A couple favorite moments in B's String Qrtts

[Sorrano]

Playing all 48 in all twelve keys? That's...a lot of work on the WTC. I'm not even sure I could accomplish that in my entire lifetime.

Consider, too, that Brahms had a better opportunity in that there were fewer distractions than we have today, such as all the electronic devices that tend to take away our time. I think that people spent more time in their various vocations than we do today. So, being gifted on one hand, and having the time on the other, I can see this being done.

[Ed C]

Opus 135 is one of the wonders of this universe and that second movement I would rank as the single most exhilarating piece in all Beethoven (and all music) and it's hard to believe the composer had only months to live. (Please don't call it hip-hop, Ed C!

LOL - I have this habit of trying to equate classical innovations with modern popular music in order to try to get my non-classical friends buy into it. I don't know how many times I've tried to get my less-enlightened rock music friends into Beethoven by claiming it as the original "heavy metal" music or the first "guitar hero". Obviously that's not needed here

[Ed C]

...My excuse was that I bought the vinyl record in 1969 - around the time "Abbey Road" came out - and it took time for me to make the change-over from the Beatles. (I still haven't made it. )

A bit off-topic but yeah, Abbey Road is pretty astounding. Leonard Bernstein called the Beatles geniuses.

Here's Lenny on the Beatles if you have some time.
Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution (1967)

[Ed C]

One of my favorite moments is from an early quartet, Op. 18, No. 4 in C minor, 4th movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFDNiuwNx1M

The part starting at 3:34. Love it.

Oh this too is one of my all-time favorite movements, Chris, another of those movements which I play for my non-classical friends to show how "boring" CM is not.

My "moment" from this movement is starting from around 2:02 in your video where the main theme is altered so that the rest after each phrase is replaced by that mischievous 2-note "chuckle". So witty. There's several other moments as well.

[Peter]

I find it very hard to just pick 'a moment' but there are certain favourites I have amongst the quartets - Op.59/1 has never waned in my affection.

[Michael]

Here's Lenny on the Beatles if you have some time.
Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution (1967)

One of the many things I admired about Bernstein was his complete lack of snobbery when it came to music. While other "serious" composers were shaking their heads at this "Liverpool dockland music" (which is how I saw the Beatles described early in their careers), Lenny really grasped what they were about. He didn't look down on any kind of music.
Many would not agree with me, but his recordings of the Beethoven symphonies (with the New York Phil) have always been my number one choice.

[Michael]

I find it very hard to just pick 'a moment' but there are certain favourites I have amongst the quartets - Op.59/1 has never waned in my affection.

My single desert island choice.

[Ed C]

I find it very hard to just pick 'a moment' but there are certain favourites I have amongst the quartets - Op.59/1 has never waned in my affection.

Same here - that one stuck out for me as sounding completely contemporary even before my ears became attuned to the deep riches of "tonic-dominant acrobatics"

Picking out cool moments is a bit difficult, yes - as soon as I think "wow - that's quite witty, must make a note of that on BRSF", it's soon followed by 2, 3 more truly sublime/ridiculous moments...

[Michael]

I find it very hard to just pick 'a moment' but there are certain favourites I have amongst the quartets - Op.59/1 has never waned in my affection.

As it is usually my number one choice, I feel compelled to waffle on a bit about Opus 59 No. 1. (Let me call it Raz 1 to save my fingers- and bear with me, because you’ve probably heard it all before.) I had cut my teeth on the Beeethoven symphonies and concertos but this was my first introduction to his string quartets and I didn’t like it one bit. However, as it was Beethoven, I persevered and it sneaked up on me and made its way (over a long period) to its lofty position. (Not that it needs a lofty position from me.)

Having cut his own teeth on the Opus 18 quartets and that superb quintet, Opus 29, and having changed the symphony for all time, Beethoven was ready to do the same for the string quartet – as he did for practically every classical music genre during this period of amazing fecundity.
Raz 1 was Beethoven’s string quartet Eroica. For the first and only time (I think) in his string quartet output, every movement – including the “allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando” - is in sonata form.

The opening theme is deceptively plain and serene, and yet it has this amazing underlying tension and instability due to the strange harmony which isn’t resolved until the coda. As in the Eroica first movement, where he modulates inside a few bars, the theme is “not quite right” until the end. Robert Simpson put it something like this: “In the opening of the Fifth Symphony, Fate knocks on the door. In the opening of Raz 1, it stares through the window.”
(Incidentally, this opening theme is very similar to the opening of the Archduke trio but the atmosphere is totally different).

Another unusual thing about this first movement is the planned absence of the exposition repeat. Beethoven pulls a stunt that he repeated other times, notably in the first movement of the Ninth symphony, where he starts off the development section as if it were an exposition repeat, but then he veers off into new territory. The development is almost longer than the exposition and he definitely tries to bamboozle the listener a couple of times during its progress.

About halfway through, he gives the impression that the recap is coming up but, at the last minute he soars off into more polyphonic development with a vast and almost calm fugato. Again he heads towards F major but when he arrives, he knocks us back on our heels with another unexpected manoeuvre, as he had already done at the same point in the Eroica first movement with the premature entry of the horn. In the quartet we arrive back at F major but we get the wrong theme – or at least the second part of it. It almost seems like showing off, as in the recap of the Eroica first movement where he see-saws around the tonic, but, as usual with B, this is not a surprise stunt (which would only work for one listening) but an integral and seemingly inevitable part of his compositional process.

The second movement is famous for its one-note opening – which caused the disgusted cello player to drop the music sheet on the floor – but it’s the usual case of Beethoven asking us to be patient. This opening is merely a pulse – as in the opening of the Waldstein sonata – and it leads into an absolutely scintillating piece, brimming with life and invention.

“A willow or acacia over my brother’s grave” is the strange inscription over the slow movement and it has caused much speculation as both of the composer’s brothers were alive at the time. The jolly old psychologist’s have put forward the theory that one of his brothers (probably Casper) was “dead” to Beethoven, but most of them seem to forget that the composer was not the first of his mother’s children to bear the name “Ludwig”. His parents first child, who bore the name Ludwig Maria, lived only a few days. Apart from the cavatina of Opus 130, I doubt if B ever poured more personal emotion into a piece than this.

In the last movement, Beethoven seems to say grimly: “If I have to put a bloody Russian tune into this I’ll do it on my terms.” I have heard the original tune and the last place you would expect to find it is in a highly-charged sonata-form movement. In the quartet, it is forced into its purpose with a sort of sublime awkwardness which is just what is needed after the devastating slow movement. For a few bars towards the end, B allows the tune to appear in something approaching its slow, Russian melancholy.

Ten or eleven quartets followed this work and each one was a masterpiece of the highest order. Many of them are very difficult works but they never gave me the trouble Raz 1 did.

[Ed C]

I really enjoyed reading that Michael - thanks very much! I will definitely keep your post handy next time I assay 59.1..

I suppose it would not be entirely inappropriate to put a link here to my audio/visual analysis of 59.1 M1 on The Daily Beethoven from last year...based largely on Lewis Lockwood's book on the quartets.

8/17 String Quartet Op.59/1 "Razumovsky"

[Michael]

(Forgot to put in link to Ed C's page. It's in the previous post.)

Now, that's what I call an analysis! It's very useful to someone like me who can't read a bloody note of music. I'm just going to settle down and go through it.
One thing puzzles me: after all this, how can the slow movement be one of your least favourites?
I know Beethoven can't win them all, but we are talking about the same work.

[Ed C]

One thing puzzles me: after all this, how can the slow movement be one of your least favourites?
I know Beethoven can't win them all, but we are talking about the same work.

Oh it's just the first movement that's analyzed there....that's why I NEED to do this whole work someday.

8/17 String Quartet Op.59/1 "Razumovsky" (Movement 1 only)

[Ed C]

I used my posts in this thread as material for today's Daily Beethoven blog post. I put a link on there referring back to this thread as well...

4/5 A Couple Special Moments in Beethoven's String Quartets

[Quijote]

[...]Very few players get it just right and (in my very humble whatever) I think the Italianos come closest [...]

Fair enough. I don't do humble, and so I must say that for LvB's late quartets it has often struck me that the Italiano Quartet often has problems of ensemble, and is generally most unconvincing. My fave LvB late quartet ensemble? The Alban Berg and The Lindsay.

[Quijote]

[...] Now, that's what I call an analysis! It's very useful to someone like me who can't read a bloody note of music [...]

I'm not about to make any caustic comments about the EdC analysis Michael refers to above, but I am going to make some blunt ones. I think for those that cannot read music, what EdC posts on his blog fits the bill exactly. But I must say that it is not analysis, rather a description of musical events, and I'm afraid to say it reveals nothing (contrary to what analysis should do). That said, I'm afraid I can offer no solution, which is why I say to EdC : carry on, it can do no harm (though you should add the "with caveats" icon).