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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, 1 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 2 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 3 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. 4 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. 5