Dissociation and Integration: The First Movement of Beethoven's Opus 130

A new reading of the finale of Beethoven's String Quartet in C# Minor, op. 131, taking as point of departure the theme in "doublet" form introduced in mm. 22-29. This theme recalls (or retrieves) the fugue subject of the first movement in peculiar ways, analyzed here in perhaps painstaking detail. Over the course of the movement the peculiarities dissipate; the theme recurs in different forms until, in a beautiful passage near the end, it seems less uncanny than reconciliatory, an authentic return at the end of the quartet to the ethos of the great fugue that began it. Meanwhile as the doublet theme develops and grows more expressive, the finale's "heroic" first theme decays. Yet the finale is the only movement in op. 131 to follow sonata-like procedures, strikingly evocative of the "Burnham canon" of middle-period works. Sonata-form narrative is undercut here by a counter-narrative tracing the transformations of the doublet theme, suggesting an overall cyclic rather than teleological dynamic. For Adorno, critique of the heroic ideal was at the heart of Beethoven's late style. Although Adorno did not think so, critique is more explicit in the finale of op. 131 than in many other late works, it is suggested, and more vivid, because the heroic accents of the symphonic style are evoked so deliberately within the movement itself.

The present research has its starting point in the obviously common origin and simultaneous creation of the initial theme of Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 132, and of the principal subject of the Great Fugue, Op. 133, first observed from Beethoven's sketchbooks by Gustav Nottebohm in the 1870s (Beethoveniana II, pp. 548-551), and further in the remarks of Paul Bekker (Beethoven, German edn., Berlin 1911-1912, pp. 533-534), who casts his nets even wider, connecting these themes with a number of motives in Op. 131.

Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Markedness, Topics, and Tropes 1. Semiotic Grounding in Markedness and Style: Interpreting a Style Type in the Opening of Beethoven's Ghost Trio, Op. 70, no. 1 2. Expressive Doubling, Topics, Tropes, and Shifts in Level of Discourse: Interpreting the Third Movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in B Major, Op. 130 3. From Topic to Premise and Mode: The Pastoral in Schubert's Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 894 4. The Troping of Topics, Genres, and Forms: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler Part II. Musical Gesture Introduction to Part II 5. Foundational Principles of Human Gesture 6. Toward a Theory of Musical Gesture 7. Stylistic Types and Strategic Functions of Gestures 8. Thematic Gesture in Schubert: The Piano Sonatas in A Major, D. 959, and A Minor, D. 784 9. Thematic Gesture in Beethoven: Sonata for Piano and Cello in C Major, Op. 102, no. 1 10. Gestural Troping and Agency Conclusion to Part II Part III. Continuity and Discontinuity Introduction to Part III 11. From Gestural Continuity to Continuity as Premise 12. Discontinuity and Beyond Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index of Names and Works Index of Concepts

SIX. A Semiotic Interpretation of the First Movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132

ABSTRACTThe ‘Amenda anecdote’ from 1856 associates the second movement of Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1 (Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato) with the vault scene of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Sketchbook jottings by Beethoven from 1799, in French, confirm that such a link really existed. The question of what incited him to represent in his music elements of Shakepeare has not been settled to any satisfaction. It seems unlikely that Beethoven read a French version of the play. Nor can a public theatrical or operatic staging have been the stimulus, for the original vault scene was not allowed to be performed by the authorities. This study approaches the Shakespeare connection from the perspective of a cultural practice that has received limited attention in the literature, that of Viennese Haustheater. A performance of the vault scene in this context, it is argued, informed Beethoven's quartet movement. The most crucial piece of evidence are the memoirs of Caroline Pichler, which mention a tableau given at her parents’ house at the end of eighteenth century. One of the claims of the study is that Beethoven's Shakespeare connection was a one-time digression from normal practice, and that it is thus hazardous to draw this particular event into a wider hermeneutic debate.

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A discographical study of Beethoven's string quartets gives rise to numerous counter examples to the normalizing trends that scholars of recording history have emphasized in the past. Innovation and variability of interpretation are central to the practice of performing these works in the recording age. Recordings of Beethoven's early, middle, and late quartets offer qualitative and quantitative evidence that spans an eighty-year history. Perhaps surprisingly, homogeneity and restraint are often found in historically informed Beethoven performance. In general, though, the various “voices” of mainstream string quartets have increasingly opened, rather than closed, these works' hermeneutic windows.

This study examines possible parallels between large-scale organization in music and discourse structure. Two experiments examine the psychological reality of topics in the first movements of W. A. Mozart's String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K. 515, and L. van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. Listeners made real-time judgments on three continuous scales: memorability, openness, and amount of emotion. All three kinds of judgments could be accounted for by the topics identified in these pieces by Agawu (1991) independently of the listeners' musical training. The results showed hierarchies of topics. However, these differed for the three tasks and for the two pieces. The topics in the Mozart piece appear to function as a way of establishing the musical form, whereas the topics in the Beethoven piece are more strongly associated with emotional content.

Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 (1826) is firmly a part of the modern-day canon, and also makes its presence felt in popular culture, notably in film. Yet in recent times, the terms in which the work is discussed and presented tend to undermine the work’s power. Although it is held up as a masterpiece, Op. 131 has often been understood in monochrome terms, as a work portraying tragedy, struggle, loss, and lack. This book takes the modern-day listener well beyond these categories of adversity or deficit. It goes back to early reception documents, including Beethoven’s own writings about the work, to help the listener reinterpret the work and re-hear it. Analyses are geared toward allowing the reader to access earlier modes of listening and interpretation, those of listeners who celebrated the work precisely for its plenitude, its richness of invention or fantasy (in Beethoven’s own words). As connoisseur listeners of Beethoven’s day implied, Op. 131 is filled with diverse musical ideas (just like a fantasia), and with a new kind of string quartet writing that is calculated to promote sustained, engaged listening. Placing this work in the context of an emerging ideology of silent or “serious” listening in Beethoven’s Europe, the book considers how this particular “late” quartet could speak with special eloquence to a highly select but passionately enthusiastic audience. It also examines how and why the reception of Op. 131 has changed so profoundly from Beethoven’s time to our own.

The literary critic Harold Bloom coined the term "anxiety of influence" to cover stages in the emancipation of poets from their powerful forebears. Much has been written on the shadow cast by Beethoven over later nineteenth-century composers, but Beethoven too had to come to terms with powerful influences. It has long been recognized that the slow movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, op. 18, no. 5, is modeled on that of Mozart's String Quartet in A major, K. 464. Here it is shown that in fact, the imitation involves not only the slow movement but all four of the movements. This provides an opportunity to examine in detail Beethoven's technique of reinterpreting his model. Indeed an examination of Beethoven's "anxiety" at different stages of his career may lead us to a closer understanding of his creative development. Toward the end of his life Beethoven imitated one of the movements from K. 464 again. Here may be seen the final stage in the confrontation of his anxiety.

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The article discusses Arnold Schoenberg's handling of the traditional development section, especially in the second movement of his String Quartet No. 2 op. 10. Schoenberg himself disparagingly referred to certain developmental practices as ‘Spandelmachen’, referring to overly simple, outdated sequencing practices. An analysis of Schönberg's writings, teaching materials and sketches highlights his own approaches to shaping a development section. The focus here is on the second movement of String Quartet No. 2 op. 10, as extensive revisions can be found in the source material. Comparisons are also made with Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet op. 59/2.

Beethoven's revision in 1800 of his String Quartet, Op. 18, no. 2, Finale, offers us a window into his rethinking of the boundaries of musical distance for this movement during a critical period of his development. Beethoven focused his changes on the pianissimo passages, and aligned this dynamic with the movement's most extreme harmonic progressions and surprising aspects of its musical form. He also introduced various revisions to assure that the more radical, distant material in the pianissimo sections remained, not just anchored to the rest of the movement, but central to its drama.

Reviewed by: The String Quartets of Beethoven Robert Follet The String Quartets of Beethoven. Edited by William Kinderman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. [360 p. ISBN 0-252-03036-2. $75.] Music examples, index, bibliography. "No group of compositions occupies a more central position in chamber music than Beethoven's string quartets, yet the meaning of these works continues to stimulate debate." (p. [1]). Thus begins William Kinderman's introduction to this remarkable group of essays. Covering the entire range of Beethoven's quartet canon, this book includes eleven essays written by ten recognized scholars in the fields of musicology and music theory. Many of the papers [End Page 353] were originally read at the conference "Beethoven's String Quartets: A Classic or Modernistic Legacy?" held at the University of Victoria, British Columbia in March 2000. The paper by Lewis Lockwood was originally presented at a symposium "Beethoven and the Creative Process" held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, May 2003. The conference papers have been revised for publication. Using a variety of research methodologies, these essays present a microcosm of the current state of research not only on the quartets, but all of Beethoven's works. Moving chronologically through the quartets, these essays reveal a wide variety of critical approaches and means of musical analysis. This is not, however, a volume for the reader unfamiliar with the quartets. The title may suggest an introduction and survey similar to the monographs by Daniel Gregory Mason or Joseph Kerman, but this is, rather, a scholarly conversation on various aspects of these compositions. Prior familiarity with the quartets is a definite prerequisite. Kinderman's introduction not only opens the volume, setting the stage for the following essays, but also presents an eloquent reception history of the quartets. This introduction gives brief background information on each opus, and also discusses how the reception and understanding of these works has evolved and changed through time. Kinderman also contributed both the opening and closing essays. In the first, "Transformational Processes in Beethoven's Op. 18 Quartets," Kinderman examines how Beethoven devised transformational passages in some movements of the quartets "wherein the strongest contrasts coexist with a high degree of integration" (p. 14). This study is closely allied with Kinderman's previous examination of the same phenomenon in Beethoven's Sonata, op. 110 (Beethoven Forum 1 [1992]: 111–45). The concluding essay, "Beethoven's Last Quartets: Threshold to a Fourth Creative Period?" addresses the coexistence in Beethoven's late quartets music of both linear and nonlinear time. Discussing each of the quartets individually from both historical and analytical perspectives, Kinderman reaches the conclusion that the "priority Beethoven granted to the imagination here comes to fulfillment in a manner that twists our expectations of the genre even more than earlier works while advancing his art toward new creative perspectives" (p. 317). The only essay to examine all of the quartets is Harald Krebs' "Metrical Dissonance and Metrical Revision in Beethoven's Quartets." Krebs examines various sketches of the quartets to demonstrate that Beethoven consciously developed metrical dissonances or conflicts within the quartets and rightfully suggests that this conscious effort should be examined in additional completed works and sketches. The remaining essays each focus on one aspect of an opus. Malcolm Miller examines the relation between registerial structure and Beethoven's unique use of the sonata principle in the op. 59 quartets. Lewis Lockwood studies the sketches for the "Harp quartet" op. 74 to demonstrate that knowledge of the compositional process can provide insight into puzzling aspects of a work while possibly raising additional new questions that might not occur in only studying the finished composition. Nicholas Marston explores the possibilities of a relationship between Beethoven's opus 74 and Haydn's string quartet op. 76, no. 6, and Beethoven's fascination with the fantasia and the relationship between this quartet and the piano sonata op. 81a. Seow-Chin Ong examines the sketches of the quartet op. 95, discussing their chronology and content, the draft of the first movement, and finally, the date of the autograph manuscript. Ong concludes by suggesting that the date for the autograph should be 1810 rather than 1814 generally attributed heretofore...

he String Quartet op. 130 in Bb major is the third and last of the three quartets commissioned by Prince Nikolai Galitzin in 1822, the first two being the quartets opp. 127 and 132.' It was composed in the period from May to November/December 1825.2 The first performance by the Schuppanzigh quartet occurred on 21 March 1826, and the quartet was published posthumously in its second version in May 1827 by Artaria in Vienna.3 The delay in publication stemmed from the problem posed by the quartet's original