Favourite Quartets

[PDG]

Peter & Rod, I appreciate your views, but I still feel that if Beethoven had not effectively been on his death-bed, then he would have fought harder to keep the fugue as the finale. With the other works you mentioned, Peter, either altering only endings of movements (opp.68, 93), or substituting one for another of similar texture within a work (op.53), or making changes before publication (op.18/1); none of these is as dramatic a turnaround as replacing a devilishly-complex fugue, with a witty, hum-along rondo (brilliant though this is).

[Luis]

I agree with Rod about the introductory purpose of the cavatina. If you hear the cavatina and the fugue you can easily perceive that both movements are highly thematically related. Their relation is something similar to the thunderstorm of the 6th. Have you noticed that the second half of the thunderstorm still if it’s very tumultuous, somehow you could imagine it played very peacefully? I don’t know if B was trying to do this, but its like he didn’t want to picture any kind of thunderstorm but one that occurs in the paradisiac ambient of the previous movements! For it’s that place what is wounded by the storm.

Still I, personally, don’t like neither the fugue nor the allegro as finales for the quartet. The allegro because it’s not, in my humble opinion, an exceptional finale for such a glorious quartet. And the fugue because, still if it’s tightly related to the cavatina, it dismantle the almost cosmic harmony of it. Here, again, the relations between these two movements reminds me B’s last sonata and its meaning. The fugue after the cavatina it’s like the allegro appassionato of op. 111 played after the arietta: too pessimistic, I might say.
It’s like the cavatina was a dream of an idealized after death situation (it’s perhaps the most spiritual of all his works) cut by the “reality” of a delirium tremens of a desperate Beethoven being in his death bed not ready to affront his own deathly destiny and thinking of that dream, instead of a relieve, as one more horrible torment of his actual situation.

You know how I usually listen this quartet? I program my CD player like this: Tracks: 1, 2, 7 (finale allegro), 4, 3, 6 (grosse fugue), and then 5, the cavatina. Some of you might think this is hideous and a treachery, I don’t care; to me nothing can follow the cavatina!!! No more music for an hour or so!

[Rod]

Originally posted by Luis:
I agree with Rod about the introductory purpose of the cavatina. If you hear the cavatina and the fugue you can easily perceive that both movements are highly thematically related...

I wasn't voicing this opinion particularly as my own, but rather as a popular sentiment. The structure of the Cavatina does not strike me as that of an intro piece, however it could be said that the relative seriousness of this movement relative to the others is necessary to allow the logical following of the ultra-serious fugue in this work. But I can tell you, authentically performed, the tone of the Cavatina would not sound so relatively dark and the rondo would not sound so light - modern strings being simultaneously darker and more brilliant in their tone, with a marginally higher pitch. Over-use of vibrato adds adds a trivial air to anything. Thus at that time the contrast between the two would not have been as pronounced as it is typically today. This has to be a consideration. The first and last movements of op135 have a similarly different complexion played in the authentic manner (see the recording by the Erioca Quartet) - their lighter moments sound far less light compared to modern interpretations. My point being that modern playing techniques and equipment enhance the extremes of 'light' and 'dark'. Also the rondo tends to be played rather lamely anyway, as if it were merely an afterthough in rehersal as well for Beethoven.

Rod

------------------
"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin