Download Pre-Concert Lecture Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartets, Op. 18

Pre-Concert Lecture
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartets, Op. 18, Nos. 3 & 1
28 November 2011
Welcome to the second of four free non-time concerts by the University of Alberta’s
resident string quartet, the Enterprise Square Quartet.
Let me begin by introducing the members of the Quartet for today, because its
personnel may vary from concert to concert:
• Guillaume Tardif, first violin
• Virginie Gagner, second violin
• Charles Pilon, viola
• Tanya Prochazka, cello
The concert series features two famous sets of string quartets by two of the greatest
masters of the form: The two quartets that form Franz Joseph Haydn’s Op. 77 and
the six quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Op. 18.
What ties these eight quartets together is the man to whom they were
dedicated, one of the great musical patrons of late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century Vienna, Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz
(1772-1816).
It is from this fact that we have drawn our theme for what we hope will be several
similar series over the years ahead: “Great Patrons of Central European Music.” The
series is sponsored by the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies
at the University of Alberta, the only such centre in Canada and one of the leading
centres devoted to Central European studies in the world.
Last time we heard the two Op. 77 quartets by Haydn, and today we will hear two of
the six quartets from Beethoven’s Op. 18. As you will note from the programme,
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today’s concert features quartets numbers 3 and 1. The reason for this order is that
we have chosen to present the quartets not in the order in which they were
eventually published, but in the order in which they were composed.
Though Beethoven was born in Bonn, he chose to spend most of his life in Vienna.
Last time I talked a little bit about how Vienna had become the undisputed musical
capital of the world in the second half of the 18th century, so certainly Beethoven
wishing to go there as soon as he could makes sense from that fact alone. However,
Beethoven’s path to Vienna was facilitated by a number of other factors that
inevitably brought him into the orbit of the music-loving Prince Lobkowitz.
In the 18th century a large state known as the Holy Roman Empire (encompassing
today’s Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Belgium, Luxemburg, Slovenia and parts
of Poland and Italy) covered much of Central Europe. Highly decentralized, it
consisted of over 300 virtually independent principalities presided over by an
elected emperor. During Beethoven’s childhood and adolescence that emperor was
Joseph II, who in his own right was also ruler of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary (or
what later became known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Joseph was well
educated in music, sang and played several instruments, and is, of course, known to
us as the royal patron of Mozart (the picture you may have of Joseph from the film
Amadeus, incidentally, is entirely false).
Joseph is, however, even more famous for the many enlightened and radical reforms
he introduced in his lands during his reign, most of which anticipated the more
progressive and constructive phase of the French Revolution by over a decade. This
reform movement, which to some extent predated Joseph’s reign, has come to be
associated with his name and is called Josephinism in the historical literature.
Proponents of these reforms are known as Josephinists.
These progressive, reformist convictions were shared by Joseph’s brothers, one of
who was the Duke of Tuscany and who was to succeed his brother as Emperor
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Leopold II. Another was his youngest brother, the Archduke Maximilian Franz, who
in 1784 became the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne. Cologne was one of the most
important principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. Most of the principalities of the
Empire were ruled by secular princes, but about of third of the Empire was Church
property and was ruled by various ecclesiastical rulers such as Archbishops,
Bishops and Abbots. Three of these had the right to participate in the lection of an
emperor, and Cologne was one of them.
All ecclesiastical principalities maintained courts just like the secular rulers, and
most had some form of musical establishment (above all for the sacred music
needed in the court chapel). Both Beethoven’s father and grandfather had jobs as
singers in the chapel choir, so it is not surprising that when Beethoven was 9 years
old he was channeled into music lessons with the court organist, Christian Gottlob
Neefe. Neefe recognized Beethoven’s talents and in 1783 helped him write his fist
published composition (the work we now know as the Keyboard Variations WoO
63).
The musical establishment in Cologne was not particularly outstanding, but all that
changed when Maximilian Franz assumed the Episcopal throne in 1784. Used to the
high standards of Vienna, he dramatically upgraded musical life in the Electorate,
engaging first-rate performers, upgrading the orchestra and building a theater for
stage and opera productions, which he personally supervised. Shortly after
Maximilian Franz arrived in Cologne, Neefe persuaded the prince to engage the 14year-old Beethoven as assistant organist, and in this way the young musician also
came to the attention of his ruling sovereign and his court.
Because Maximilian Franz was also Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights that court
included many of these knights who came from prominent aristocratic families in
Austria, and who shared the Archbishop-Elector’s love and knowledge of music.
Among these was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein (whose forefathers were related
through marriage to the Lobkowitzes). Waldstein became one of young Ludwig’s
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earliest patrons, and he persuaded his friend the Archbishop-Elector to let him take
the 17-year-old Beethoven to Vienna to study with Mozart. That first attempt to
move to Vienna was short-lived due to the death of Beethoven’s mother, which
forced him to return to Bonn. But in 1792 Maximilian Franz again agreed to let
Beethoven depart for Vienna with recommendations from Waldstein in order to
pursue studies with Haydn, Salieri and others, where he continued to pay
Beethoven's court salary.
This time Beethoven stayed for good, and thanks to Waldstein found immediate
entrée into the most prominent music-loving families of Vienna, such as that of
Prince Karl Lichnowsky (already a well-known patron of Mozart), at whose palace
he was given free accommodation when he first arrived, and, of course, Prince
Lobkowitz, at whose palace he was soon giving public recitals, including premiering
his famous Rage over a lost penny (later published as Op. 129) in March 1795.
By this time Beethoven was establishing himself not only as a performer but also as
a composer. Between 1793 and 1798 he composed nearly 100 works, including
piano trios, piano sonatas, piano variations, string trios, a string quintet, orchestral
dances and minuets, a piano concerto and numerous songs, but no string quartets.
Here he was wary about treading in the footsteps of Haydn, who has effectively
created the form, and whose 67 great quartets composed between 1769 and 1799
was an intimidating act to follow. By 1799 the heavy footsteps of tradition sounded
behind any young quartet composer, for by then it had become the intellectual
musical form: the most difficult, the most challenging and the most
uncompromising. It was, in short, the bar of greatness for any composer.
Thus, when Beethoven began composing the first of what was to be his Op. 18 set
that year, it was both a major achievement and a major statement. He had reached
full compositional maturity and was ready to have himself compared to the giants,
Haydn and Mozart.
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Prior to the next concert in this series I will a little more to say about the quartets
themselves, as well as about Beethoven’s politics and the patronage of Prince
Lobkowitz, but for today let us hear how Beethoven announced that he had arrived.
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