BEETHOVEN LATE QUARTETS 3

BEETHOVEN REWRITES HANSEL AND GRETEL.

Having looked at very big picture aspects of the Late Quartets so far, I am itching to get into some detail, so decided to spend last week with the first movement of Op. 127. It’s on a modest scale – just 6 minutes or so – but as intriguing and absorbing as many a longer piece. I need to start with some basic music theory as taught to me long, long ago. 

[Intro]ABABCAB

This is a mnemonic for arguably the most important form of the Classical and Romantic ages (1760-1914?): sonata form. The overwhelming majority of opening movements in long form genres (symphonies, sonatas, quartets…) written between 1760-ish and 1914-ish are sonata forms [see post 2 for more on this]. This mnemonic tells you that sonata form consists of – 

ABABCAB is a useful shorthand, but I also like the conceit of hearing sonata form as a classic fairytale: 

Soooo… labouring this a bit (though it is important) another way to look at it is that sonata form is all about disruption and resolution.

• Statement: the first AB is all about stating ideas and ensuring the listener knows them.
• Development/Disruption: the development/departure/adventure is the crucible in which we hear ideas transformed – thrilling magic in the right hands. 
• Resolution/Balance: the closing AB section balances the opening AB, and they frame the development/disruption. 

This shows itself in the way that keys work in sonata form. Op. 127 is in E-flat so if the first movement were a textbook sonata form it would work like this. Start in the tonic or home key [A], move to the furthest point [BC] then return home [AB], changing B to fit in the home key.

If you want to hear masterful, textbook sonata form [[Intro]ABABCAB], the first movement of Mozart’s Prague Symphony, No. 38 is terrific.  https://youtu.be/tLinpqckLGw?si=RNyI8EpkIRutx0QC

NAVIGATING

A listener navigating a sonata form must be able to navigate by a minimum of 3 landmarks:

• A the opening, 
• C the beginning of the departure
• A the homecoming.

If listeners cannot do this, the composer has failed. Everything stands or falls on the memorability and distinctiveness of the material and no one understood this better than Beethoven. He was staggeringly good at it. The opening of his 5^th Symphony! 

• A the opening: hear those opening 4 notes just once and they are in your brain
• C the beginning of the departure:  those 4 notes return with a twist to open up a new path
• A the homecoming: they return again, changed again, to signal homecoming, but more…

At no point is the listener in any doubt as to where in the piece they are and what Beethoven is doing with those 4 notes.

OP. 127: MAESTOSO – ALLEGRO

At first sight, the opening movement of Op 127 looks like another, brilliant example; but here is the rub. Beethoven makes it looks very much like sonata form but it is anything but. He uses two types of material: Maestoso [A] (majestic) and Allegro [B] (lively). 

Listen to the first minute or so of this wonderful performance by the Alban Berg Quartet a few times and you will hear the first Maestoso and then the beginning of the Allegro. I hope you agree there is no danger of any listener confusing the two types of material.

The first movement of Op. 127 consists of 3 pairs of Maestosos + Allegros. As a seasoned quartet listener around 1825, accustomed to hearing your first movements in sonata form, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the Maestosos function much like the opening 4 notes of Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony, i.e. they match up to the standard sonata form script as follows:

• A   opening                                                          Maestoso 1 + Allegro 1
  • C   beginning of the departure                Maestoso 2 + Allegro 2
• A   homecoming                                                 Maestoso 3 + Allegro 3

Going back to the video above, listen from the start until you hear the second Maestoso arrive – see how unmistakeable it is. But it is not strictly ‘C beginning of the departure.’ In fact, Beethoven does these things which make this not sonata form:

First: Remember C, the development section, the adventure/departure that should lie at the heart of the sonata form? Here, everything after the first Allegro, the first 2 minutes or so (therefore the majority of the piece) is ‘C’ because Beethoven simply does not stop developing his ideas: he never fully returns home to a second AB. It is as though Hansel and Gretel bake the witch then carry on having further adventures. You can see this especially clearly when you look at the keys Beethoven uses:

Second: Keys. As I mentioned above, if Beethoven were writing textbook sonata form his keys for this movement would maybe look like this –

He does nothing of the sort: 

At the start of Maestoso 2 he is in G major which is a distant relation to the tonic/home key. That would be fine since this could be taken for the start of the departure wherein anything goes. But, come Maestoso 3 – which should be the homecoming and in the home key – he has gone even further away, to C major. This unusual handling of keys is matched by very unusual proportions:

Third: Proportions. Remember, sonata form is partly about balance/resolution. Not so here, for two reasons. First, there is no symmetry, as we know already since there is no closing AB section. Second, if you take each pair of Maestoso + Allegro as a section and compare their lengths, you see immediately that the 3 sections are quirkily different lengths, and the last pair is 14 bars longer than the total of the earlier 2.

Fourth: The End. Given that there is no final AB section, what happens to end the movement? If you have read Post 2 you will know that each of the Late Quartets needs to be listened to in its entirety to make sense of its individual movements. Here is a classic case when Beethoven eschews the conventional symmetry or an individual form to expand into the whole piece. As I say above, during the 3rd Maestro+Allegro Beethoven ventures further and further from home disappointing anyone hoping for a homecoming, and he does it at length. Then, as the end approaches, he allows everything to fade away – the momentum, the loudness, the amount of activity between the instruments. He ends on a light E-flat chord, pauses and then starts the next movement with a low E-flat in the cello: the innocent ear could be forgiven for thinking that this represents continuity – but in fact this new movement is in a different key (A flat), which you don’t discover for a moment or two. And that is a whole different adventure.

I am now hotly aware that it would take much longer to read this screed than to listen to the 6 minutes of music that inspires it….and this barely scratches the surface of what’s to be said about it: I hope it is useful. And I heartily recommend listening to it to the point of familiarity – then turn to the slow movement and be astonished in a whole different way….

If you would like to read more about sonata form, one classic is Charles Rosen’s Sonata Forms, but there is no shortage of books on symphonies and sonatas which can give you more thoughts.