BEETHOVEN’S LATE QUARTETS 4

‘Viewing the Firmament’: The Slow Movements

There is more slow, reflective music in Beethoven’s late quartets than in any other sequence of works from any other time in his life: in fact, he wrote very few other slow movements between 1787-1823 that are as long as those in Op. 127, Op. 131 and Op. 132, all written 1823-1826. Not only are they huge in themselves, they also take up a remarkable proportion of the total length of their pieces. Referring to the table below you can see that Op. 127’s Adagio is only marginally shorter than all its other movements put together. Op. 131’s Andante is longer than the 3 movements that precede it and only just shorter than the 3 that follow it. The slow movements are highlighted in the table below- all timings taken from Alban Berg Quartet recordings:  

It is hard to exaggerate what an enormous shift this is in Beethoven’s thinking about multi-movement forms. Just compare that grid with one showing his first quartets, the 6 Op.18 pieces he wrote 25-28 years earlier (all timings from the same Alban Berg Quartet set as those above). Here we are dealing with the heir to Mozart and Haydn. He departs from their practices in many ways, but not so much in the way he treats the form: With the exception of No. 4 (which has no slow movement) the first and second movements are about the same size and normally longer than the last two movements which are usually both shorter and lighter in tone.

I wondered if Beethoven’s thinking might have evolved between 1800 and 1826, so tried lining up the durations of the first and slow movements of all 16 quartets but found only that all his first movements except Op. 95 last between c.6 and c.10 minutes while the slow movements, last between 6 and 16.5 minutes: there was no evolution; more of a dramatic change in the 1820s.

Forgive me if I am labouring this: I find it utterly fascinating, all the more so because we have no words from Beethoven to help us understand the seismic shift in his thinking. It is not a glib question of him developing a liking for slower music as he got older – it is a complete shift in his concept of a multi-movement form. Before now, most of his 4 movement pieces (symphony, sonata, quartet etc) could be pictured as wedge shaped: the opening movement is the thick end, it was almost always the weightiest and most important. Then the remaining movements follow in descending order of gravity and length. The immense slow movements of the Late Quartets, shift what had been the thick end of the wedge to somewhere in the middle: I don’t even know what that shape would be called. There is an important qualitative difference too. Opening movements are almost always sonata forms i.e. built on the principle of argument and reconciliation: contrasting themes are introduced, developed then resolved. Tension rises as the argument develops, then is released as the musical logic brings us safely home. Slow movements are never sonata forms. (I almost stuck in an ‘almost’ before ‘never’ there since someone is sure to know of an exception). They can be many other things: simple binary forms (section A then section B), variations, rondos (where one theme returns several times with different material between the returns – ABACA etc) or song-inspired forms. If sonata form could be described as goal oriented music, slow movements often pursue episodic or discursive lines of thought to offer what is usually a place of repose and reflection. For me, they are also the place where you will find the most beautifully crafted, intimate and subtle ensemble writing. I can easily believe that Beethoven made his Late Quartets slow movements as a kind of special gift to his players. They truly deserve Charles Ives’ wonderful description of his own quartets as “…four men who converse, discuss, argue politics, fight, shake hands, shut up, and then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament.”

By increasing the length and importance of the slow movements versus the first movements, is Beethoven indicating a shift, in his late middle age, away from the cut and thrust of sonata form and towards this more reflective music? Not quite, and it will take a few more posts to put down what I think I get out of them.

I aim to start with Op. 127 – not only is it the first of them, but working at getting to know this movement is a brilliant preparation (the best preparation I would say) for getting into all the other slow movements, each of which is utterly different and challenging in its own way.

VARIATIONS

Op.127’s Adagio is the first variations movement of the Late Quartets. 

Variations, at their crudest, can be bum-numbingly tedious music for show-offs. A tune is stated then each variation treats it in a contrasting manner. Usually, each successive variation has more notes in it than the one before. At some mid-point it may go all poignant, but it always recovers to romp to a close that is just begging for a standing ovation. None of the great variations fall into this deadly stereotype. The closest Beethoven came was in pieces like this, on Rule Britannia written in 1803 (so 20 years before the Late Quartets).

It’s a lot of fun (and certainly not a bum-numbingly tedious ego-trip) but it is a long way behind the variations of the 5^th Symphony’s Andante con moto, written only a little later, 1803-1805. Like Rule Britannia, each variation is clearly segregated, but the ‘theme’ is more a sequence of ideas than a tune:

1: flowing melody in lower strings leads to several short phrases that are repeated like questions and answers by different combinations of lower strings, full orchestra and winds alone, leading to

2: rising march-like melody which you hear first in understated form on clarinet then, after a tentative moment, as a fanfare with brass to the fore.

3. After this, that tentative moment is extended into a mysterious transitional passage which leads you seamlessly into Variation I. 

The whole thing takes the first 2 minutes of this video – or hunt out the classic Kleiber recording which is also on YouTube:

If you listen to the first 2 minutes a few times then listen intently to the whole thing you see how little Beethoven is interested in using variations in the way he did with Rule Britannia. Instead, each variation subtly grows the material until the musical story reaches a moment of crisis: an hesitant, almost sinister moment of doubt… then recovers. It is a very linear movement and very clear. You might recognise that scenario’s similarity to sonata form and this middle ground between the two ideas is well worth remembering in considering the late quartets.

Now, Op. 127’s Adagio, written 20 years on from the 5^th Symphony. It is much longer than the Andante, and the story it tells not so linear or clear.  What it does have in common with the Andante is that the ‘theme’ is much more than a Britannia-style tune. It is almost a mini set of variations in itself because phrases are constantly exchanged between the first violin and cello and varied on each iteration. Variation works on a micro as well as a macro level here.

If you look around online you will have no difficulty in finding descriptions which tell you that there is a theme, 6 variations and a coda. This tells you little more about this piece than the Tube map of London’s Victoria Line conveys how the cityscape above ground changes between Walthamstow and Brixton.  In fact I have yet to find anything written about this movement that truly illuminates it. If anyone can point me at some great writing about it I would be truly grateful but, for now, I assume that far greater musical minds than mine have left well alone for a reason.  My best suggestion is to enjoy taking a lot of time to get familiar with it yourself. Ideally, listen to it once a day (or more) until you feel you have a grasp of it. This is no small ask: it is a huge expanse of music and requires considerable concentration to familiarise yourself with it. But it is worth it. 

Begin with ignoring the question of its variation structure and simply gain familiarity with the whole movement and its tidal movements. To my ear it is not as much of a ‘sonata’ movement as the 5th Symphony’s Andante: it is more episodic and discursive, but its narrative does pursue rises and ebbs in tension to bring you home at the end – but home is much changed.

I can suggest 2 good approaches for repeat listening. 

WHO IS TALKING TO WHOM? Paying attention to how the ensemble works is a great way into any music. Who is talking to whom? Who dominates and for how long? What are the other instruments doing meanwhile? What does that do for the balance and the way the music proceeds? Sometimes it is even worth taking the time to listen to a whole movement from the point of view of just one instrument – especially if you can find a well filmed performance on YouTube. In this piece, it does not take long to figure out the important relationship between first violin and cello. After the mysterious opening chords, they sing melodies back and forth to each other almost rapturously, and this regular repetition/variation gives the music a lot of its poise and spaciousness. Yet, as the movement progresses, viola and second violin become ever more prominent and interesting. Following that story is absorbing.

FOLLOW THE TIDES: taking the feeling of the opening (after the opening chords) as ‘home’, when do you feel the music is furthest from home and when does it feel more as though it is returning there? I may be edging into abstractions, but I also can’t help picturing music as space. Beethoven is constantly filling and emptying space in this movement, and not just by using more or fewer notes / instruments at any given time. Sometimes it is simply a question of momentum and stillness, but there is also everything from the emptiness of silence to the fullest harmony; everything from minimal activity to multiple lines of thought intersecting. The energies this releases are endlessly absorbing.

HAPPY LISTENING.