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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, ‘Quartett[o] serioso’ (1810-11)
Allegro con brio
Allegretto ma non troppo
Allegro assai vivace ma serioso - Più allegro
Larghetto espressivo - Allegretto agitato - Allegro
BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (BB 52) (1908-9)
Lento –
Poco a poco accelerando – Allegretto –
Introduzione (Allegro) – Allegro vivace
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Quartet in F, Op. 59 No. 1 (Razumovsky) (1806)
Allegro
Allegretto vivace sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto
Allegro
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, ‘Quartett[o] serioso’ (1810-11)
Mendelssohn called Beethoven's Op. 95 ‘the most Beethoven-like thing he ever wrote’ and paid
homage to it in two of his own string quartets. Beethoven himself called it his ‘Quartett serioso‘ in
the original manuscript (and was so absorbed by the intensity of the music that, when he wrote
down the subtitle, he forgot to put the final 'o' on the 'Quartetto'). Certainly, this F minor quartet,
the only one to which he gave a nickname, is serious business. It is concise and intense, without
respite or relaxation. Everything is tightly drawn and abrupt. There's a complete lack of transition or
other passages of music where the tension might be eased. The development concentrates on
essentials. All in all, the music reflects a very agitated state of mind – maybe, even, something of the
external events of his life, when we look at what Beethoven was going through at the time he wrote
his eleventh string quartet.
"Life is nothing but drums, cannons, and human misery of every sort," Beethoven said in the
summer of 1809, speaking of the fourth time Austria found itself at war with France in two decades.
Nevertheless, three Viennese patrons of the arts had recently offered him an annuity for life to keep
him in Vienna. Finding difficulty in concentrated thought, the increasingly deaf Beethoven began to
fill his sketchbooks with fragments, undeveloped melodies, theoretical examples and exercises.
Then, remarkably, in the Fall of 1809 he wrote the E-flat quartet, Op. 74. The work is as genial and
outgoing as the F minor quartet, which followed one year later, is dark and inward-looking.
The F minor quartet, the Quartett[o] serioso, foreshadows the deep utterances of the towering late
string quartets. Its first movement is the shortest and most compressed Beethoven was to write.
(The opening motif of four 16th-notes recurs about 100 times in a movement of only 151 measures).
By its conclusion, though, it leaves the impression of having travelled a very great distance. In the
calm Allegretto, in the distant key of B minor, the cello begins a descent to a place where time seems
to stand still. The third movement is a scherzo, but without humour – a fierce march that appears
three times, framing two contrasting trio sections. After a slow introduction, the finale returns to
the taut, concise manner of the opening movement. It ends with a surprise – a shock really – as a
sudden ray of light appears from nowhere in the major key in the brisk coda of a profound and
troubled string quartet.
BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)
Quartet No. 1, Op. 7 (BB 52) (1908-9)
The première of the first of Bartók's six quartets was given in March 19, 1910 by four young friends
of the composer, the oldest not yet 25 and the youngest under 18. The Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet
was formed to première this quartet, unplayed since being completed over a year earlier. On
March 17, they had premièred music by Bartók's fellow-countryman, Zoltán Kodály. Music-lovers
quickly realised the significance of the music played in the two concerts and began to refer to the
occasion as the birth of modern Hungarian music.
Bartók was in his twenties and just beginning to establish himself as a modernist when he wrote the
first quartet of his cycle. The emerging influences on his musical language were Mágyar folksongs,
which he had begun to collect a few years earlier, and the piano music of Debussy, with which he
became familiar shortly before composition began. Still trying to break free from the late Germanic
romanticism of Liszt, Brahms, Wagner and Strauss, Bartók’s success in forging a new and increasingly
personal idiom can be heard quite clearly as the quartet proceeds. At the outset, the harmonic
idiom is densely chromatic, much after the manner of Schoenberg and other Viennese composers.
The mood is emotionally dark. Bartók was profoundly depressed over the rejection of his love for a
young violinist, Stefi Geyer, calling the opening movement his ‘funeral dirge.’ He based its canonic
first theme on that of a concerto he wrote for her. It reappears at the end of the first movement
where it grows into a short transition in which the tempo increases to Allegretto. This theme and
many small motives derived from it continue to add to the unity of the quartet. The second
movement follows without a break and includes three main ideas. First comes a three-note falling
phrase derived from the Stefi theme. Then comes a waltz-like theme introduced by the two inner
instruments; and, finally, comes a whole-tone scale over a pizzicato cello phrase. Fast recurring
accompanying notes become increasingly important as the intensity of the music rises in the finale.
It's here that Bartók’s use of Hungarian folk music is most noticeable. The rhythmic energy of the
Mágyar melodies propels the quartet to a dramatic conclusion in a mood that is now positive and
exuberant. Kodály regarded this third movement as a journey away from the funeral dirge of the
opening and a ‘return to life’ for its composer.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Quartet in F, Op. 59 No. 1 (Razumovsky) (1806)
With his three Razumovsky quartets, Beethoven to all intents and purposes brought to an end the
Viennese tradition of amateur quartet playing. While he had written his first six quartets, his Op. 18,
with the amateur quartet market in mind, Beethoven was at once a great consolidator and a great
innovator and was soon ready to move on. He began to demand more from his performers. With
the three Razumovsky quartets, composed mainly between April and November 1806, the classical
quartet, comfortably established as a congenial exchange of thoughts and pleasantries between four
friends, now begins to speak loudly and argumentatively in public. Think of the beginning of the first
Razumovsky and the end of the last one, the Beethoven scholar Joseph Kerman argues: "there's not
much conversation in evidence on either page. A better term might be determined ensemble
shouting."
And shout they did, when the three Razumovskys were first performed. Even the Schuppanzigh
Quartet, Vienna’s leading professional quartet and the earliest performers of the music, broke out in
laughter when they saw the F major quartet. Beethoven held their leader, Ignaz Schuppanzigh, a
cheerful, chubby man, in some esteem, nicknaming him ‘My Lord Falstaff.’ But it was to
Schuppanzigh that he directed his famous remark: "Do you suppose that I am thinking about your
wretched fiddle when the spirit moves me?" The verb ‘to compromise’ was no longer in
Beethoven’s vocabulary.
The opening movement is Beethoven’s longest quartet movement to date and it strains at the leash
of the classical style. Among the broadest and deepest structures of Beethoven's entire middle
period, its majesty and energy have been compared with that of the Eroica and its serenity with that
of the Violin Concerto. Its symphonic breadth is a characteristic of all the Razumovskys and other
middle-period music by Beethoven. The second movement is a highly unusual scherzo, a constantly
developing structure around a rhythmic kernel. The movement can be viewed as a prototype for the
scherzos of Mahler. Its form is closer to sonata form than the usual scherzo-trio-scherzo pattern.
Adagio molto e mesto is the performing indication that Beethoven asks for in the slow movement,
introducing the unusual term, ‘slow and mournful.’ Both of its expansive and highly expressive
themes are in the minor key. A cryptic remark pencilled into the margin of the slow movement
points to its unusually restless, dark and desolate nature: ‘A weeping willow or acacia tree on my
brother's grave.' The music dissolves into a brief, ethereal cadenza for the first violin. This gives way
to the finale which offers some consolation in the way that Haydn often rounded off his quartets
with a spirited finale. The cello introduces a lively theme marked Thème russe and this launches
another large-scale movement. Beethoven found the theme in a collection of Russian folk songs
that he owned. Its inclusion, transformed from the minor key to the major and bearing a family
resemblance to earlier themes in the quartet, is believed to have been in tribute to Count
Razumovsky, the Russian Ambassador to Vienna, one of Beethoven’s most important patrons and
the dedicatee of this ground-breaking work.
— Program notes © 2016 Keith Horner. Comments welcomed: [email protected]
The First 'Razumovsky' Quartet, Op. 59 No. 1, was the first quartet Beethoven wrote
after his life-changing 1802 stay in Heiligenstadt. His most famous literary document,
now known as the ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’ was written in the depths of despair when
the 32 year-old composer considered suicide at the prospect of advancing deafness.
This heartfelt plea for understanding and sympathy from his brothers and the world at
large was found among his papers at his death. On the MusicTORONTO blog, Keith
Horner reads this moving document in which Beethoven confronts his feelings, faces
his deafness and ultimately finds renewed determination and independence as a
composer. Keith also visits Heiligenstadt and posts photographs from the past and
present.
Visit http://music-toronto.com/blog/