales link the movement’s drama to
the ‘quick-witted brevity’ of Op. 95’s outer movements.
9
The second movement of Op. 59 No. 2 also ends softly, with scale degree five in the top voice.
10
F. Krummacher, Das Streichquartett. II. Von Mendelssohn bis zur Gegenwart. Handbuch der
musikalischen Gattungen, vol. VI (Laaber, 2001), p. 18.
Ex. 8.3 F. Mendelssohn, String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13, movement two, bars 1–16
Ex. 8.4 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 95, movement four, bars 1–2
Ex. 8.5 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 74, movement two, bars 13–17
13
Marx, Lenz and ‘emancipation’ in Op. 59
Schumann and Mendelssohn showed an appreciation of the various dra-

matic modes of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets in their own composi-
tional responses. However, the climate of German music scholarship after
the 1848 March Revolution fostered a rather one-sided view of string
quartets, and those of Beethoven in particular. In their own processes of
canon formation, scholars at the time built on the ideology of ‘true’ quartets,
which had emerged c. 1800, confirming the ideals of homogeneity, ‘purity’
and ‘spirituality’. Nationalist and liberalist sentiments were popular in
Marx, Lenz and ‘emancipation’ in Op. 59 243
mid-century Germany, evidenced not least in a zeal for collecting and

discussing German cultural artefacts. String quartets by Austro-Germans
in general, and especially by Beethoven, became flagships for a new ideal of
social and political harmony: these works were to be homogeneous, ‘pure’
and ‘spiritual’, as the earlier discourse had enjoined; and now they were also
recruited in the cause of freedom and emancipation.
The notion of ‘emancipated’ string quartets, and the idea that Beethoven
achieved emancipation in his middle period, is expressed in Marx’s
Beethoven biography of 1859 and more clearly in the second edition of
1863. At first Marx appears to refer to a freedom of personal interaction,
enacted in the very playing of quartets. Praising the brothers Müller highly
for their quartet performances, Marx employs the idea of Viereinigkeit
(fourfold unity) that Petiscus had used in 1810 to define the ‘true’ string
quartet.11 He repeated the notion, by now common, that the four string
quartet players must merge into one, while each retains his individuality:
[The Müller Quartet’s performance] was the Oriental fourfold unity instead of our
narrow threefold unity, in which the life of the original German folk musicians is
subliminally presented. All four united are one; they did not cease until their four
souls flowed together and their muscles were subsumed under the strong striving of
a single will. But in every foursome, each individual is yet an entire man again,
whose strength is not divided between two or four voices, but used undivided in
service of his own voice.12
Marx’s description of the performers’ interactions then slips seamlessly into

a discussion of composition – of how the composer can achieve this ideal
four-part interaction through a kind of free polyphony. Thus he further
propagates the composer- and score-focused ideology of ‘true’ string quar-
tets. In his view, Haydn and Mozart attained ideal four-part writing in their
quartets, but their works did not yet yield complete freedom; they still
composed according to the paradigm of ‘conversational’ quartets. By this
he meant that they were still writing with the capabilities and limitations of
the four instruments foremost in mind. This emphasis, he suggests, ham-
pers the free expression of a composer’s spirit. Marx, like Lenz, located
Beethoven’s ‘Emanzipation der Stimmen’ (emancipation of the voices) in
Op. 59. He made it clear that the voice that is ‘emancipated’ in this opus is
11
The Müller Quartet, led by Karl Friedrich Müller (1797–1873), comprised four brothers.
They played all of Beethoven’s string quartets, but did not perform the late quartets so often
in public as they did the earlier works.
12
Marx, Leben und Schaffen, vol. I, p. 186. This is an elaboration on a similar statement in the first
(1859) edition, vol. I, p. 203.
actually that of the composer, who could now use the string quartet to
express whatever came to his creative mind:
[Beethoven] envisaged the four voices ideally, without losing sight of their specific
characters. To him they were no longer this violin, this cello, in their imperfect state;
they had become to him entirely free, ingeniously constituted agents of his
thought.13
For Marx and Lenz, the ‘freedom’ to be found in Op. 59 is not only a
freedom from the traditions of the Mozart and Haydn quartets. It is a
freedom of expression, so that the composer could fashion these works
‘nach Nothwendigkeiten des Geistes’ (following the necessities of the spirit),
in Lenz’s words.14 Thus Beethoven brought the quartet into closer align-
ment with the ideal of absolute music.15 Apparently he also brought the
genre closer to himself, producing ‘das persönliche Beethovensche Quartett’
(the personalised Beethoven quartet).16 Citing Gottfried Ephraim Lessing
and Friedrich Rochlitz on the authenticity with which the creative artist
expresses himself through his works, Lenz observes: ‘with this right itself [of
authentic expression], Beethoven gives us his mind in Op. 59 . . . Never had
Beethoven’s will spoken so clearly.’17 This linking of a new-found ‘freedom’
in the string quartet with Beethoven’s expression of his own compositional
persona or ‘voice’ was to prove important for these works’ reception,
especially when it became tied to narratives of heroism.
Wagner and Helm: latest means greatest
Mid-century writers tended to accept a tripartite periodisation of

Beethoven’s career, and to elevate the middle-period quartets, and Op. 59
in particular, as Beethoven’s greatest. Yet despite this high praise, a belief in
the transcendent greatness of the late quartets was emerging clearly in
critical commentary. And the admiration sometimes came at the expense
of the middle-period works. In response to Lenz’s praise of the Op. 59
quartets, for example, the influential Beethoven scholar Alexander
Oulibicheff expressed the following criticism in his Beethoven, ses critiques
et ses glossateurs (1857):
13
Ibid., vol. II, p. 39. The statement is almost identical in the first edition, vol. II, p. 45.
14
Lenz, Beethoven. Eine Kunst-Studie, vol. IV, p. 19. 15 Ibid., vol. IV, p. 18.
16
Ibid., vol. IV, p. 167. 17 Ibid., vol. IV, p. 20.
Wagner and Helm: latest means greatest 245
At the time of their first appearance with us in St Petersburg, few people liked them
[Op. 59]. Since then, the wind has changed for them, and contemporary critics place
them far above the first six quartets by Beethoven . . . Thanks to the untiring
eloquence and zeal [of the more recent critics of Beethoven since 1848], the quartets
dedicated to Count Rasoumowsky [sic] are now preferred to the first six, I will not
say by the general public, but by competent judges. Already we can look forward to
the day when the recognition of the last five will leave Op. 59 as far behind as Op. 59
has left Op. 18. Today the Op. 59 are called the ‘great’ Beethoven quartets; soon the
Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132 and 135 will be called the ‘very great’.18
Oulibicheff’s valuing of the late quartets vis-à-vis the middle-period quar-

tets was in fact adopted more widely and sooner than he had thought. In his
article ‘Les Derniers Quatuors de Beethoven’ for the Revue philosophique et
religieuse (1856), Jean-Baptiste Sabattier, for one, finds that Beethoven had
not fully mastered compositional technique in Op. 59, and implies that the
later works achieved the implicit stylistic goal: ‘The opening quartet in F
[Op. 59 No. 1] is overburdened by the accompaniment’, he complains, ‘and
the design seems too involved. The composer has not yet found his final
manner.’19
Kristin M. Knittel speaks of an ‘emerging belief’ in the 1870s that the
works of the last period were his greatest, viewing Wagner’s 1870 essay on
Beethoven as the linchpin in this shift in reception.20 The belief had already
emerged by this stage, but Wagner set the discourse on a new philosophical
footing, which allowed new claims to be made about the late works’
‘authenticity’, on biographical grounds. Drawing on Schopenhauer’s ideas
of the will and the ‘inner eye’, he maintained that the works written in
complete deafness were not the products of a madman, as previous critics
had tended to assume, but godlike creations of utmost genius. Nature had
intervened, Wagner found, the deafness permitting Beethoven to shut
out the external world of appearances and objects and produce works
articulating his highest and innermost ideals. This simultaneous appeal
to Schopenhauerian ideas and Beethoven biography would certainly have
attracted the more forward-thinking critics of Wagner’s day. As Wagner
understood it, the onset of the composer’s complete deafness, greatness and
‘lateness’ occurred around the time of the seventh and eighth symphonies
(1811–12). ‘Never has any art in the world’, he enthuses, ‘created aught so
18
Oulibicheff, Beethoven, ses critiques et ses glossateurs, pp. 257 and 259.
19
J.-B. Sabattier, ‘Les Derniers Quatuors de Beethoven’, La Revue philosophique et religieuse,
5 (1856), 81.
20
K. M. Knittel, ‘Wagner, Deafness, and the Reception of Beethoven’s Late Style’, Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 51 (1998), 60.
radiant as the Symphonies in A and F [Symphonies 7 and 8], with all their so
closely allied tone-works from this godlike period of the master’s total
deafness.’21
Knittel notes that only three years after the publication of his Beethoven
essay Wagner abandoned his radical position on the composer’s deafness
and embraced its diametric opposite, deeming deafness to be a hindrance.22
Helm, however, agreed with Wagner’s earlier view, which he reflected and
realised more fully in his 1885 book on the string quartets – the first
substantial monograph on the subject, and highly influential. The under-
lying ‘plot’ or narrative that Helm applied to Beethoven’s quartet-writing
career had clearly moved from one valuing the middle period most of all (an
‘organic’ narrative) to one following a teleological trajectory with the final
period as the goal.23 The string quartet becomes the vehicle par excellence
for a working out of Beethoven’s apparently godlike creative powers, and
the late works are the expression of the composer’s innermost soul. Helm
speaks of Beethoven’s inward ‘Trieb’ (drive), which is to be worked out
progressively in the course of his quartet-writing career.24 And the stakes
were higher still: he sought to make a case for Beethoven’s string quartets as
paradigmatic for music altogether, assuring the reader that these works were
so fundamentally all-encompassing that one could trace in them not only
their intrinsic musical-psychological development, but also music history as
a whole. At the start of his book he observes:
Just as Beethoven’s string quartets record a whole world of moods, a history of the
development of the inner person, so too they embody as a whole and at the same
time, in a nutshell, the history of today’s music in general.25
Although Helm praised the late quartets in no uncertain terms, and adopted a
teleological narrative for Beethoven’s quartet oeuvre, in his account the real
turning point in the composer’s quartet-writing career arrives with Op. 74,
and especially with Op. 95. This is what we might expect, following Wagner’s
idea of the early onset of Beethoven’s deafness and his celebration of roughly
contemporaneous middle-period works. Helm certainly did not underrate
Op. 59; yet the manner in which he spoke of the works of that opus makes it
clear that he considered them intermediate rather than high points in
Beethoven’s quartet oeuvre, or indeed in chamber music altogether (in
21
R. Wagner, Beethoven (Leipzig: Fritzsch, 1870), p. 36.
22
Knittel, ‘Wagner, Deafness, and the Reception of Beethoven’s Late Style’, 75.
23
On this topic, see J. Webster, ‘The Concept of Beethoven’s “Early” Period in the Context of
Periodizations in General’.
24
Helm, Beethovens Streichquartette, p. 8. 25 Ibid., p. 2.
Heroism, emancipation and periodisation 247
contrast to Lenz’s view, for example). It is only with Op. 74 that the composer
will succeed in reaching inwards, to draw on what Helm and Wagner at least
believed were Beethoven’s more authentic creative powers.26
Late nineteenth-century critics were slowly but surely moving the goal
posts for Beethoven’s string quartet oeuvre towards the later works; in the
process, the ideology of ‘true’ string quartets was persistently invoked.
Crucial to Helm’s argument is the mapping of the authentic self of the
composer onto the supposedly authentic form of the genre, the ‘true’ string
quartet, which is now understood to arise with Op. 74:
Only two years separate the great Rasumoffsky [sic] Quartets of Beethoven from the
next work in this genre, Op. 74, and yet these later quartets are written with a very
different point of view . . . By comparison the Master comes deeper into himself, he
gives us a psychological picture drawn from his very own subjectivity, but one that is
in progressive development . . . Beethoven settles . . . yet more into the true way of
the string quartet.’27
Helm praised Op. 74 for being less ‘orchestral’ than Op. 59, an aspect of the
opus that was to become a leitmotif in its reception, inflected positively or
negatively depending on the times and conceptual framework. In the same
vein, he commended Op. 95 for its ‘purity’ and asceticism – hallmarks of the
‘true’ quartet.28
In terms of scholarly reception, Helm’s book was seminal. Later writers on
the string quartet borrowed extensively from it, some, such as Joseph de
Marliave, without acknowledgement.29 Beethoven scholars in general adopted
the teleological narrative in Helm’s book, so that the later works are more or
less automatically accorded higher status. What is missing after Helm is the
Wagnerian ideological and philosophical underpinning, although the rhetoric
of inner exploration and subjective involvement persists, along with the now
closely related ideal of ‘true’ and ‘emancipated’ string quartets.
Heroism, emancipation and periodisation
What has been evolving in the literature on the middle-period quartets is a

career-level narrative of crisis followed by triumph, in which Beethoven is
found ultimately to achieve the ‘emancipation’ of the string quartet.
26
Ibid., pp. 117–18. 27 Ibid. (My emphasis.) 28 Ibid., p. 143.
29
Left incomplete at the time of his death, Marliave’s book was later finished by J. Escarra (Les
Quatuors de Beethoven, 1925) and translated into English by H. Andrews (Beethoven’s Quartets,
1928).
Kerman, in his 1967 monograph on Beethoven’s quartets, brings out this

narrative in bold relief. Already in the late 1850s, Marx and Lenz had laid
the groundwork with their concept of the ‘emancipation’ of the string
quartet. Just over one hundred years later, Kerman couches the supposed
bid for freedom in graphic, even violent terms: ‘A new world was being
explored, and if the string quartet was going to find a place in it at all, it had
to smash the fragile, decorous boundaries set by the classic image of
chamber music.’ This happens, he finds, in the ‘symphonised’ string quar-
tets of Op. 59, which in his larger narrative represent a crisis in Beethoven’s
quartet-composing career.30 After Op. 59, in a doubly heroic and ironic
move, Beethoven supposedly overcomes the temptations of ‘symphonic’
and indeed ‘heroic’ style, which had seduced him in Op. 59, finding his way
towards generic ‘truth’. Op. 74 is valued for moving once again towards
what Kerman considered a more quartet-specific sphere, although it is
simultaneously deprecated as less revolutionary, and thus problematically
unheroic!31 He praises Op. 74 in score- and composer-centric terms reflect-
ing the ideology of ‘true’ string quartets, in its masterful handling of the four
voices and outstanding compositional polish, which is achieved through
textural blending, consummate handling of form, and a certain inwardness
and non-referential character. This is even more marked in Op. 95 with its
qualities of concision and directness.
Not far beneath the surface of Kerman’s text one finds the biographical
assumptions that continue to shape the discussion of this music and under-
pin the ‘heroic’ compositional trajectory that scholars after him will
continue to trace, so that the middle-period quartets are still viewed as
tumultuous turning points or way stations, rather than goals in them-
selves.32 The onset of deafness explains the tone of ‘stubborn universal
impressiveness’ that for Kerman characterises the middle period.33
Beethoven’s personal relationships are seen as decisive for the composi-
tional course of the middle-period quartets: ‘In Beethoven’s case’, he finds,
‘the revolutions marking the major style changes can be seen to have been
precipitated by circumstance in his ill-managed emotional life.’34 Typically,
30
31
See also Lockwood’s critical comments: ‘Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of
Heroism’, p. 38.
32
This narrative is implied, for example, in Kinderman’s recent discussion of the period 1803–9,
where two chapters on ‘The Heroic Style’, encompassing this period, are framed by chapters
entitled ‘Crisis and Creativity’ and ‘Consolidation’; see Beethoven.
33
Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 117. 34 Ibid., p. 91.
Heroism, emancipation and periodisation 249
the discussion of Opp. 74 and 95 is prefaced by biographical information,

the ‘immortal beloved’ story in particular.
Both the concept of ‘heroic’ style and the idea of ‘true’ string quartets,
which are yoked together in the reception of Beethoven’s middle-period
string quartets, are problematic. These lenses through which Beethoven’s
works are viewed can distort, hindering a broader understanding of the
expressive and emotional reach of these works. The ‘emancipation’ of the
string quartet is itself a construct of the scholar or critic of chamber music.
For several influential writers, Beethoven will effect ‘emancipation’ at some
point during or after the composition of the middle-period quartets; for
others, this has already been accomplished. Philip Radcliffe’s account of
Beethoven’s quartets, which was published just prior to Kerman’s, shows
how easily ‘emancipation’ can be mapped onto a broader historical trajec-
tory. Radcliffe goes back to the mid-eighteenth century and Haydn, whose
‘orchestrally informed’ quartets are seen as stepping-stones:
[C]hamber music, especially for strings alone, could not become a major branch of
composition until it could stand on its own feet, independently of orchestral music;
and this could not happen until composers ceased to depend on the harmonic
support provided by the continuo. This was a very gradual process: at the time when
Haydn was forming his style, the distinction between orchestral and chamber music
was still imperfectly realised . . . even in much later works, he still seems uncon-
sciously to be thinking in terms of the orchestra.35
The point at which ‘emancipation’ of the genre occurs is arbitrary and easily
shifted. Here, as in Kerman, it is thought to result in the composer’s moving
away from the ‘lure’ of orchestral style. Radcliffe’s narrative is rather similar
to that in Walter Willson Cobbett’s article on Haydn’s string quartets for the
Cyclopedic Survey, which, however, locates the achievement of ‘emancipa-
tion’ in Haydn’s Op. 33 (1781).36 Scholars of chamber music construct this
turning point according to the aspects of history they choose to emphasise
and valorise; the ‘emancipated’ works might be Haydn’s Op. 33, Mozart’s
‘Haydn’ String Quartets (1785), Beethoven’s Opp. 59, 74, or 95, or late
quartets, or (much less likely) some other work or event. The idea of
emancipating string quartets relates not to Beethoven’s middle period as a
fixed or fixable entity, but rather to the changing values of those who write
chamber music history.
35
Radcliffe, Beethoven’s String Quartets, pp. 12–13.
36
See Cobbett, s. v. ‘Haydn’, in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, especially
pp. 517–18 and 532–3; see also Webster’s critique of ‘Sandbergers tale’ regarding reception
narratives of Haydn’s string quartets, in Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony, especially pp. 341–4.
The need to talk about genre in terms of emancipation at all needs to be

understood within a changing cultural context. The related ideology of ‘true’
quartets emerged in the nineteenth century in an environment of rapid
transition, especially with regard to the private musical sphere. It is not
surprising that the discourse of ‘genre liberation’ was most intensive with
regard to string quartets, the genre most closely associated with the private
realm of courtly music making and patronage: the discourse about the string
quartet became a site for trying to work out deep-running hopes and fears
regarding the new social contracts of the early nineteenth century, and
renegotiated socio-politics in the mid-century. The original impetus for
this ideology, c. 1800, probably came from socio-musical concerns – the
perceived shrinking of the sphere of chamber music, and a nostalgic desire
to capture and pin down a refined ‘social’ music that would enact and instil
the ideals of ‘true’ sociability – rather than any stylistic features of the string
quartets actually being then composed, published and performed.37
Of course, the ‘Quartet-Tisch’ did not ‘soon replace the bar’, as Petiscus
hoped in 1810. As the nineteenth century progressed, persistent discourse
about ‘true’ quartets attested to the urgent quest for a unified and unifying
‘voice’ for musical Germany, which would speak for cherished social and
cultural ideals. The work of a composer genius such as Beethoven was an
obvious choice, not least because themes of democracy and spirituality can
be attributed to his works, including the quartets. The idealisation of the
string quartet spoke less about the music itself, however, and more about a
nostalgic quest for ‘true’ intimacy and fully constituted selfhood, supposedly
to be found in the past. From c. 1900 another related kind of nostalgia took
hold, as some influential devotees of chamber music felt the canonised
‘classics’ of chamber music – and implicitly the socio-cultural stability for
which they had come to stand – to be under threat. In 1927, the one
hundredth anniversary of Beethoven’s death, for instance, Thomas
Dunhill observed a need to ‘win friends’ for the Beethoven quartets in an
article on them for The Musical Times.38 Win friends for whom exactly, one
might ask. Sociability was arguably still at stake here, although the under-
lying social issues had changed radically in the intervening century.
More recently, Robert Winter echoed Dunhill, observing laconically: ‘the
seventeen quartets [of Beethoven] have increasingly borne the burden of the
great classical tradition that – argued critics and theorists such as Hanslick
37
See my ‘Nineteenth-Century Visual Ideologies of the String Quartet’, 146.
38
T. F. Dunhill, ‘The Music of Friends: Some Thoughts on the String Quartets of Beethoven’,
Musical Times, 68 (1927), 113–14.
The middle-period quartets and the truth of performance 251
and Schenker – died with Brahms’.39 In fact, that which was ‘born’ with
Hanslick and Heinrich Schenker has kept us at a remove from a deep
appreciation of the drama of Beethoven’s string quartets. These influential
scholars’ development and promotion of formalism helped to cement the
ideology of ‘true’ string quartets in Beethoven quartet scholarship. Analyses
of these quartets from the late nineteenth century onwards, especially
following the work of Riemann, have tended to demonstrate, over again,
how the works convey unity and closure, and model excellent thematische
Arbeit – all of these hallmarks of the ‘true’ quartet.
The middle-period quartets and the truth of performance
In the realm of performance, the ideology of ‘true’ string quartets does not
seem to have exerted such a powerful force, even though it is found clearly in
the discourse about string quartet performance from the early nineteenth
century onwards.40 This is not the place for a comprehensive discussion of
the history of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets in performance.41
However, one can consider two key trends in the performance history of
these works, which run contrary to the main trends in scholarly reception.
First, in the performance sphere, Beethoven’s middle-period quartets have
not ceded place to the late works, as they have tended to in scholarship: they
are equally widely and variously performed and recorded, and have been
central to the performance canon of chamber music since the mid-
nineteenth century. Second, approaches to and interpretations of the
middle-period quartets have if anything become more diverse over time.
They imply an ‘open’ concept of these quartets as musical works, which runs
contrary to the ‘closed’ score-centric ideology of ‘true’ quartets, and to the
notion purveyed in several influential studies of performance history that
recorded performances are becoming more uniform over time.42
39
R. Winter, ‘Performing the Beethoven String Quartets’, p. 57.
40
On this subject see my ‘Performance History and Beethoven’s String Quartets: Setting the
Record Crooked’, Journal of Musicological Research, 30 (2011), 1–22.
41
For the early part of this history, see Chapter 2 and Winter, ‘Performing the Beethoven String
Quartets’, pp. 29–57. For the recording era, see my ‘Commonality and Diversity in Recordings
of Beethoven’s Middle Period String Quartets’, Performance Practice Review, 15 (2010), available at:
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/ppr/vol15/iss1/4.
42
See, for example, M. Chanan, Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on
Music (London: Verso, 1995), p. 11; J. A. Bowen, ‘Tempo, Duration, and Flexibility: Techniques
in the Analysis of Performance’, Journal of Musicological Research, 16 (1996), 148; and R. Philip,
Performing Music in the Age of Recording (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 252.
Recording/date 160
1 Capet 1927
2 Philharmonia 1930s 140
3 Léner 1937 Mvt 4
4 Roth 1938
5 New Italian 1951
6 Pascal 1952 120
7 Budapest 1959
8 Tátrai 1960
Metronome marking
9 Vlach 1963 100
10 Végh 1973 Mvt 3
11 Talich 1979
12 Gabrieli 1979 80
13 Alban Berg 1979
14 Orford 1986
15 Vermeer 1988 60 Mvt 1
16 Borodin 1989
17 Medici 1989
18 Tokyo 1989 Mvt 2
19 New Budapest 1990 40
20 Guarneri 1991
21 Vogler 1992
22 Brandis 1992 20
23 Emerson 1994
24 Alexander 1996
25 Lindsay 2001 0
26 Takács 2001 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Recording number
Beethoven’s markings:
Movement 1: Allegro, minim = 88 Movement 4: Allegro, crotchet = 126

Movement 2: Allegretto vivace, dotted crotchet = 56 Adagio ma non troppo, quaver = 69
Movement 3: Adagio molto e mesto, semiquaver = 88 Presto, crotchet = 92
8.1 Average metronome marking for twenty-six recordings of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major, Op.
59 No. 1
Certainly the use of expressive devices such as vibrato have become more
standardised, and portamento and tempo rubato, which were integral to
nineteenth-century performances, much less prominent. However, perform-
er’s general approaches to such crucial determinants of interpretation as
tempi and bowing styles have diversified to the point where after the mid-
twentieth century it becomes increasingly difficult to infer any governing
‘approach’ to string quartet performance, except in the field of historically
informed performance. Even in such a basic measurement as overall dura-
tion, the variability among modern recordings can be striking.43 Figure 8.1
shows the average metronome marking for each movement in twenty-six
recordings of Op. 59 No. 1, drawn from 1927 (Capet Quartet) to 2001
(Lindsay and Takács Quartets).44 The variability in the durations of the
43
As Bowen has shown, many more sophisticated measurements of tempo can be made from
recordings; see ‘Tempo, Duration and Flexibility’.
44
These data are subject to errors of up to ±2 seconds. Final ritardandi were included in the
calculations. Note that the discrete data points in Figure 8.1 have been joined by dashed lines to
make the positioning of the data, and their fluctuations, more apparent.
The middle-period quartets and the truth of performance 253
very earliest recordings is entirely to be expected, owing to the need to fit

recordings as neatly as possible on to the sides of 78 rpm discs. The variability
continues, though, seen especially in the data for the fourth movement, so
that not even weak trends over time are evident in the data.
On the qualitative level, there is at least as much if not more diversity in
bow articulation in the recent recordings of the middle-period quartets as
the earliest. In the case of the first movement of Op. 59 No. 1, for example,
there seem to be two basic approaches, which do not fall neatly into
chronological order or national groups. Ensembles such as the Takács,
Alexander, New Budapest, Medici and Gabrieli String Quartets deploy
off-string (that is, clearly detached) strokes and a generally uniform
approach to articulation in the four parts. By contrast, ensembles such as
the Vogler, Guarneri, and Tokyo String Quartets deploy a more ‘conversa-
tional’ approach to articulation, making use of more variety and imitation
within and between the voices and deploying gentler, more legato bow
strokes. There is no question of a single ‘right answer’ here, although one
can argue at length about Beethoven’s supposed intentions, especially
regarding tempi and articulation. Each performance brings out different
aspects of these multifaceted works, and speaks truly of the performers’ own
aesthetics and conceptions of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets.
Performances of the middle-period quartets continue to reveal these
works’ multiple dramatic modes, and other truths than those implicit in
the Cabinetstück conception of string quartets as homogeneous, ‘pure’,
‘spiritual’ works that are embodied in their scores. Adorno seems to have
reached a more complex view of these works’ ‘truth’, too, in his observation
that ‘Beethoven derived the criterion of the true quartet from the immanent
demands of the genre, not from traditional models’.45 Beethoven did not
discard the ‘traditional models’, but deployed them to dramatic ends. The
essence of these works’ theatricality is the way they play, critically and
creatively, with the established generic traditions. What the genre
demanded, or afforded, in the first decade of the nineteenth century was
the chance to revel in the numerous dualities with which it had become
associated – process versus product, learned versus light, ‘public’ versus
‘private’, joyful versus sorrowful, and so forth. With these in mind, we need
not conceptualise Beethoven’s developments in the middle-period quartets
primarily in terms of trajectory, transition, or bridge, thus reducing these
works largely to way stations between the early quartets and the late.
45
T. W. Adorno, Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie. Zwölf theoretische Vorlesungen (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1962), p. 277.
The middle-period quartets sit firmly within the thought-universe of their

time, and exhibit an internal dramatic development of their own that can be
understood as concentric developmental orbits. The plots of the ‘outer’ works,
Op. 59 No. 1 and Op. 95, deal substantially with the dialectic of process versus
product. The F major quartet’s process-orientation is taken to a new limit in
the fragmentary utterances of the F minor work. Op. 59 No. 2 and Op. 74
develop intimacy, expressivity and songfulness, in particular. Their pathetic
dramatic modes are largely unrelated to the ‘heroic’ style, as it has been
understood today; both works develop expressive dualities such as joy versus
sorrow with particular poignancy, and a brand of heroism that resides in
constancy and stoical resignation. In the centre of the middle-period quartets’
space sits the work whose plot spins most explicitly against the ideals of ‘true’
quartets, and the ‘heroic’ paradigm in its narrowest understanding. Op. 59
No. 3 can be read as the era’s most highly original and ironic quartet drama:
Beethoven’s ‘emancipation’ of the string quartet from itself.
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Index
Abraham, Gerald 126 Romantic 54–5, 69, 79, 90, 206–7

Adams, Sarah Jane 36 spirituality, accessed through 101–2
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund 54, 78, 253 articulation
Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg 173, 191 in Beethoven’s autograph manuscripts 43–6
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 26–7, 170–1 diversity in bow articulation 253
articles ‘off-string’ bowing 43–5, 253
‘Ideen über Musik’ (Ideas about Music) Attitüden (acting out emotions depicted in
(Wagner) 70 paintings) 26
see also Wagner, Johann Jacob Austen, Jane 130
‘On Quartet Music’ (Petiscus) 11, 12–13, Persuasion 130
16–17, 19, 29, 37, 102–3, 111, 115, autonomous art 89
234, 243, 250 see also art
see also Petiscus, Johann Conrad
Wilhelm Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel 52, 173–4, 176–7
‘Performance of Instrumental Quartets’ Bach, Johann Sebastian 35, 52, 176, 191
(Cambini) 23–4 and Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 2 103, 109–11,
see also Cambini, Giuseppe 115, 118
‘Thoughts about Recent Musical Art, and Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann 174
van Beethoven’s Music, Specifically Bagge, Selmar 104, 108
his Fidelio’ (Wendt) 183 Baillot, Pierre 21–2, 23, 32
reviews/reports accent, concept of 39–40
Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 L’Art du violon 39–40
50, 52–3 Baroque/Baroqued 52–3, 73, 75, 110
Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 Barry, Barbara 65, 66–7
124, 127, 155 Barthes, Roland 208
Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) Beethoven, Kaspar Karl 5, 69, 163
170–1, 179, 183, 184, 187–8 Beethoven, Ludwig van
Clement 44 authorial voice see under individual
Gassmann and Monn string quartets 11 works
Haydn 33–4 career
Schuppanzigh’s concert series 32, 33 after death of Haydn and Albrechtsberger
Amenda, Karl 9, 19, 29, 37, 162 173, 191
ancient art see under art and heroism 2, 124–5, 162
anxiety of influence 173 planning 5
Arnim, Bettina von (née Brentano) 14–15 ‘theatrical epoch’ 5–7, 20
Arnold, Johann Carl 14 compositional context for middle-
Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim 15 period quartets 6–7
Arnstein, Fanny von 30 ‘three period’ schema 1–2, 172, 244
art turning point, 1809 as 172
ancient 55, 207 compositional persona 56, 108
versus modern/Romantic 206–7 conflation of biography and works 2, 124–5,
autonomous art 89 248–9
modern 55, 206–7 dedicator, power as 89–90
271
272 Index
Beethoven, Ludwig van (cont.) Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 72a 160
heroism see heroism Leonore Prohaska, incidental music, WoO 96
Haydn as inspiration 33, 86, 93, 161 5
late quartets, reception of 1–2, 244–7 Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt Op. 112,
patrons, importance of relationships with 27, 175, 231
89–90 Missa Solemnis Op. 123 109, 174–5
and Rasumovsky 89–90 Overture in C major, ‘Zur Namensfeier’,
dedication to 29, 50, 51, 52, 89–90, 116–17 Op. 115 232
and Schuppanzigh 28–9 Piano Concerto No. 5 (‘Emperor’) 174
social divide, insulated against 30 Piano Sonata Op. 14, No. 1 36
song and voice, interest in 175–7 Piano Sonata Op. 27 No. 2 209
‘soulful’ expression, capacity for 103–4 Piano Sonata Op. 57 (‘Appassionata’) 221
‘style periods’, traditional division of career Piano Sonata Op. 81a (‘Les Adieux’) Op. 73
into 1–2, 244 174
Beethoven, Ludwig van (works) Quintet, Op. 16 124
‘Als die Geliebte sich trennen wollte’, Septet, Op. 20 37, 124
WoO 132 175 Sextet, Op. 71 37
‘Andenken’, WoO 136 177–8 string quartets
‘Archduke’ Trio, Op. 97 6, 236 issued in score 12
Cello Sonata Op. 102 No. 1 44–5, 231 late quartets 1, 12, 168, 206, 225, 233, 236,
Choral Fantasy, Op. 80 129, 130 244–6, 249
Coriolanus Overture, Op. 62 217 String Quartets Op. 18 5, 29, 33–4, 36, 37, 48,
Der glorreiche Augenblick, Op. 136 50, 51, 52, 53, 99, 168, 245
231, 232 ‘La Malinconia’ 128–9, 179, 181
Die Geschöpfe der Prometheus, Op. 43 5 Op. 18 No. 1 9, 19
Die Ruinen von Athen, incidental music, Op. String Quartets Op. 59 5, 29, 31, 34, 46–7,
113 6 235–6
Egmont, incidental music, Op. 84 5, 6, 174, central in performance of chamber music
175, 184, 198, 203, 213, 215 1, 251
‘Die Trommel gerühret!’ 213, 215 ‘exploratory’ character of 4, 92
expressive modes in 6 fingerings in 40–3
‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’ 6, 192–5 fugato in 82–3, 84–6, 114–15, 153
harp as emblem of unveiling in 198–200 ‘heroic’ character of 92
Klärchen’s character in 172, 178, 192–3, as instruments of change 8
195 links between works in 93–4, 162–6
Liberty’s music in 199–200, 218, 227–8 and the opus concept 162–6
Overture 189, 213, 226, 228 ‘personal’ style of 92, 224
Siegessinfonie 198, 226, 228–30 ‘process’ versus ‘product’ 53–5, 165–6
Fidelio, Op. 72 5, 35, 70–77, 79–81, 108–9, public versus private 51–3
132, 184, 231 and ‘symphonic quartets’ 2, 92, 123, 124,
expressive modes in 6 164, 248
Florestan’s character in 143, 178 String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 40, 50–90
‘In des Lebens Frühlingstagen’ 73–4, as a ‘classic’ 126–7
79–81 codas in 60–2, 68, 80, 82, 88, 89
Leonore’s character in 143, 178 confinement enacted in 69–82
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 70–82 connections to Fidelio in 70–82
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 137, deletion of large-scale repeats in
138–40, 141–2, 143–6, 148–55, 62, 63
164–5 early criticism of 40, 50
Große Fuge, Op. 133 221–3 ‘exploratory’ character of 92
‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata 223 fingering in 41–2
König Stephan, incidental music, Op. 117 6, folksong in 82–8, 89
232 see also folksong
Index 273
fugue, handling of 59–60, 84–6 Eigentümlichkeit (originality) in 124, 127,

‘private’ style in 95 138
process-orientation in 56 Erzählton (narrative tone) in 142–3, 162,
‘process’ versus ‘product’ 53–5 166
‘public’ nature of 51 ‘exploratory’ character of 92
public versus private 51–3 fantasia elements and 128, 133, 142, 143,
register, use of 55, 56–9, 60–1, 80–2 148, 161–2, 165–6
‘re-reading’ in 56, 57, 60, 65, 66, 68–9, 71, Fidelio references in 137, 138–40, 141–2,
82, 83–86, 89, 90, 128 143–6, 148–55, 164–5
structural blurring in 66–7 fingering in 42–3
and ‘symphonic’ style 96 folksong in 127, 137–43, 151, 163
visual character of 56, 58, 60, 66, 71, 82 see also folksong
String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 91–123 freedom versus confinement in 150
allusions to J. S. Bach in 103, 109–11, 118 fugue/fugato 125, 153, 156–62, 166
authorial voice in 108 ‘fundamentally human’ voice of 125, 138
and the ‘Classical Adagio’ 104–5, and genre 127, 161–2
110–11 and Haydn’s influence 127, 128–9, 144,
codas in 99–101, 111, 115–17, 120–21 147, 154, 161–2, 164, 166
commentators on 91–2 and heroism 124–5, 131–3, 160, 161–2
continuity versus articulation in 105, 123 ‘heroic codes’ in 132, 161
dualities in 105, 108, 123 inter-movement connections in 146–8
‘equality’ in 115 and melancholy voice 143, 150, 166
see also string quartet see also melancholy
‘exploratory’ character of 92 and Mozartian elements 127, 128–9, 131,
‘feminine’ attributes of 93 133, 156, 164
fingering in 41–2 and the ‘opus concept’ 162–6
folksong in 91, 114–17, 118 and parody 126, 127–8, 152–3, 154
see also folksong and the performer 151, 156
‘heroic’ character and 92, 93, 122–3 ‘personal’ style of 92
humour/wit in 115, 119 popularity of 124, 133–4
learned style in 114–15 process-orientation in 165–6
lyrical voice in 97, 104, 107–8, 115–17, public-sphere discourse in 125
123 ‘re-reading’ in 128, 134, 154, 164
and the Missa Solemnis 109 ‘Schmerz’ motif in 79, 144, 145–6, 148, 151
Neapolitan harmony in 93–5, 97, 98, 114, and Schumann’s chamber music 236, 239
119 and ‘symphonic’ style 125
and the performer 105–8, 123 and the sublime 158–60
‘personal’ style of 92 and visual experience 4
process-orientation in 94 String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 6, 29, 31, 34,
‘private’ character of 95 39, 167–201, 235–42
public versus private 95 central in performance of chamber music
and rhapsody 97–8, 104, 123 1, 251
rhetoric of improvisation in 108 codas in 181, 189, 197–8
and Schumann’s chamber music 239 contexts of composition 172–7
schwärmerisch (enraptured) character of dualistic nature of 168, 171–2, 187,
98 189–90, 193, 194–5, 197–8, 201
schwebende Tonalität (hovering tonality) and Egmont 6, 172, 174, 175, 178, 184,
in 118 188–9, 192–4, 198–200
spirituality in see spirituality fantasia elements in 167, 171–4, 179–80,
and ‘symphonic’ style 123 183–4, 191, 196
String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 124–66, 198 and the harp 179, 181–2, 187, 195, 196,
authorial voice in 154, 162 198–200
codas in 155, 160–1, 165 and heroism 168, 192, 195, 198–200
274 Index
Beethoven, Ludwig van (works) (cont.) Symphony No. 8 245

humour 179–80, 181–3 Symphony No. 9 174, 223
as instrument of change 8 Violin Concerto, Op. 61 25, 44, 132
and the maze metaphor 195, 201 Bürgertum (bourgeoisie/middle classes) 29, 30
mechanical qualities and 180–1, 190 Berlin 14, 31, 32, 47
parody in 181–3 Bildung (well-rounded education) 17, 30
performance of 189–90 binary opposition 7, 95, 164–5, 170, 171
‘Schmerz’ motif in 177–8 see also dualism
and Stimmung (mood) 168, 184 Bloom, Harold 173
style versus that of String Quartet Op. 95 Boccherini, Luigi 21, 23
170, 172 Böhm, Joseph 32
and sublime transcendence 187–8 Borckmann, August 28
and tableau aesthetics 183–90 Botstein, Leon 20
timbre, use of 171 Boucher, Alexandre-Jean 21
variations in 169, 185, 187, 194–5, 196–8 bowing articulation see ‘off-string’ bowing
vocal aesthetics of 176–7 Breitkopf and Härtel 5, 163, 173, 176, 190–1
String Quartet Op. 95 6, 25, 29, 34, 63, Brown, Clive 43, 48
202–34 Brunsvik, Thérèse von 193
and articulation 44–5 Brunsvik, Count Franz von 26, 30
and authorial voice 223 Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie (Kunst- und
autograph manuscript of 39, 45 Industrie-Comptoir) 36, 41
and battle metaphors 202, 205, 217, 233 Burgtheater 6
central in performance of chamber music Burke, Edmund 159
1, 251 Burnham, Scott 2
codas in 203, 216–17, 220–1, 225–31, 233
compositional and aesthetic context of Cabinetstück (cabinet piece) 10–17, 21, 23, 24,
202–10 37, 107, 253
and Egmont 203, 213, 226–31 Cambini, Giuseppe 13, 21, 23–4, 33
fingering in 43 ‘Performance of Instrumental Quartets’ 23–4
and fugue 219–20 canon, the
and Gluckian opera 203 canonised string quartets as models 9
as instrument of change 8 chamber music see under chamber music
Mahler’s orchestration of 232–4 and the early string quartet 33–8
melancholy in 218, 219, 220 Castil-Blaze (François-Henri-Joseph Blaze) 70
and Mendelssohn’s chamber music 240–2 chamber music
as musical parallel to literary fragment 208 canon of chamber music
narrating voice in 221–3 canonised string quartets as models 9
and Neapolitan tonality 210, 216, 224 centrality of Beethoven’s quartets in 9,
non ligato in 44–5 103–4
‘opposite worlds’ in 205, 216 ‘classics’ of chamber music 35, 250
and public performance 231–4 as a construct 2
and Romantic irony 208–9, 223, 225–6 and early canon formation 33–8
and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 170, string quartets of Haydn, Mozart and
172 Beethoven in 103–4
and theatrical metaphors 202–3, 210 chamber and theatre styles, merging of 6,
tone painting in, 205 35, 53
String Quartet Op. 130 44–5, 104 public and professional performance of 8, 18,
Symphony No. 3 (‘Eroica’) 51, 92, 124–5, 180 31, 34, 52
Symphony No. 5 54, 124, 174, 190–1, 192, string quartets as ideal chamber music 11,
198 233–4
E. T. A. Hoffmann on 117, 168, 198 theatrical genres as inspiration for 19
Symphony No. 6 (‘Pastoral’) 68, 205, 213 Chemischen Druckerey 34
Symphony No. 7 231, 232, 245 Cherubini, Luigi 34–5
Index 275
‘classic’ characteristics of a nation and 138

‘classics’ of chamber music 35, 250 performance of 151
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 126–7 and quest for original utterance (‘Ursprach’)
‘Viennese Classical string quartet’ 17–18, 20 142–3
Classical style 141, 143, 162 Russian folksong 82–8, 89, 114–17, 118,
Clement, Franz 25, 26, 44, 49 137–40, 163
Clementi, Muzio 6 Scottish folksongs 142, 176
Cobbett, Walter Willson 249 in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 82–8, 89
Collin, Heinrich Joseph von 217 in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 91, 114–17,
Corialan 217 118
Corelli, Arcangelo 35 in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 127, 137–43,
cyclic integration 162–3, 166 151, 163
Czerny, Carl 40, 89, 108, 115 and ‘universal character’ 138
formalism 251
Dahlhaus, Carl 54, 236 Förster, Emanuel Aloys 18
Daverio, John 236 fragment 7, 20, 38, 207–8
David, Ferdinand 48–9 see also Schlegel, Friedrich
Del Mar, Jonathan 64, 65, 68 France
Deutsche Musik-Zeitung 104 conception of string quartet in 10
developing variations 59, 165–6 French metaphors of theatre 21–2
Diderot, Denis 23, 187 French occupation of Vienna 17, 173
D’Indy, Vincent 153 French Violin School 13, 44, 47, 48, 127
Ditters von Dittersdorf, Carl 36 freedom 150, 192, 198, 199, 251
Drabkin, William 1, 170 versus confinement/restraint 69–82
dualism/dualities 37, 253–4 and heroism in Beethoven’s string quartets
central to Beethoven’s middle-period 247–8
quartets 7 string quartet writing and freedom 103, 184,
and the character of the string quartet c.1800 243–4
9, 10 fugue/fugato 52–3, 59–60, 82–3, 84–6, 114–15,
and compositional voice 108 125, 153, 156–62, 166, 191, 219–20
and E flat major 174–5 fugal quartets appearing in print 11, 35, 156
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 105, Fux, Johann Joseph 52, 173
108, 123
and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 168, Gardiner, William 174
171–2, 187, 189–90, 193, 194–5, Gassmann, Florian Leopold 11, 35, 156
197–8, 201 Genette, Gérard 127–8, 153
Dunhill, Thomas 250 Gerber, Ernst Ludwig 20
Germany
Eberl, Anton 33 Adagio as part of musical heritage 110–11
emancipation conception of string quartet in 8–10, 13, 24,
‘emancipated’ string quartets 89, 162, 243–4, 103
254 German Romanticism/idealism and
and periodization 247–51 Viennese traditions 206
Erfindung (process of musical invention) 130 and national identity 17, 103–4, 115, 250
nationalist and liberal sentiments in 242–3
Ferraguto, Mark 137 Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm von 97
Finscher, Ludwig 8–10 Geschichten spielen (pantomiming of scenes
String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 126, 134–6, 155, from famous plays) 25–6
165, 166 Gluck, Christoph Willibald 34–5, 36, 203
folksong Orfeo 160
appetite for in early nineteenth century 142 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 31, 142, 175
Beethoven’s arrangements of 142–3 Egmont 172, 192–5, 196, 203
brevity and simplicity of 151 Harzreise im Winter 97
276 Index
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (cont.) Beethoven’s middle period, assessment of

Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt 175 246–7
Werther 70 on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 91–2,
Greek drama 55, 88, 97, 107, 117, 123, 127, 207 94, 95, 98, 101–2, 104, 108, 109,
Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste 36 122–3
Griesinger, Georg August 12, 176 on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 124, 125, 131,
Gülke, Peter 126, 165, 166 144, 151, 159–60, 164
Gyrowetz, Adalbert 18–19, 26, 34–5 on String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 168–9
on String Quartet Op. 95 202–3, 205, 213,
Hähnel, Ernst Julius 196 217, 220, 224, 225, 226, 233–4
Hand, Ferdinand 70 Herder, Johann Gottfried 97, 117, 138, 142
Handel, George Frederick 35, 52, 232 heroism
Hänsel, Peter 13, 36 and Beethoven’s career 2, 124–5, 162
Hanslick, Eduard 26, 49, 250–1 Beethoven’s heroic style 2
Härtel, Gottfried see Breitkopf and Härtel and String Quartets Op. 59 92
Haydn, Franz Joseph 10, 13, 18, 23, 25, 33–4, 37, and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 92, 93,
43, 55, 173, 191, 232 122–3
Beethoven, Haydn as inspiration for 33, 59, and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 124–5,
86, 93 131–3, 160, 161–2
Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, ‘heroic codes’ in 131–2, 161
Haydn’s influence on 127, 128–130, and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 168, 192,
144, 147, 154, 161–2, 164, 166 195, 198–200
and counterpoint 114–15 and Egmont 172, 195, 198–9
The Creation 128, 130 and ‘emancipated’ string quartets 244,
fingering, provision of 41 247–9
four-part writing and freedom 243 in Fidelio 143, 193
and humour/wit 99, 114, 115, 119, 154, 162, nineteenth-century conceptions of ‘heroic’
180, 181–3 2–3, 172
as ‘implied dedicatee’ 51, 86, 117, 164, 166 Hickman, Roger 20
London market oriented towards 232 Hoffmann, E. T. A. 54, 174, 187
reception c. 1800 34, 127 Kreisleriana 13–14
register, use of 59, 86 Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier 195, 196
rhetoric of improvisation 108 on Symphony No. 5 117, 168, 198
song and voice 123, 175, 176–7, 184–5 Hoffmeister, Franz Anton 18
‘soulful’ expression, capacity for 103–4 Hoftheater 5
string quartets 9, 12, 18, 26, 33, 35, 47, 93, Holz, Karl 27, 33
94–5, 164, 181–3, 184–5, 188–9, Homer 175
243–4, 249 Odyssey/Odysseus 175
String Quartets Op. 20 52–3 Horn, Franz Christoph 204–5, 207
String Quartet Op. 20 No. 2 59, 154, 161 ‘Musikalische Fragmente’ (Musical
String Quartets Op. 33 8, 249 Fragments) 204–5
String Quartet Op. 54 No. 1 144, 147 Hübsch, Lini 126
String Quartet Op. 71 No. 3 59 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 30
String Quartet Op. 74 No. 2 43, 59
style mixing 86, 117 iconography, nineteenth-century string quartet
symphonies 12, 127 14–16
London Symphonies 181–3 ideology
vocal works 175, 176–7 and German nationalism 17, 103–4, 242–3
‘The Wanderer’, Hob. XXVIa:32 75 and string quartet performance 29–33
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 54, 88 and ‘true’ string quartets 3, 17, 32, 36, 111, 115,
Hellsberg, Clemens 31 209, 235, 242–3, 250, 254
Helm, Theodor 4, Indorf, Gerd
Index 277
on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 58–9, 61, Kramer, Richard 59, 233
64, 89 Krommer, Franz 18, 34, 36
on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 126, 154 Kunstkammer (gallery) 17
on String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 169 Kunstreligion (art religion) 103
on String Quartet Op. 95 210, 221
intimacy 53, 128, 161–2, 233, 234, 250, 254 Landsberg 5 6, 173–4, 176, 191, 193
ironic reversal 37–8, 88, 231 Landsberg 11 226
irony 234 learned style 25, 60, 84–5, 114–15, 125
Romantic irony 208, 209, 210, 223, 225 intellectual stimulation, quartets directed
Italian opera 126 towards 18
see also string quartet
Jahn, Otto 89, 108 lebendes Bild (picture brought to life; see also
Jean Paul see Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich tableau) 24, 26
Joachim, Joseph 4, 15–16 Leib-quartett (personal quartet) 27–8
Joseph II 25 Lenz, Wilhem von 62, 91, 97, 105, 244
Journal für Quartetten Liebhaber 34–5 on Beethoven’s ‘emancipation’ in middle
period 243–4
Kanne, Friedrich August 33, 35, 107 on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 125, 136, 161,
Kant, Immanuel 129–30, 143 165
on extended sympathy 103 on String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 168,
on the sublime 158–60 170–1, 179, 183–4, 190, 191, 195,
Keats, John 196 197
Kerman, Joseph 4, 247–9 Lessing, Gottfried Ephraim 244
on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 51, 58–9, 60– Lichnowsky, Prince Karl 27, 31, 90
1, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69, 71, 73, 77–8, 83, Linke, Joseph 27
89 listening
on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 92, 109, 114, absorbed 14
119 interactive 32
on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 125–6, 136–7, and intimate contact with music 233
141, 149, 158, 160, 165 non-visual 13–14, 32
on String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 169, 170, ‘serious’ 15
180, 186, 188, 189, 191, 196, 200–1 silent 32
on String Quartet Op. 95 202–3, 210, 213, Livingstone, Ernest F. 225–6
216, 219–20, 221, 225–6 Lizst, Franz 163
key characteristics Lobkowitz, Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 69–70, 78 von 27, 39, 52, 55, 173
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 92–3, 98, Lockwood, Lewis 62, 63, 64, 66, 143
99, 108–9, 113–14 London 25, 29, 52
and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 78, 174, Handel and Haydn’s music in 232
184 market for music 231–3
and String Quartet Op. 95 218 Longyear, Rey M. 206, 225–6
see also Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel Lvov, Nikolai 83
Kinsky, Prince Ferdinand 55, 173
Kirkendale, Warren 108–9 Macpherson, James 142
Kirnberger, Johann Philipp 173–4 Ossian poem cycle 142
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 97 Mahler, Gustav 232–4
Knittel, Kristin M. 245, 246 Malibran, Alexander 43
Koch, Heinrich Christoph 11, 19–20, 106–7 March Revolution 242
Introductory Essay on Composition 11 Marliave, Joseph de 247
Lexikon 106–7, 234 Marston, Nicholas 170, 171, 173, 197
Komlós, Katlin 36 Marx, Adolf Bernhard 54, 91, 103
Kraft, Anton 26, 27, 31 on Beethoven’s ‘emancipation’ in the middle
Kraft, Nikolaus 26, 27 period 243–4, 248
278 Index
Marx, Adolf Bernhard (cont.) last ten string quartets of 8–9

on String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 124–5, 131, operas of 203
133, 136, 138, 143, 159 Don Giovanni 203, 205
on String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 168–9, 184, ‘Prussian’ Quartets 8–9
190 ‘soulful’ expression, capacity for 103–4
on String Quartet Op. 95 209, 225 as a composer of vocal music 176–7
Mason, Daniel Gregory 121–3, 141, 203, 213 Muffat, Gottlieb 52
Mathew, Nicholas 3 Müller Quartet 243
Mayseder, Joseph 26, 27, 32, 49 musica reservata 231
melancholy 6, 55, 69–79, 177–83
D minor commonly associated with 218 nationalism 17, 103–4, 115, 242–3, 250
as a dualistic temperament 172 see also Germany
freedom versus restraint 70, 73–4 Neate, Charles 231–2
and heroism 143 Nietzsche, Friedrich 234
melancholy voice 55, 69–70, 166, 219 Nohl, Ludwig 103, 115
Romantic’s melancholy conception of art nostalgia 250
69–70, 79, 90 Notley, Margaret 101–2
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 69–79 Nottebohm, Gustav 44
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 111, 122 ‘Punkte und Striche’ 44
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 143, 150, Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von
153, 155, 164, 166 Hardenberg) 195, 207, 234
and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 168, 172,
174, 178–9, 194–5, 196 ‘off-string’ bowing 43–5, 107, 253
and String Quartet Op. 95 218, 219, 220 Ong, Seow-Chin 226–8
visionary, degenerative melancholic as 143 opera
melodrama 148–51, 174, 175, 198–200, 212, chamber music influencing operatic works
215, 227–8 19–20
Mendelssohn, Felix Gluck’s operas 36, 160, 203
reception of Beethoven’s quartets 235, 240–2 Italian opera 126
String Quartet Op. 12 240 as inspiration for string quartets 19
String Quartet Op. 13 240 Mozart’s operas 203, 205
Michaelis, Christian Friedrich 179–80 in Vienna 25, 203
Miller, Malcolm 99–101, 136 ‘rescue’ opera 132, 143
Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 109, 174–5 see also Oulibicheff, Alexander [Alexander Ulybyschev]
Op. 59 No. 2 125, 244–5
Momigny, Jérôme-Joseph de 21
Monn, Matthias Georg 11, 35, 156 Paganini, Niccoló 31
Moran, John Gregory 47 Paisiello, Giovanni 36
Mosel, Ignaz von 26, 29–30 parabasis 88, 223
Moser, Andreas 49 Paris 25, 29, 32, 52
Möser, Karl 31, 32, 47 parody 38, 53, 90
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 10, 13, 18, 23, 33, and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 126,
34–5, 36, 37, 43, 44, 47, 115, 119, 161, 127–8, 152–3, 154, 162
164, 176 and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’)
Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 3, influence on 127, 181–3
128–9, 131, 133, 156, 161, 164 and String Quartet Op. 95 205
England, reception in 232–3 in Tieck’s theatrical works 204
four-part writing and freedom 243–4 pathos 71, 82, 122, 221
‘Haydn’ String Quartets 8–9, 249 patrons 27, 153
String Quartet K. 387 156 Beethoven’s relationship with his patrons,
String Quartet K. 465 127, 128–9, 131 importance of 89–90
String Quartet K. 499, ‘Hoffmeister’ 8–9 and performers 26–9
Index 279
performance 3 Plato 107

Adagio, performance of 105–8 Pleyel, Ignaz 12, 13, 181
articulation in Beethoven’s autograph poetry
manuscripts 43–6 ancient versus modern 206–7
and Beethoven’s Leib-quartett 27–8 literary rhapsodies 97
duration 252–3 melancholy 55, 90
fingerings in early Beethoven sources 40–3 modern poetry 206–7, 216
and folksong 151 Ossian poem cycle (Macpherson) 142
genius in 32–3, 107 Romantic 54–5, 79, 205–6, 216
ideals for string quartets 12, 13–14, 21, 25 portamento 41, 43, 48, 107, 252
portamento 41, 43, 48, 107, 252 portato 44, 48–9
portato 44, 48–9 Pratsch, Johann Gottfried 83
professional performance of string quartets 8, Privatakademien (private academies) 26–7
18, 31, 34, 52 private sphere 25, 26–7, 31
Schuppanzigh’s performances 32–3 ‘private’ style 22, 52, 53, 95, 164, 170, 171, 231
‘selfless’ 12, 14, 32 process-orientation 7, 54–5, 56, 69, 94–5, 165,
silence and stillness in 14 166, 240, 254
and social function 29–33 ‘process’ versus ‘product’ 53–5
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 105–8, 123 see also String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1
and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 151, 156 Prometheus (Viennese journal) 206
and String Quartet Op. 74 189–90 public sphere 103, 125
and String Quartet Op. 95 231–4 ‘public’ style 2, 2, 51, 52, 53, 164, 170, 193, 233
tempi and bowing styles, diversification of ‘Punkte und Striche’ (Nottebohm) 44
252
tempo see duration Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim (Arnold)
as ‘transfusion of passions’ 21 14–15
and ‘truth’ 251–4 Quartet-Tisch (quartet table) 15–16, 17, 250
vibrato 48, 107, 190, 252 quatuors brillants 12–13, 17–18, 20, 21, 127,
visual experience of 4, 56, 58, 60, 66, 71, 82, 133–4
disavowal of 13–14 quatuors concertants 12, 13, 17–18, 20, 21, 133–4
‘Performance of Instrumental Quartets’
(Cambini) 23–4 Radcliffe, Philip 127, 170, 249
performers Radicati, Felice 40, 42
as composers 108 Rasumovsky, Alexei Rosum 114–17
and patrons 26–9 Rasumovsky, Count Andrey Kirillovich 26, 27,
periodisation 52, 82–3, 84–5
and 1809 as a turning point 172 as dedicatee 29, 50, 51, 52, 89–90, 116–17, 166
and ‘emancipation’ 247–51 Rasumovsky Quartet 27, 28, 39
and emphasis on teleology 1–2 register (musical) 4, 41
Pestelli, Giorgio 172 high registers 51, 73–4, 79–82, 88, 108–9,
Petiscus, Johann Conrad Wilhelm 11, 36–7, 154, 190, 224
234, 250 in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 55, 56–9, 60–1,
on the performance of string quartets 12 76, 80–2, 86, 88
on the string quartet achieving social reform/ in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 97, 99, 108–9,
Bildung 17, 29, 250 119–21
on the string quartet genre 16–17, 19, 36–7, in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3 136, 137, 148,
234 150, 153–5, 158, 161, 164
and ‘true’ quartets 13 in String Quartet Op. 74 180, 189, 190, 194, 198
on types of string quartet 17 in String Quartet Op. 95 211, 212, 213, 216,
and Viereinigkeit (fourfold unity) 12, 102–3, 217, 220, 221, 224, 228
111, 115, 243, Reichardt, Johann Friedrich 14, 31, 32, 44, 209
Philharmonic Society 231 Rhapsodie 97
physicality 3, 163, 202 remembrance 20
280 Index
‘rescue opera’ see opera ‘Über die Unverständlichkeit’ (On

resignation 111, 122, 143, 172, 189, 221, 254 Incomprehensibility) 83–4, 88
retrospection 25 Schmalfeldt, Janet 54
Revue philosophique et religieuse 245 Schmutzer, Ferdinand 15–16
rhapsōdos 97, 107, 123 Schneider, Friedrich 190–1
rhapsody 97–8, 104, 105, 117, 127 Schneider, Georg Abraham 13
literary rhapsodies 97 Schoenberg, Arnold 118
musical rhapsody 97–8 Schopenhauer, Arthur 234, 245
Richards, Annette 196 Schreiber, Anton 27
Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich 209 Schreiber, Christian 138–40
Riemann, Hugo 4, 94, 126, 128, 251 Schreyvogel, Joseph
Rietz, August Wilhelm Julius 240 Sonntagsblatt 206
Rochlitz, Friedrich 244 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel
Rode, Pierre 34, 47 Musicalische Rhapsodien 97
Romantic/Romanticism 107, 192, 198–199, 240 and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1 70, 78
art 54–5, 69, 79, 90, 204, 206–7 and String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 92–3, 98,
early Romanticism 206–7, 216 99, 113–14
German Romanticism 206–7 and String Quartet Op. 74 (‘Harp’) 174, 184
Kunstreligion (art religion) 103 see also key characteristics
philosophy 205–6 Schubert, Franz 188
poetry 54–5, 79, 97, 205–6, 216 Schumann, Robert 163
quest for roots of utterance 88 Piano Quartet Op. 47 236–9
Romantic irony 208, 209, 223, 225 reception of Beethoven’s quartets 235–40
and Shakespeare 117 String Quartet Op. 41 No. 3 239–40
Romberg, Andreas 13, 33 Schuppanzigh, Ignaz 26, 47, 49
Romberg, Bernhard 13, 33, 40 and Beethoven 14, 28–9, 32
Romeo and Juliet 19 and canon formation 35
Rossini, Gioachino Antonio 126 concerts/chamber music parties 23, 29, 30,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 23, 70, 138, 142, 31–3, 35, 37
185, 187 Rasumovsky String Quartet, leading 27
Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire 130 Schuppanzigh Quartet 27, 30–1, 35, 40, 124
Rudolph of Austria, Archduke 173, 177 as ‘singing orator’ 33, 107
Rumph, Stephen 172, 175 as violinist/performer 14, 26, 31–3, 44
Russian folksong see folksong Schwärmerei (rapture) 97
schwärmerisch (enraptured) 98
Sabattier, Jean-Baptiste 245 score-centred reception of the string quartet
Salieri, Antonio 36 3–4, 9–10, 11–12, 15–16, 24, 33, 248,
Salmen, Walter 89 251, 253
salon culture 10, 25, 30, 169, 206 ‘secondary’ musical parameters 4, 171
Schaulust (visual stimulation) 25, 31–2 secularisation 17
Schenker, Heinrich 250–1 Seckendorf, Franz Karl Leopold Freiherr von 206
Schilling, Gustav 70 Seidel, Carl Ludwig 70
Schlegel, August Wilhem von 30, 206, 207, 209, ‘selfless’ performance see performance
216, 223, 234 sensibility/sensibilité 107
‘Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur’ 55, Seyfried, Ignaz Ritter von 27–8, 32–3
206–7 Shakespeare, William 86, 117
Schlegel, Friedrich von 30, 54, 88, 205–6, 207, and style mixing 86, 117
208, 209, 223, 234 see also Romantic/Romanticism
Athenäum Fragments 83–4, 207 silent listening see listening
Lyceum Fragments 207 Simpson, Robert 228
fragment, idea of 207–8 Sina, Louis 27
and process-orientation 54–5, 205–6 Sisman, Elaine 142–3, 171, 197
and Romantic poetry/art 54–5, 69, 205–6 Smart, George 231–2
Index 281
social function and performance ideals 17, ‘true’ quartets 9, 17, 32, 36, 115, 235, 242–3,
29–33, 250 250, 254
see also performance and Petiscus, Johann Beethoven shaping the ideology of 110–11,
Conrad Wilhelm 209
sociability 22, 29, 250 concept of 3
‘logical sociability’, wit as 208 as Cabinetstücke 10–17, 20, 23, 24, 37, 107,
sonata form 51, 53–4, 62–9, 89, 103, 118–19, 253
125–6, 156, 162, 165, 212, 215, 239 unity/Viereinigkeit 10, 12, 17, 25, 32–3, 102–
sonata style 96, 161 3, 111, 243
song and voice, aesthetics of 175–7, 185 ‘Viennese Classical string quartet’ 17–18, 20
spectacle 31 see also Beethoven, Ludwig van (works)
spectatorship 21–2 style mixing 86, 117
spirituality 12, 13, 16, 17, 25, 33, 37, 102–4, 107, sublime, the 52, 119, 125, 158–60, 187
205, 216, 228, 242–3 dynamic versus mathematical 159–60
accessed through art 101–2 see also Burke, Edmund and Kant, Immanuel
in String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 108–9, 111, subscription concerts 31
115, 123 sul una corda 43, 49, 158
‘earthy’ spirituality 104, 109 Sulzer, Johann Georg 105–7
Spohr, Louis 43, 44, 48 ‘symphonic’ or symphony style 2, 92, 96, 123,
Steinberg, Michael 169, 216 125, 164, 168, 190, 249
Steiner, Sigmund Anton 47 synthesis 54, 82, 84, 88, 125, 135–6, 162, 166,
string quartet 197, 205
arrangements for 35–6
Beethoven’s Leib-quartett 27–8 tableau, aesthetic of 185
blending of subgenres c.1800 17–18 tableaux vivants 24, 26
composition-centred view of 3–4, 9–10, 11– Taruskin, Richard 89
12, 15–16, 248 tempo rubato 33, 107, 190, 252
connoisseur appeal of 17, 18, 34, 50, 52–3, 82, Thayer, Alexander Wheelock 89
84, 85, 158, 209–10, 213, 216, 231–2 theatres see Vienna
and contemplation 14, 17, 25, 32, 108, 122 theatricality 7, 53, 126, 132–133, 152–4,
and the conversation metaphor 8–10, 22, 23, 160–2, 163–5, 166, 168, 191,
24, 31, 53, 86, 103, 125, 161, 209, 210, 203, 253,
243, 253 string quartets and the figure of theatre
‘emancipated’ string quartets 243–4, 254 19–24
and ‘equality’ 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 32–3, 115 Thomson, George 142, 176
see also String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2 Tieck, Ludwig 14, 204, 206, 223, 234
and ‘homogeneity’ 12, 13, 17, 37, 242 Tomaselli, Giuseppe 176
ideals 3, 8–17, 29–33, 36, 115, 209, 235, tone-painting 205
242–3, 250, 254 Tost, Johann 26
and learned style 18, 25, 60, 84–5, 114–15, 125 Tovey, Donald Francis 212
and musica reservata 231 Traeg, Johann Peter 36–7
performance-centred view of 10, 21–3 tragedy 122, 189, 192, 231
professional performance of 8, 18, 31, 34, 52 tragic dramatic mode 69, 202, 240
public versus private 22, 51–3, 95 Triest, Johann Karl Friedrich 176–7
and ‘purity’ 10, 12, 13, 17, 32–3, 37, 44, 242, ‘true’ quartets, concept of see under string
247 quartet
spirituality see spirituality Tusa, Michael 79
and theatricality see theatricality Tyson, Alan 89–90
theatrical metaphors for 10, 20–1, 22, 23–4,
202–3, 210 unendliche Melodie 104
thematische Arbeit (thematic working) 126, 158 see also Wagner
theory of 8–10 unity 10, 12, 17, 33, 103, 165, 207, 243, 251
tripartite typology/classification of 17–18 see also performance and string quartet
282 Index
utterance vocal aesthetics 175–7, 185

Romantic quest for roots of 88
string quartet as unified utterance 102–3 Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich 14, 15
unmediated 33, 142–3 Wagner, Johann Jacob 70
Wagner, Richard 168–9
Verdi, Giuseppe 126 on Beethoven 44–7
Vetter, Walther 89, 118 deafness 245–6
vibrato 48, 107 unendliche Melodie 104
Vienna 25 ‘Zukunftsmusik’ (Music of the
concert life 18, 25 Future) 104
French occupation of 17, 173 Waldstein, Count Ferdinand von 30
opera see opera Watson, Angus 6
private sphere in 25–9 Weber, William 235
publishing trade in 34–6, 41 Webster, James 112, 126, 169
and reception of German Romanticism/ Weigl, Joseph 26
idealism 206 Weiss, Franz 27
salon culture in 10, 25–6, 30, 169, 206 Wendt, Amadeus 183
social-cultural circumstances changing in 169 Winter, Robert 250–1
social levelling in 29–31 Wranitzky, Anton 26
stringed instrument performers in 26–7 Wranitzky, Paul 18, 20, 26, 30, 35
theatres/theatre life in 25, 30, 206
Burgtheater 6 Zelter, Carl Friedrich 31
Hoftheater 5, 25 Zinsendorf, Count Karl 25
reforms of 204 Zmeskall von Domanovetz, Nikolaus 25, 26, 29,
Viereinigkeit (fourfold unity) 12, 17, 25, 102–3, 30, 31, 39, 52, 209–10
111, 243 as dedicatee 209–10
Viotti, Giovanni Battista 44, 47 ‘Zukunftsmusik’ (Music of the Future)
virtuosity 18, 20, 35, 156, 158 (Wagner) 104

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Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets

Beethoven’s middle-period quartets, Opp. 59, 74 and 95, are pieces

nancy november lectures in musicology at the University of

The aim of Music in Context is to illuminate speciﬁc musical works, repertoires or

books in the series

List of illustrations [page vi]

Select bibliography [255]

4.2 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 2, movement one,

5.9 Beethoven, String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3, movement two,

6.12 Beethoven, Egmont, No. 8 (Melodrama), bars 44–5 [200]

The story of the writing of this book is marked by numerous arrivals

to question this teleological view. A study of these works’ reception, in

studies of the various conceptions of ‘heroic’ that were current c. 1800, as

commentators. Theodor Helm, in his seminal book on Beethoven’s quartets

Beethoven’s ‘theatrical epoch’

Central to my approach is the idea of a ‘theatrical epoch’ in Beethoven’s career

Beethoven’s middle-period quartets were composed at a major turning

Theories and ideals of the string quartet c. 1800

Mozart’s ‘ten great string quartets’.1 According to Finscher, this ‘theory of

The ‘true’ string quartet as music’s Cabinetstück

part harmony in particular, contributed to music theorists’ estimation of the

up a substantial proportion of the performed repertoire in Beethoven’s

The actual sight of performance is irrelevant, in Hoffmann’s opinion, since

quartet playing Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 3 (1904; Fig. 1.2). Although no

1.2 Ferdinand Schmutzer, Das Joachim-Quartett beim Musizieren (1904), etching

In this view, the quartet might seem to be represented as synthetic and

The blending of string quartet subgenres c. 1800

The string quartet and the ﬁgure of theatre

styles or to specify a precise difference in character between them’.38 This

These metaphors suggest an expressive mode that encompasses rather than

by the sight of the performance, and the ﬁrst violinist in particular.

in his article ‘Performance of Instrumental Quartets’ (1804) for the

In this conception of string quartet performance, the crucial conversa-

Contexts of string quartet performance and publication

The emerging ideals regarding the genre relate to contemporary composi-

Performers and patrons

String quartets were a favoured medium in private music making at this

musicians.60 High economic inﬂation resulting from political upheaval

Seyfried emphasised Beethoven’s direction of the ensemble, and the

new quartet together.65 It is likely that Beethoven ‘learnt how to write

Social function and performance ideology

public performance of quartets in Vienna was becoming more common.

early Quartettproduktionen was probably similar to that at the quartet

arbitrariness, and too frequent use of tempo rubato’.81 Early nineteenth-

Early canon formation

Those ‘most excellent, most distinguished compositions’ in Schuppanzigh’s

Mozart, Cherubini, Gluck, Gyrowetz and Wranitzky. Beethoven is featured,

In 1802, for example, Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie (Kunst- und Industrie

century: Petiscus’s aversion to non-string quartet genres, expressed in 1810,

deployed a range of compositional techniques and expressive devices,

Cursed tipsy Domanovetz – not Count of music, but Count of

Fingerings in early sources

Early performers of the middle-period quartets notoriously railed against

sense of Beethoven’s concern with the practicalities of performance, and

Ex. 2.2 Op. 59 No. 2, movement two, bar 32 (viola)

Articulation markings in the autographs

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Beethoven’s autograph performance

Ex. 2.5 Op. 95, movement four, bars 40–1

Beethoven’s unprecedented use of dynamic markings can likewise be

Equivocal evidence from early editors

Beethoven chose to claim new privileges as ‘playwright’ of the middle-

quartet, the numerous ﬁngerings and bowings relate to quartet rehearsals

Op. 59 need not demand arbitration as to whether it is ‘not generally