Beethoven: String Quartet No. 10, in E-flat major, Op. 74, Harp
Ames Town & Gown performers: Arianna Sting Quartet
April 8, 2017, Ames City Auditorium
Notes by Karl E. Gwiasda
At three times in his life, Beethoven concentrated his attention upon the string quartet. Between mid-1798 and 1800, he worked on the set of six quartets (Op. 18) by which he made known his readiness to bear comparison to Haydn and Mozart. In 1806, in fulfillment of a commission from Count Andreas Razumovsky, he penned three quartets (Op. 59) whose scope, scale, and boldness went beyond anything hitherto attempted by even Haydn and Mozart. Finally, in 1825, prompted by a commission from Prince Nicolas Galitzky for up to three quartets, Beethoven again addressed the form. Though by this time seriously ailing, the composer spent his last two full years of life producing five quartets, plus a “Great Fugue,” that consummated his art and thought, and that have ever since been counted among the most sublime achievements of Western music.
Two quartets fall outside of this pattern: the Quartet in E-flat (heard tonight) from 1809 and the Quartet in F minor from 1810. They alone fill the near 20-year hiatus between the Razumovsky quartets and the final spate of essays. Not that Beethoven wanted things that way. In 1806, he had written his publisher that he had in mind “devoting myself almost entirely to this type of composition [i.e., quartets].” Failing, however, to receive any stimulus from publishers or patrons, Beethoven busied himself instead with writing sonatas, symphonies, and various commissioned works. Thus, the E-flat and F minor quartets stand as early signposts along what became, for a long while, a path not taken.
The year 1809 had brought to Beethoven one welcome encouragement. In March, three noblemen joined to promise him a guaranteed annuity on the sole condition that he abandon all thoughts of leaving Vienna for a position elsewhere. Beethoven gladly accepted the offer, but the year would prove an ill time for all the city’s residents. In February, hoping to forestall Napoleon’s expected invasion of Austria as the sole step left to completing his subjugation of continental Europe, the Austrian government had declared war on France. The war brought the result it was meant to avert. In early May, Napoleon’s army was at Vienna’s walls, and French artillery started shelling the city. The siege culminated in a bombardment that began the night of May 11 and lasted until dawn. The city surrendered, opened its gates, and came under French occupation.
Like many other citizens of Vienna, Beethoven had spent that fearful May night hiding in a cellar for protection. Then, with the others, he endured the consequences of military occupation: looting, punitive levies, travel restrictions, and a food shortage. On July 26, Beethoven wrote his publisher that he had been unable to work since the siege’s beginning and was still beset by the sight and sound of “drums, cannons, and human misery in every form.” Soon, however, he did go back to composing. During the year’s remaining months, he completed three piano sonatas and the so-called “Emperor” concerto while also producing the Quartet in E-flat.
The quartet’s overall genial character offers no overt indication of the troubled times that accompanied its birth. In certain of its formal features, however, the quartet suggests an intentional homage to Haydn, whose death on May 31, during the first weeks of Vienna’s military occupation, had deeply saddened Beethoven. As Haydn had often done, for instance, Beethoven prefaces his first movement with a slow introduction, which he begins with a twice-repeated four-note phrase and ends with three quickly stated chords. The first violin initiates the movement’s main section with a lyrical theme that is soon followed by a second theme, played pizzicato by the viola. (Beethoven’s frequent use of pizzicati [plucked notes] in the first movement is the source of the quartet’s nickname, “Harp.”) After the two themes have been put through a pattern of development and reiteration, the first violin bursts into a swirling, somewhat “Gypsy fiddler” passage that takes the movement to its cheerful close.
The second movement, marked Adagio ma non troppo (“Slow, but not overmuch”), is built upon a tenderly lyrical theme presented at the outset by the first violin and then restated in variant guises that become increasingly colored in sadness. Relief comes with a reappearance of the initial theme, but there follows another descent towards sadness. Once more, the music returns to its gentle beginning, this time to take the movement into a resigned close.
Though marked only as Presto (“Very fast’), the third movement is a propulsive scherzo in the ABABA pattern Beethoven favored for such pieces. Conventionally, the “B” section (or “trio”) in such movements relaxes the pace, as though granting a moment to catch a second wind. In this instance, however, Beethoven spurns any slowing down, instead providing contrast by turning his trio into a little fugue. In addition, he allows no pause between the presto and the concluding movement, marked Allegretto (“Slightly fast”). As one more surprise, he casts his finale as a theme-and-variations, a step he took in no other of his previous quartets—and in none that came after. Lewis Lockwood plausibly proposes that Beethoven may have chosen his ending as a bow towards Haydn, whose E-flat quartet from 1797 (Op. 76, No. 6) begins with a variations movement (Beethoven [2003], p. 236). Beethoven treats his theme to six variations, which he arranges in a sequence of first a vigorous, then a gentle one. After the quiet sixth variation, he brings the quartet to an exuberantly headlong conclusion.