Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (166 page)

78. As Stowell elaborates (
Beethoven
, 80–85), Owen Jander finds in the slow movement the atmosphere of a
Romanze
, of which Beethoven wrote two freestanding examples for violin. Plantinga among others is dubious about the connection. In general Plantinga finds more tension in the first movement than I do, using descriptions like “high pathos” and “insistent in the extreme.” As he notes, though, the most common descriptor applied to the whole work is “serene.” And as Plantinga also admits, most of the incipient disruptions are quickly restored to peace.

79. At the end of the finale Beethoven recalls the opening timpani tattoo, but I think that since the tattoo has not been around throughout, it's more a formal than an audible connection. In order to be meaningful, motifs have to keep happening. That the timpani tattoo largely gets lost after the first movement (though perhaps it survives in themes that tend to fall hard on the beat in duple patterns) and that the “sore” D-sharp near the beginning has only hazy implications later are, to me, signs of the haste in which the concerto was composed. The extreme regularity of the phrasing in the first movement may be another sign; likewise, that Beethoven used a perhaps-borrowed, at any rate conventional, theme for the finale. It took him time and energy to give fresh twists to ideas and their phrasing; his first thoughts were often more conventional and foursquare. My general sense is that the pieces he composed in a hurry have less pervasive and complex thematic, tonal, and rhythmic interrelationships, because there was not as much time to think, revise, and plan ahead.

80. Senner,
Critical Reception
, 2:68–69.

81. Stowell,
Beethoven
, 16–19, 24. Beethoven had heard Clement's Violin Concerto in D Major, because it premiered on an April 1805 concert in which Beethoven conducted the
Eroica
. Plantinga (
Beethoven's Concertos
, 233) notes that the violin writing in Beethoven's concerto is on the whole less adventurous than Viotti's.

82. Stowell says (
Beethoven
, 52–55) that in the manuscript of the Violin Concerto, there are multiple staves given to the solo part, and many passages have two or three different versions noted on those staves. The whole manuscript is much worked over by Beethoven, but it remains unclear how the final published version was arrived at. As Plantinga writes (
Beethoven's Concertos
, 239), “the current form of the violin part bears an odd, fragmented relationship to the text of the autograph”; sometimes it follows the top line of the solo, sometimes the second, and sometimes it has a passage that does not appear on the autograph at all.

83. A paraphrase of Eugène Ysaÿe in Stowell,
Beethoven
, 20. It was mainly Joseph Joachim who placed the Violin Concerto in the repertoire, starting with a celebrated performance in 1844, when he was twelve.

 

20. That Haughty Beauty

 

1. Wyn Jones,
Life of Beethoven
, 92–93.

2. Thayer/Forbes, 1:427–28.

3. Senner,
Critical Reception
, 2:52–53.

4.
Grove
Music Online
, s.v. “Schuppanzigh, Ignaz.” As a historical footnote, Schuppanzigh also was one of only two men known to play in the premieres of every Beethoven symphony. The other was Anton Schreiber, the violist of his quartet.

5. Landon,
Beethoven
, 56–58.

6. Wegeler/Ries, 116.

7. Specht,
Beethoven as He Lived
, 42–43.

8. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
Compendium
, 234.

9. Kerman,
Beethoven Quartets
, 59.

10. Part of the effect of the beginning of op. 59, no. 1, is that the cello solo mostly falls on the relatively milder middle G and D strings. The melody on the C string would have been stronger, on the A string more lyrical and sweet. Both were possible, but Beethoven chose the strings with the least distinctive character. Ratner, in
Beethoven String Quartets
, considers the tone of the movement “melancholy and nostalgic . . . bittersweet in the touches of sharp dissonance” (106). Most commentators don't hear it in those terms. I find a certain expressive elusiveness in the F Major—part of its relatively undramatic quality.

11. Kerman in
Beethoven Quartets
emphasizes the individuality of the works. I'm concerned with how that individuality is expressed not only in the themes and forms but also in the colors and textures.

12. The opening of the F Major is made still more unstable, more strange, by its theme that turns around C, the fifth degree of the scale, treated as if it were the first degree, giving the cello theme a certain modal, Mixolydian flavor.

13. A few more elements unite the main theme of the first and last movements of the F Major Quartet. Both have a falling step on A–G that echoes the D–C motif, and the articulation of the finale theme has a resemblance to the 1234 1 rhythmic motif of the first movement: its implied phrasing is 1212 1. Also, both themes have a modal quality. The first segment of each transacts its main business within the compass of the sixth C to A. And, of course, both themes are presented by the cello, the main protagonist of the quartet, often involved in playing a melody rather than the usual bass line—which, as is noted, gives the whole quartet a bit of a suspended, modal quality (see Kerman,
Beethoven
Quartets
, 93).

14. In characteristic Beethovenian fashion, the F Major's opening 1234 1 rhythmic motif is diminished from quarters to eighths in the third bar, augmented to whole notes in the violin from m. 16.

15. Kerman,
Beethoven Quartets
, uses “reinterpretation” for the effect I'm calling “redefinition” in the F Major, though he applies it only to the first movements of all three quartets. I think the most elaborate example of it is in the second movement of the F Major, with its constant reenvisioning of its opening rhythmic motif.

16. As late as the final manuscript, Beethoven had planned to repeat the entire development and recapitulation of the F Major Quartet first movement, but he finally struck it out (Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 320). As Lockwood notes, even without the repeat this is still the longest quartet movement written to that time. Also, until late in the game he planned a similar repeat in the second movement, which is likewise enormous even without the repeat. If he had included the repeats, he would have ended up with a quartet as long as or longer than the
Eroica
. Lockwood concludes that the F Major “formed the primary model for quartet composers for the rest of the 19th century” (321), including Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.

17. The element that unifies the basketful of keys in the development of the F Major first movement is that most of them involve, and so constantly redefine, the note D: it is the sixth degree of the scale in F, the third degree in B-flat, the fifth degree in G minor, and so on, until it becomes the much-emphasized leading tone of E-flat minor.

18. Kerman,
Beethoven Quartets
, 109.

19. Regarding the form of the second movement of the F Major, see Ratner,
Beethoven String
Quartets
, 117 and 119. He calls the total effect a “picaresque journey.” It is in a barely noticeable sonata form with elements of rondo. “Drumbeat” and “pirouette” are Ratner's terms for the second movement's two leading ideas.

20. Landon,
Beethoven
unabridged, 208.

21. Kerman,
Beethoven Quartets
, 110.

22. Solomon, in “Beethoven, Freemasonry,” 116, speculates that the “brother” involved in the slow movement of op. 59, no. 1, might have been a Masonic brother; the acacia is a Masonic symbol (though the willow is not). It is not likely that Beethoven was referring to a brother of his who died in infancy.

23. As is common in a slow-movement sonata form, there is no repeat of the exposition. The scalewise rising-fourth figure from the first movement turns up periodically, sometimes inverted, and there is a series of them in the first violin leading to the transitional violin solo, which has a series of fourth descents and ends with repeated D–C figures—the quartet's primal motif.

24. The primal D–C motif is very much around in the finale of the F Major—it arose from the first two notes of the
Thème russe
in the first place. As in the first movement, the keys tend to involve and redefine D (notably the redefining of D in the wrong-key recapitulation in B-flat), with one exception: there are excursions to D-flat in the developments of the first and third movements and a similar one to A-flat in the finale. All of them make a point of the D-flat becoming D-natural in modulating away from the flat key. I tend to agree with Kerman's and other scholars' feeling that the finale is not up to the level of the other movements. That is not an uncommon problem with Beethoven—and myriad other composers. Finales are a chronic headache.

25. Kerman, in
Beethoven
Quartets
, 102, contrasts the F Major Quartet with the
Eroica
Symphony, saying the quartet “resists programmatic imaginings . . . breathes an abstract quality that sets it in a different emotional sphere from the symphony.” At some point I wrote in the margin of that page “don't agree!,” but now, as the text reflects, I rather do agree. Kerman also notes, “Does not the piece as a whole tend towards a loose modality?” (103). As is noted in the text, I agree but don't see why he cites Lydian mode; the beginning actually has a Mixolydian feel, the finale's
Thème russe
tending to natural minor.

26. As is said in the text, the opening fifth in the violin and the cello's simultaneous E–D-sharp appear to be the primal motifs in the E Minor Quartet. Three measures later that B will rise a half step to C, then, in the turn to the Neapolitan, the E will rise to F. What seems to me to be the essential idea behind all this is
a fifth or other larger interval with a half step on each side
. The prime form of that motif is D-sharp–E–B–C, but its echoes are myriad throughout, and D-sharp/E-flat is the starring pitch. I think the presence of C major periodically in the piece and its sustained threat to E minor in the finale are partly explained by the figure D-sharp–E, the leading tone of the quartet's E minor rising to the third of C major. In its guise as E-flat, the starring pitch tends to relate to D, as in the cello in the beginning of the first-movement development. In other words, the D-sharp/E-flat is continually swinging one way or the other, relating to the keys E or D as the tonality goes—and thereby serves as a generating element of the tonal structure. So as D was the highlighted pitch in the F Major Quartet, in the E Minor it's D-sharp/E-flat—spelled out at the beginning of the development when E-flat–B-flat is respelled D-sharp–A-sharp, taking E-flat major into the beginning of a stepwise modulation scheme (echoing the first measures): B minor to C minor, A-flat major to B-flat minor, B minor to C major—and with that latter key another burst of ebullience. (C major will turn up in the same mood, same key, and same notes in the finale's
Thema
.) Meanwhile the presence of F major harks back to the first quartet in the set, the presence of C major to the next member of the set.

27. On the expressive effects of rests in music, see Swafford, “Silence Is Golden.”

28. Both main themes of the E-minor second movement feature the primal E–D-sharp motif, the first theme beginning E–D-sharp and the second theme B–D-sharp–E (so also including the B–E fifth motif).

29. In the second movement of the E Minor, a
marcato
idea in horn fifths outlines the shape of the Russian theme to come in the scherzo, and the coda recalls the arpeggio themes of the beginning of the quartet.

30. The most famous use of the op. 56, no. 2, Russian folk song is the mighty coronation scene of Mussorgsky's
Boris Godunov
. Beethoven's treatment of it is joking, Mussorgsky's grand.

31. The shocking first chord of the C Major is a diminished seventh. Beethoven often does not resolve those kind of chords conventionally, and sometimes simply moves freely from one diminished seventh to another. This treatment is intended to erase a sense of tonality for a while; it is Beethoven's form of atonality.

32. Senner,
Critical Reception
, 2:172.

33. Ratner, in
Beethoven String
Quartets
, 151, identifies the barcarole rhythm of the C Major Quartet's second movement.

34. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 31.

35. Thayer/Forbes, 1:413.

36. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 31.

37. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 138.

38. Ibid., nos. 138a and 139.

39. Thayer/Forbes, 1:416. It is possible these concerts were held in the Lichnowsky palace, but Thayer votes for Lobkowitz. There may have been a separate concert at Lichnowsky's, as Barry Cooper notes in
Beethoven
Compendium
, 18–19.

40. Wegeler/Ries, 88–89.

41. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 119.

42. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 167.

43. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 76.

44. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 143.

45. Ibid., no. 148.

46. Thayer/Forbes, 1:421–22.

47. Ibid., 1:423.

48. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 150; Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 122.

49. Gordon, “Franz Grillparzer,” 555.

50. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 124. This is noted in a letter from Prince Nikolaus to his vice-
Kapellmeister
Fuchs demanding to know why the altos were not at the rehearsal and saying that if Fuchs could not keep his singers in line, it would be on his head.

51. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 150. Here is one of the few cases of Beethoven saying something nice about Haydn during the old man's lifetime, though it is more a case of his being conventionally humble and deferential toward the prince.