Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 132 (Part 1)

Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the Classical Music Podcast. My name is Joshua Weilerstein, I'm a conductor, and I'm the artistic director of the Lozan Chamber Orchestra in Lozan, Switzerland. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive into this amazing world, having incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank all of my Patreon sponsors for making season five possible. If you'd like to support the show, please hit over to patreon.com/stickynotespodcast. And if you are a fan of the show, please just take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. Every rating or review helps more people find the show, and it is greatly appreciated. And a special thank you today to Marta for sponsoring this two-part episode on Beethoven's quartet Opus 132. And before we move on, just one more thing. I'm planning another Ask Me Anything episode to air on June 21st. I made a little mistake last week and said it will be on the 14th, so apologies for that, but I did want to give you a few extra days to ask your questions and also to split today's episode into two parts. Because if any piece deserves a two-part episode, it's Opus 132. Now I have a few questions saved up already for the show, but I would love to hear more from you about any questions you might have about classical music, about conducting, about things I'm doing or anything else, hence Ask Me Anything. I'll give you until Sunday June 16th to send in your questions, so get your questions into sticky notes podcast at gmail.com, or my Facebook page at sticky notes podcast, and we'll do an AMA together on June 21st, hopefully including some surprise guests. Okay, thanks, and on to part one of today's Patreon sponsored episode on Beethoven's string quartet Opus 132. I've long hesitated to do a show about any of Beethoven's late string quartets. These are pieces that quartets spend the better part of their careers grappling with, struggling with, failing with, and much more rarely succeeding with. They are some of the most extraordinary pieces of art ever conceived of. Five quartets, Opus 127, Opus 130, Opus 131, Opus 132, and Opus 135. All written near or at the end of Beethoven's life, these pieces represent the pinnacle of everything Beethoven achieved. Yes, even far beyond the symphonies in this conductor's opinion. They explore not only every conceivable emotion, but they dig down into the core of those emotions, defiantly refusing to skim the surface and daring to ask and then answer the fundamental questions of life and death. Everyone has a favorite late Beethoven quartet, but mine has always been Opus 132. And so this week I'm taking the opportunity of getting a Patreon sponsor request from Marta for a piece of chamber music to take the leap myself into late Beethoven. We'll discuss Beethoven's situation as he recovered from a life-threatening illness, which he was sure was going to be his end. The unusual five movements structure of the piece. And this week, the first two movements of the quartet, the first of which to me defines everything that Sonata form can do to express emotion and a narrative in a piece of absolute music. All of this and more is coming right up on Sticky Notes. In April of 1825, Beethoven began to suffer from a severe intestinal illness. Beethoven had always struggled to keep a handle on his assorted ailments, but it truly seemed that this time, at least according to Beethoven, the end was near. He wrote to his doctor, Anton Bronhofer, who he alternately worshiped and ridiculed, saying, quote, "I am not feeling well. I hope you will not refuse to come to my aid, for I am in great pain." Bronhofer gave Beethoven two prescriptions, no wine, coffee, spices or alcohol, and a visit to the bucolic Viennese suburb of Baden for rest and recuperation. Beethoven was sure he was not long for this world and wrote to Bronhofer and apologies for the graphic nature of this, quote, "I am still weak and I spit up rather a lot of blood. Often it streams out of my nose, and there is no doubt that my stomach has become terribly weak." Miraculously, it seems Beethoven recovered, and while in the midst of his recovery, Beethoven found the strength to complete his Opus 132 string quartet, a piece that grapples with these emotions even as it tosses them aside. While this piece does dispense with some of the formal traditions of a string quartet, as most of his late quartets do, it still vacillates, like any good classical era string quartet between grief and joy, sadness and frivolity, and an easily recognizable structure of composition, with a synodiform first movement, a minuet and trio second movement, a slow movement, and in the only break with tradition, a short introductory march movement before a fast-class movement. But as always with Beethoven, it is where he breaks with these traditions that we find the most fascinating and profound discoveries. Let's begin with the first movement. As I re-familiarized myself with the piece, I realized that while the third movement of the quartet is the only one that has any explicit programmatic or narrative purpose, the first movement could easily be seen as both a narrative, and be seen as one of the best arguments for synodiform of any piece, even as Beethoven bends the rules of the form nearly past their breaking point. But let's start with the introduction. It lasts only eight bars, but within those eight bars lie the seeds for the entire first movement. One half step up, a leap of a sixth, and then a drop of a half step. This strange, tense and unsettled grouping of intervals was a theme, if you can call it that, of many of Beethoven's late works. Take the opening of the Grozafuga, for example. This is a motive that possessed Beethoven, but the rhythm actually was with Beethoven not only in his late period, but his middle period music as well. Take the opening of the slow movement of Beethoven's quartet, Opus 59, number two. Now take the opening of 132 again. One of the greatest challenges of playing these kinds of themes is that they are written to be played in a slow tempo, but also have to have a feeling of inevitability about them. In Opus 132, Beethoven is not particularly helpful about the speed he wants this introduction played. He says to play it "sustained enough". There is also no metronome working prescribed, so a quartet has to make a decision based purely on how they hear and feel this music. To me a quartet has to find the tension of these very tightly held intervals, while also not investing in outsize importance to the introduction beyond its extremely short duration. The entire thing at a "normal" tempo lasts only about 45 seconds, not even a tenth of the movement, but plays this too fast or without enough importance, and it's difficult for the audience to understand that actually this introduction holds those seeds for the music that Beethoven will work with in the faster section of the movement. But for now, listen to how Beethoven moves on, with a disturbed and unsettled line from the first violin, which leads to the opening theme. The theme is agitated to say the least, but it's also unusual in that it is played at least at first by the cello, not the first violin. Beethoven democratized the string quartet in a revolutionary way. That's a bit of a generalization since Mozart also wrote works that emphasize the importance of the cello in a quartet, but Beethoven was one of the first composers to truly embrace the equality of the four voices in a quartet. At the time, the first violinist in the group was by far the most important voice, and you can see this by the fact that many quartets at the time named themselves after their first violinist. But right away Beethoven emphasized the different nature of this quartet by placing the first theme in the cello, but in a very high register. This slightly choked-off feeling adds to the feeling of restrictedness in the music, which relates itself back to that restricted intense opening. The first violin then takes over the theme as it winds around again very small intervals. The theme is quite expressive, but also unsure of itself. It is accompanied by long notes in the other strings, outlining the motive of the introductory music. Beethoven's quartets, even more than in his symphonic works, rely on the most dramatic of contrasts. Right here is a perfect example of one of those contrasts. The expressive music is suddenly overtaken by a rushing forward of energy, as if this burst of energy has released the theme from its bounds. This new life force is interrupted just as quickly, by a one-measure return to a slow tempo, followed by a new beginning for the exposition theme. This level of emotional whiplash can be disorienting, and it's as if Beethoven simply can't get the music going yet. The four note motive is again passed around the group, as this time a second violin and the cello tried together to take the opening theme to a new place, while the first violin outlines the four note motive. This use of a long-known accompaniment with a restless theme also disorients as regarding the tempo. Is it faster, slow, excited, or calm? Beethoven will finally answer this, as this time the rush of energy brings us to a grinding version of the main theme of the exposition. Since so much of this first movement will be spent talking about synonym form, allow me to make a slightly longer summary of it than usual. Synonym form was the dominant structure of first movements of classical and many romantic era pieces. It features an exposition with two contrasting themes, but in addition to the themes contrasting, there were specific rules of what key the two themes should be in. If a piece was in a major key, the second theme should normally be in the dominant key, so a piece in C major should have a second theme in G major. If a piece was in a minor key, the second theme should be played in the relative major key. The relative major key is the major key that has the same key signature as its minor key, so when a piece in A minor, the relative major is C major. Remember that for this piece. Of course, many of these rules were in essence made to be broken, and among the greatest composers there are more instances of exceptions to these rules than the composers actually following them. What we are in right now in this quartet is the opening theme of the exposition in A minor, but at this moment Beethoven starts moving towards his second theme, which as I said should be in C major. We've also been an uncommonly dark music for Beethoven, and as he changes the key, the music lightens dramatically and becomes perhaps even playful. This is all to take the music to the second theme, the contrasting theme in F major. This is certainly not the quote unquote "right key" for the second theme, but it will have a great connection with the third movement, which we'll talk about next week. But keys aside, this second theme could not be more contrasting to the first theme if it tried. But what's most remarkable to me about this transformation is that Beethoven dramatically changes the entire character of the music while still retaining his obsession with small intervals. The opening theme of the exposition has the intervals of a whole step and half step up, followed by a whole step, half step, and half step down. The second theme's intervals are a whole step, whole step, and half step up, with a half step and whole step down, followed by a leap of a third. It's almost literally an inversion of the opening theme in terms of the whole step, half step relationship. But due to the change in harmony, it is in an utterly different world. I realize this is a little more technical than I usually get, but I think it's vital to understand Beethoven in this way. Because as I often say, Beethoven uses the most simple of methods to create the most complex and profound music. But the cohesion and rigor of his compositional method allows these themes to work because of, instead of in spite of, their contrasts to each other. Beethoven plays on an F major for quite a while, while again using that rushing mode of he used earlier to stop and start the motion of the music. One of the hallmarks of Beethoven's late quartets is their variations in tempo. Gone are the days of a single tempo dominating a movement. Instead, Beethoven pushes and pulls, speeds up and slows down, and that's no more true than in the first movement of this quartet. As the exposition comes to an end, Beethoven writes for the music to slightly slow down, followed by a sudden return to the regular tempo. As he is entering what is usually the most stable part of an exposition it's ending, Beethoven disorients us even further. We then begin the development, which is Beethoven's specialty. A development section allows the classical era composer to explore his or her imagination. They can take the themes they have already presented and turn them over, manipulate them, undermine them, tear them apart and put them back together again, explore distant keys and harmonies and almost give you the feeling of improvisation within this very rigorous and rigid form. Beethoven takes full advantage of this, using both the opening four note motive and the main theme of the exposition as his foil. The music winds its way to one stunning moment after another. Here's one right at the beginning of the development. Beethoven seems to reach a crisis moment and a visit to his favorite key representing drama, C minor, but instead he stops short. What would you expect to come here? Probably a huge arrival in the minor key that he is set up, right? Well, instead, Beethoven veers off down an exit ramp of C major. It is utterly unexpected, but in a moment I'll show you why it somehow makes total sense. As Beethoven explores C major, he returns back to his build-up music for lack of a better word. And this time he seems to be setting up an arrival in E minor. Well, this time the music does give us that satisfying arrival, but not in E minor. Instead, Beethoven arrives at the most vicious moment of the piece, a rough and rough statement of the four note motive in Unison, but beginning on D sharp, not on E. Beethoven has given us an arrival, but in the wrong tonality entirely. So why does it make sense? Think back to the exposition and the stopping and starting quality of the opening theme. That rushing motive that was always stopped in its tracks, followed by Beethoven having to go a different way to get his theme going. Beethoven, by trying twice to arrive at something and failing both times, is obliquely referencing his exposition, and he's actually doing something pretty unusual, tying together the exposition and development even more tightly than usual. Instead of just using themes and motives for his development, Beethoven is tying together the structure of the exposition and the development, which helps a lot. Because the next two sections of the movement are where there is a lot of disagreement, among musicians, musicologists, and audience members, about just what Beethoven is doing with the structure of the rest of the movement. Let me tell you what's supposed to happen now. Beethoven is supposed to return to his main theme with a recapitulation in the home key, and the second theme of the recapitulation is supposed to now match the key of the first theme. This is part of the idea of the music resolving in the recapitulation. The second theme departs from the main key in the exposition and returns home in the recapitulation. There is then the possibility of a coda, where the composer sums up the structure with a sense of finality. Now let me lay out just what happens in the rest of this movement, since we've basically talked about all of the important themes so far, and you're thoroughly versed in Sonata form by now. Beethoven does return to a clear recapitulation in terms of the themes, but the key is E minor, not A minor, the home key. He then plays the second theme in C major, the relative major of A minor, but that's not the right key at all, followed by playing yet another complete version of the recapitulation. But this time, the main theme music is in the correct key of A minor, followed by the second theme being an A major, almost following the rules, but not really. Beethoven then plays one of his most passionate and powerful coda's and the movement finishes in A minor. Now I'm going to put a little graph on the sticking notes Facebook page, because I know that can be a little bit confusing, but it's really important in understanding this movement. Alright, what the heck is going on here? Some musicologists believe that the whole recapitulation section I just talked about in E minor and C major is just an extension of the development, but it really doesn't sound like that, and structurally it matches the exposition almost bar for bar, like a recapitulation is supposed to do. Some people believe there is a double recapitulation, with Beethoven just emphasizing the variety of keys he can get through and emphasizing the fundamental importance of these two themes. Some people argue that this whole movement is just one continuous development on the four note motive and the main theme. I don't know if there's really a correct answer, so rather than trying to give you a definitive answer to the question, what is the form? I want to explore why Beethoven would do this. Beethoven bends a lot of rules in his music, but structure is not usually one of those rules that he is so cavalier about. To me in this movement, this is Beethoven turning the structure of Sonata Form into kind of a narrative form, and there is one key moment that illustrates this to me. Remember Beethoven's situation at the time he wrote this piece? He certainly felt he was near death and vacillated between trusting his doctor and thinking that he was a blithering idiot. There were moments of repose for Beethoven and moments of agony. These wild contrasts in his music are always present, but the despair of the minor music and the carefree nature of the major key music is striking in this movement even for Beethoven. But as I've shown you, this major and minor key music is actually made up of the same elements, of whole steps and half steps just inverted. So by essentially doing the recapitulation twice, it allows Beethoven to explore these deeply related ideas in even more keys. Our modern ears are not really trained to these contrasts of keys, and in a couple of weeks during my AMA, I'll try to explain the importance of these keys that composers like Beethoven. But for Beethoven, exploring a key as a wildly different from A minor as E minor for a recapitulation could have easily described the disorientation, confusion and agony of his illness. His return to C major in this first recap rather than in the exposition where it belongs is just another sign of that disorientation. And then returning to AMA for the second and last recapitulation could represent a sort of acceptance of the true nature of these themes, grave, serious and final. This is by far the darkest of Beethoven's late quartets, and even as Beethoven approached his death two years later, his music, while always serious, often lightened in character. The brooding quality of the movement is heightened by its structural breaks, as evidenced by the finality of the feeling of this second recapitulation. And here is that crystallizing moment that I was talking about. As Beethoven cycles through his second theme for a second time in AMA, he ends the section in the same way that he has ended it before. But here instead of moving on to more gentle music, Beethoven changes one time. The C sharp of AMA becomes the scene natural of AMiner, and Beethoven returns to his opening theme. It is a striking moment that highlights the fragility of the major music, one brief change and we are back into the darkness. Beethoven then plays with some of his most urgent and agonized music, with insistent and driving 16th notes driving us toward what we think is the ending. But even here, Beethoven can't escape the opening theme, and here there is actually a huge debate over what notes Beethoven meant to write. In the original parts, these are the notes Beethoven wrote. But modern editions claim that Beethoven actually corrected this later, and it should be this. Honestly, the second version makes more sense from a compositional standpoint. The whole idea of the piece has been that half step up idea, but I've become so used to the other way since I grew up with this recording I'm playing for you now of the Cleveland quartet, that for me the second version lacks drama. There's also inconsistent evidence of this correction, so it's left to every quartet to decide which is the correct note, and which way fulfills Beethoven's intentions. Now one of the things I haven't mentioned so much in this exploration of this movement is the 16th note line that takes us into the main part of the movement. 16th notes begin to become more and more dominant as the movement progresses towards its close, and the short coda is dominated by them. As the first violin plays a fiery cascade of 16th, the second violin thunderously proclaims A minor as the fundamental key as this first movement comes to a close. This is the darkest movement of Beethoven's late quartets. It brings the mind the first movement of the 9th symphony in its grief, power, and finality, but this utterly serious and dramatic character that Beethoven achieves in this movement is actually not that. common in Beethoven's late quartets. Beethoven is best known as a composer of relentless seriousness. Even the most joyous music he wrote is often considered to be written under a layer of rigor and struggle, as if no joy is even worthy without the struggle that came before it. But much of this reputation comes from just one period of Beethoven's music, the heroic middle period where Beethoven explored characters such as these. Beethoven's early music is full of humor and a certain kind of Beethovenian lightness, and his late quartets in particular are full of humor, joy, profound introspection, grief, and an embrace of life itself. There's often a feeling of this music in late quartets having gone over to the other side, coming back to us as a gift from almost a more evolved species. The first movement really does stand out as an exception to all of this. It's more of a version and an evolved version of Beethoven's middle period music. A perfect example of this late period transformation in Beethoven's music is the second movement of the quartet. Beethoven was basically the inventor of the scarlet zone. Quick musical history lesson here, the minuet was a dance movement that became ubiquitous in the works of the early and middle period classical era composers. Beethoven himself started out writing minuetes, but soon felt he wanted to ratchet up the energy and speed of the dance, and it turned into his scarlet zone, which literally translated means "joke". Beethoven's symphonies passed the second, all feature scarlet zones, and the minuet in the first symphony is a scarlet zone, all but name. Therefore, it's really striking that Beethoven seems to return to the idea of a minuet in this second movement. The tempo is much slower than a typical scarlet zone, and the gentle, flowing feeling of the music is certainly that of a minuet. There's even one more piece of evidence that this is a minuet. It is that the movement is clearly in homage to the minuet and trio of Mozart's quartet K464. Listen to them back to back. Now, they're very similar, but Beethoven's music is weirder, and the question, of course, is why? Well, Mozart begins on the root of the chord, and the music is completely unambiguous harmonically. Beethoven, on the other hand, weaves around the root of the chord and begins on the leading note to the chord. This creates ambiguity in two ways. We're not 100% sure what key we are in until about 10 seconds into the movement, and we have a rhythmic ambiguity. Was the first note a pickup into the root of the chord? But Beethoven writes the music in three, like a minuet should be, and puts that leading note on the downbeat. So in essence, Beethoven has taken something pretty conventional with that leading note, and turned it into a slightly awkward rocking feeling. There is unease here, despite the beauty of the main tune. A quartet has to decide what to emphasize in this movement. Should they bring out the fact that the rhythm is a bit unusual, or should they try to quote "correct it" and make the leading notes sound like pickups? I think Beethoven's pretty clear, and the joy in this movement is how the tune, which is quite normal, interacts with the accompaniment, which always gives me the feeling of being a bit unsteady on its feet. This is another one of those movements where Beethoven's obsession with motives and cells is so clear. For the first minute of the quartet, we get practically nothing but these two motives. The winding scale line and the beautiful tune above. The extraordinary thing about it is that I'm not sure you would have noticed if I didn't point it out to you. The rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity and the simple beauty of the tune is so compelling that it makes you forget that Beethoven is obsessively working with just two simple elements here. Beethoven's first break from the obsession is to play another rhythmic joke, and in this little moment the music is much more like a scarred so than a menuette. Beethoven uses a hemiola, a rhythmic device, which obscures where the bar lines are, to give the music that's slightly more playful feeling. Of course, it also emphasizes the rhythmic ambiguities that have been present in the whole movement. Beethoven then returns to the obsession, but it's as if that little joke broke the mold, and Beethoven now works with the volume of the two motives. We can see Beethoven's working out process in real time. We started with total ambiguity, found peace, played a little joke, and now we have an argument over that joke, and which tune is the correct one, in the correct place, and in the correct rhythm. But this is late Beethoven, where conflicts almost always get resolved amicably, and we return back to the tune, now lovingly accompanied by running eighth notes, which take us confidently and happily to the end of the menuette section. [Music] Despite the fact that this music is beautiful and gentle, especially in comparison with the first movement, it's still had a ton of rhythmic and harmonic ambiguities that are not typical for a menuette. For his trio or middle section then, Beethoven goes in a completely different direction, with one of the most magical sounds that has occurred in the whole quartet so far. This music which resembles a fiddler improvising away is as far away from that serious and forbidding image of Beethoven you could possibly get. Beethoven has the first violin as to hold their open a string, giving the music that slight buzz of a perhaps less than fully trained folk musician, while the second violin noodles around a beautiful and tender line. The middle section of this middle section is to me Beethoven at his silliest, weirdest, and most brilliant. This tune seems as playful but also as normal as it gets. The accompaniment is a basic group of three quarter notes, while that noodling idea gets expanded on and passed around the group. But listen one more time, and now I'll tell you where the downbeats are. Even in this most playful of moments Beethoven can't resist adding a little more rhythmic ambiguity. Seemingly the thing that ties the menuette section in this trio, section together. One thing that Beethoven emphasizes over and over again is that the accompaniment should be always played short. He does this by writing "Sempraced Acato" repeatedly in the accompanimental line. Beethoven was never above reminding the musicians exactly what he wanted multiple times if necessary. In the manuscript available online at imslp.org, which is an absolutely remarkable resource for sheet music, you can see that Beethoven writes "Sempraced Acato" in such large letters that it takes up three measures. Three measures later, he writes it again. Beethoven then throws a huge curveball. Returning us to the character of the first movement in what could be described as a musical temper tantrum. This isn't only the character of the first movement, it's also Beethoven returning to that obsession with chromaticism and the half-step that marked the very opening of the piece. But just as soon as the storm comes, it passes and the fiddler returns. It's as if Beethoven is portraying his landlord downstairs banging on the ceiling, begging him to stop playing the piano, only to give up and let his eccentric but brilliant tenant keep on composing. But this little moment also serves as another reminder that the strange opening music of this movement is also related back to the first movement. Both movements start with the leading tone followed by the root of the chord and in that lies the connection harmonically between these two wildly disparate movements. Of course, like any good minuet, the main music returns here and we are off to the end of the movement in peace and joy. We needed this repose, this kindness, because we came out of the violence of the first movement. And now we are going to enter one of the most extraordinary movements ever composed, a 15 minute hymn of thanksgiving from Beethoven to whatever God he believed in, for saving his life and allowing him to continue to compose. It's a movement that is beyond superlatives, but to give it its full due I'm going to save it and the rest of the supreme masterpiece for next week. I'll see you there. Thanks so much for listening to Sticky Notes today. We'll have part two of our exploration of Opus 132 next week, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on iTunes. It really helps the show gain more visibility. And please send any of your questions to Sticky Notes podcast at gmail.com or my Facebook page at Sticky Notes podcast by Sunday June 16th for the AMA. And if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, just head over to patreon.com/stickynotespodcast. Thanks, and I'll talk to you again after a while. [Music]