Reflections on the 17 Beethoven String Quartets: The Late Period Quartets (Part 3 of 5)

The Late Period Quartets

By Paul Katz

It’s 2020, we are celebrating Beethoven’s 250th birthday, and I decided it is the perfect time to revisit the album notes I wrote 45 years ago for the Cleveland Quartet’s recorded Beethoven Quartet Cycle on RCA Victor. The 17 quartets of Beethoven were the core of our 26-year career as we immersed ourselves in research, score study, years of exhilarating rehearsals, two recorded cycles, 30 complete cycles in the major capitals of the world, and literally thousands of Beethoven quartet performances. Musicians generally agree that there is no other music as rewarding or profound in all of western music. These masterpieces have challenged me as a musician and enriched my life – what a privileged existence!

Formed in 1969, the CQ knew only 2 Beethoven quartets for the 1970 Beethoven bi-centennial year, but we joked that we would be ready for a cycle in 2020! Though it’s 50 years later and the Cleveland Quartet is no longer active, I could not let this special year go by without participating in some way, and so I returned to my notes written between 1975-1980, and reduced and edited them for this series of CelloBello blogs. The original project was voluminous – 3 boxed sets of LP vinyl, with written liner notes discussing each individual quartet. I have taken about 20% of that original project and rewrote it for CelloBello in five-parts: The Early, Middle, Late Quartets, the Metronome Markings, and Interpretive Considerations.

The Late Period Quartets (Op. 127 130, 131, 132, 133, 135) 

No composer has expressed Man’s deepest emotional states as profoundly as Beethoven. There is a heartfelt depth to the musical experience, an enlightened level of consciousness, a sincerity and nobleness of concept that enriches and inspires. “Those who understand (my music) must be freed by it from all the miseries that others drag about with themselves,” Beethoven is reported to have said. Whether or not he actually uttered these words is ultimately unimportant, for generations have found in his music the noblest and purest expression of universally shared human values such as Love, Joy, Peace and Strength of Character. There is despair and anger, even rage, but never hate, not a cynical or bitter note. Pain and suffering (which he knew better than most are beautifully expressed to us as a necessary part of the synthesis of life.

In the years following the completion of Op. 95 in 1810, Beethoven experienced illness, financial trouble and an unbelievably traumatic personal life. Composing didn’t stop, but it markedly slowed, and it’s probable that his disastrous personal life affected his productivity. We can also imagine a creative ferment taking place that needed time—an expanding musical language and a deepening level of consciousness that ultimately was to produce some of mankind’s most spiritually profound music.

The last six piano sonatas written between 1814-1822 (Op. 90 – Op.111), the two Op. 102 cello sonatas, the song cycle An die Ferne Geliebte and substantial work on the Missa Solemnis (not completed until 1823) are the only major undertakings of the years 1814-22.

The failure in 1812 of his relationship with a secret love seems to have caused an emotional depression for years. A letter to an “Immortal Beloved” was found in his papers after his death, causing generations of ongoing speculation as to the woman’s identity. With Sherlock Holmes like investigative abilities, Maynard Solomon, in his 1977 book “Beethoven”, made a seemingly air-tight case that the letter was written in 1812 to Antonie Brentano, 10 years younger than Beethoven and wife of Franz Brentano, a businessman and friend of Beethoven. But as historians have kept digging, additional love letters to others and contradictory clues continue to surface, and so the controversy remains unresolved. Alternative possibilities include Countess Josephine Deym who Beethoven had pursued years earlier, and Bettina Brentano, a woman of beauty and intellect who befriended a number of famous men, including Goethe. Whoever she was, this lost love and the realization that he would never be a husband or father most likely intensified his emotional need for family connection and fueled a five-year legal battle over guardianship of his nephew Karl. In 1820 Beethoven finally succeeded in discrediting the boy’s mother in court and was awarded Karl, whom he referred to as his own “son”.

Yet the custody battle and his traumatic misfortunes do not entirely explain these lean years, for in 1822 his productivity returned amidst deteriorating health and ongoing personal difficulties, including a disastrous relationship with his newly adopted son Karl. In early August of 1826 Karl shot himself in the head because, as he later explained, “My uncle harassed me so.” Not even this nearly successful suicide attempt stopped Beethoven from his work on his final complete quartet, Op.135, though the incident was so emotionally devastating as to have possibly hastened Beethoven’s death.

Beethoven was finishing the Missa Solemnis, was working on the Ninth Symphony and had indicated to friends he was thinking again of writing string quartets, when an offer came from Prince Nikolas Galitzin toward the end of 1822 to commission “one, two or three new quartets!” He would need until February of 1824, however, to finish the symphony, the mass and his final piano work (the “Diabelli” Variations) before devoting himself full time to this commission.

The order of publication of the late quartets and therefore the chronology of the opus numbers is somewhat different than his order of composing. The three quartets for Prince Galitzin were written in the sequence of Op. 127, 132 and 130. The Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue), Beethoven’s most problematic work, was the original finale of Op. 130 and thus, part of this commission. (The 20th Century composer Igor Stravinsky described the Grosse Fuge as “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever.”) All of Vienna, even learned musicians, were bewildered by this movement and it was universally condemned in the press. Beethoven was furious: “And why didn’t they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!” But his publishers begged Beethoven to write a new finale and he eventually complied. The Grosse Fuge was detached from Op. 130 and published as the Op. 133 string quartet and in a piano four-hand version as Op. 134.

These 3 quartets for Prince Galitzin were then followed by Op. 131 and his last complete work, Op. 135. His final composition before falling seriously ill in December 1826 was the new finale (Allegro) for Op. 130, which replaced the Grosse Fuge. His death on March 26, 1827 cut short many plans, including a tenth symphony, an opera in collaboration with Franz Grillparzer (who wrote the oration for Beethoven’s funeral instead), a requiem mass and a string quintet.

The compositional techniques employed in the late quartets move in varied and divergent directions. Beethoven approaches questions of contrast and, in myriad ways, how to balance unification with variety. Op. 130 has a 10-minute first movement and 1’50” second movement. The 3rd movement has an astonishing proliferation of dynamic markings on virtually every beat, while the Grosse Fuge finale of the same work has 4 minutes of unremitting fortissimo and more than 2 minutes of total pianissimo. The divertimento approach of the six separate movements in Op. 130 contrasts with the total integration of the seven uninterrupted movements in Op. 131. A plethora of short motivic material in the first movement of Op. 135 contrasts with single-minded motivic repetition of the second movement of Op. 132. There is harmonic adventurism everywhere—novel key relationships, abrupt modulations, expressive and dramatic use of dissonance. The passing and distribution of melodic material between the four instruments is far more complex than before, resulting in innovative, conversational interchange between the voices. Rhythmic inventiveness such as off-beat accents, syncopation, sudden changes of meter and tempo and highly ornamented writing spice each late quartet.

These compositional elements often express a highly introspective, deeply spiritual or mystical aesthetic that even today many have found abstract and inaccessible. Isolated by deafness, Beethoven’s inner world deepened. One can only imagine the lonely Beethoven, cut off from normal human interaction from more than 20 years of deafness, suffering illness, physical pain, and the emotional torments of a disastrous personal life.

Karl Holz, confidante of the composer and second violinist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet that premiered Op. 130, relates that Beethoven composed the slow movement Cavatina “in the very tears of misery and that never had one of his pieces moved him so deeply and that merely to relive it in his feelings always cost him a tear.” The Cavatina is a sincere and transcendental outpouring of emotion in simple song with a middle section, Beklemmt (inner suffering) that is perhaps Beethoven’s most direct expression of profound anguish. One of the great miracles of music, the beklemmt section is an instrumental approximation of sobbing, gasping—one senses a sorrow too overwhelming and personal to share with another human being.

In April of 1825, Beethoven was confined to bed in terrible pain, spitting blood and suffering from inflammation of the bowels and stomach troubles. Upon recovery, he wrote the third movement of Op. 132, the “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart” (Sacred Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode), one of music’s most inspired and transcendent compositions. In the manuscript he added. “this piece has always B instead of B-flat!’ This clarification Beethoven felt necessary for he was not composing in a major or minor key as nearly all music since the early 1600s had been written, but was returning to the medieval church mode of Lydian, awakening in the listener all of the religious feelings associated with church music of the Middle Ages. In Aldous Huxley’s novel “Point, Counterpoint” he refers to this movement as “proof as to the existence of God”.

This Hymn of Thanks is interrupted twice with a “Neue Kraft fühlend” (Feeling New Strength), a joyous swirl of muscular activity in D Major. Here we have trills, ornaments, syncopation, quick-moving spiccato scales, pizzicato—a lyricism and dance that is full of a love for life.
In fact, we should never forget Beethoven’s indomitable spirit – these amazing works have many positive moments of joy and strength. Joseph Kerman hypothesizes that his isolation also intensified his need to reach other human beings with his music. So, sprinkled within the mystical and the abstract are folk songs and dances, childlike tunes, hymns, recitatives and melodies of great simplicity and expressive power. One finds catchy folk-like rhythms and drones, intentional harmonic banality and nonsense-like repetition. One of the extraordinary achievements of this music is the integration of these divergent tendencies into a unified compelling whole. The spiritual mystic and the innocent child, the philosopher and the village clown coexist effortlessly.

While sketches for Op. 135, Beethoven’s final complete work, had already begun, the bulk of the composing was done in August and September of 1826, just after Karl’s attempted suicide and during the two months Karl was recuperating in the hospital. Remarkably, Op. 135 is the work of a man seemingly at peace with himself and suggests nothing of the chaos or trauma he must have been experiencing on account of Karl. Op. 135 is a return to a classical aesthetic of grace, transparency and emotional restraint that combines a Haydnesque humor with a profound spirituality. Both Op. 135 and his last composition, the new finale for Op. 130 to replace the Grosse Fuge, exude a love of life, often with a playful, even humorous character. Op. 135’s modest proportions and its comparative lack of emotional intensity may have resulted in part from the drained physical and emotional state of the composer. For Beethoven, music at this point most likely served as a refuge, the only order and solace in his life, the one aspect of his existence over which he still had control.

Performers agree that there is no greater responsibility than worthy interpretation of the Late Quartets of Beethoven. That musical statements so profound, and of such spiritual depth must be felt by our hearts, perceived by our minds and transmitted through a collective voice is humbling, fulfilling, terrifying and motivating.To have lived inside the Late Quartets of Beethoven, both as a member of the Cleveland Quartet as well as a mentor and teacher to the many wonderful young groups that keep this music alive today, has given me the deepest, most enriching, musical moments of my life. The entire world of music thanks you Ludwig!