12 BEETHOVEN LATE QUARTETS 4 [ELIAS QUARTET]

Beamish: Epilogue
Beethoven: Quartet in Am, Op.132

Elias Quartet
Sally Beamish, viola

There is nowhere in Beethoven’s music where you are brought more intimately into contact with the man himself than in his Op.132. At its heart lies the Heiliger Dankgesang, a hymn of thanks for deliverance from suffering: Beethoven’s later years were plagued by illnesses which would ultimately overwhelm him: given his frailty, it is amazing his last masterpieces were ever written. His gratitude for whatever relief he enjoyed is the sunlight in this piece, which explores a profound and intimate inner world. No less a figure than T.S. Eliot grasped this: ‘There is a sort of heavenly, or at least more than human gaiety, about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.’

The Elias Quartet is joined by composer/violist Sally Beamish in another work rooted in prayer. Her Epilogue is inspired both by the quiet Quaker gathering sometimes held at the close of day – the epilogue of the title – and a theme by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis. Perverse though it may sound to open a concert with an epilogue, this short work sets the scene beautifully for Beethoven’s immense quartet.