At the end of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven composed a haunting treasure.
After more than ten years and several hundred performances, Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, remains fresh and hauntingly beautiful to me. I am still fascinated by its construction and still get choked up in the timeless, prayerful third movement. From the anxiously searching and manic first theme to the heroically possessed final coda, it is a piece that only becomes more intriguing with time.
Beethoven was at the end of his life when he wrote the A minor quartet, also known as the Heiliger Dankgesang quartet, one of his several late quartets. It was composed in 1825, just two years before Beethoven’s death. By then, he had finished with his concertos, symphonies, and piano sonatas and chose to focus solely on writing for a string quartet. With his 16 string quartets, Beethoven forged the backbone of the repertoire. At the beginning of his career, he composed with classical unity in the ensemble; in the middle period he exploded the quartet form to symphonic diversity and scope. In his final works, he had both extremes at his command and seemed free to just work out his musical ideas in their purest form.
I think of these last quartets as not necessarily being for performance. In fact, in 1810 he wrote (in English) to a friend and said about the String Quartet No. 11 in F minor (“Serioso”), Op. 95, “The quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public....”
https://www.allthingsstrings.com/lay...uartet-Op.-132
After more than ten years and several hundred performances, Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132, remains fresh and hauntingly beautiful to me. I am still fascinated by its construction and still get choked up in the timeless, prayerful third movement. From the anxiously searching and manic first theme to the heroically possessed final coda, it is a piece that only becomes more intriguing with time.
Beethoven was at the end of his life when he wrote the A minor quartet, also known as the Heiliger Dankgesang quartet, one of his several late quartets. It was composed in 1825, just two years before Beethoven’s death. By then, he had finished with his concertos, symphonies, and piano sonatas and chose to focus solely on writing for a string quartet. With his 16 string quartets, Beethoven forged the backbone of the repertoire. At the beginning of his career, he composed with classical unity in the ensemble; in the middle period he exploded the quartet form to symphonic diversity and scope. In his final works, he had both extremes at his command and seemed free to just work out his musical ideas in their purest form.
I think of these last quartets as not necessarily being for performance. In fact, in 1810 he wrote (in English) to a friend and said about the String Quartet No. 11 in F minor (“Serioso”), Op. 95, “The quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public....”
https://www.allthingsstrings.com/lay...uartet-Op.-132