From 1800 to 1808, Beethoven had maintained a blistering pace for composition, moving forward in every genre and blazing new ground. In 1809, when Lou was 38, that changed.
Beethoven had received an offer to go to Cassel and work for Jerome Bonaparte as choirmaster. This would have put him in the same category as his late grandfather, also named Ludwig van Beethoven. Lou over the years had put his grandfather on a pedestal, not understanding that he had far outpaced his ancestor. But then Beethoven did something really smart: he put his talents up for sale.
”Do you want me to stay in Vienna? What’s it worth to you?” he asked. Starting with the Archduke Rudolph, a group of nobleman wrote up a contract for Beethoven that would permit him to live well and stay in town. It turned out to be a mixed blessing due to the inflation that devastated Austria after Napoleon defeated it.
The arrival of French troops in defeated Vienna gave the elderly Haydn one last hurrah. French officers came to Haydn’s music room, sat down at his piano and sang arias from his two last oratorios with great love and enthusiasm. The old man was moved, and two weeks later he died with a smile on his face. It was only at this point that Beethoven would permit himself to praise his former teacher in public. Lou could be catty at times.
Archduke Rudolph, due to epilepsy, didn’t take the military career path that a younger brother to the Hapsburg emperor would have ordinarily taken. He turned to the priesthood, but his real gift was music. Beethoven took the time to be a good teacher, and he minded his P’s and Q’s when dealing with this member of the high nobility. Rudolph was not a dilettante, but a man of genuine musical talent as both a pianist and a composer. He could have inherited an archbishopric, but he turned it down to pursue his muse. He was one of the few who had a deep understanding of Beethoven’s music.
Starting in 1809, Beethoven’s quantity of output dropped precipitously, but the quality didn’t. For a period in that year, Beethoven wrote a lot of pieces in E-flat: a piano trio, a piano sonata, a piano concerto – and this quartet.
It starts with a “poco adagio” introduction leading to an “allegro” in sonata format. The tune rolls until it slams the brakes on a foreign sounding D-flat. The pizzicato playing gives this quartet the nickname of “Harp,” and the plucked strings are not a garnish, but part of the main course. Development and recap are normal size, but the coda is absolutely huge! This is where the pizzicati make their payoff as they accelerate to a breathtaking conclusion.
The slow movement in A-B-A-B-A format is marked “adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile” in A-flat. Lou rarely wrote such long singing lines, and this conversation with God points to what he would do in his last quartets a decade later. The contrasting “B” section is marked “andante con moto” in D-flat.
The scherzo in C minor and 3/4 is marked “presto” and is delicious rather than demonic. Lou uses 2+2+2 and 3+3 within a bar, which gives it its rhythmic thrust. The “trio” section accelerates to “piu presto quasi prestissimo” for some wild counterpoint. This movement is in his five-part A-B-A-B-A scherzo format until...
It leads slyly into the only theme-and-variations finale in all his quartets. It’s marked “allegretto” in E-flat and has six variations that add grace to the theme. The end becomes a loud and playful “allegro commodo,” only to pull back to a quiet and modest end.
Next weekend it’s a large group of songs.