HOW TO LISTEN

One aside before getting stuck in: the only way to listen to this music is actively, and active listening is something which is taught less and less, leaving listeners to develop their own approaches.  Thankfully, it is not difficult to acquire some good habits – I have 4 which work for me so I mention them here in case they are helpful.

Be prepared: Know what you are dealing with: what, when, why, where… You don’t want to be weighed down with info, but knowing nothing puts you at a disadvantage.

Repetition: listen to unfamiliar music over and over again until you find yourself humming along or anticipating favourite moments. Hey – you HAVE favourite moments. You also start to feel the bones beneath the surface, the ebb and flow of the piece. The only health warning is: listen to more than one recording to ensure that your view of the piece is not overly influenced by a single interpretation.

Compare: There is nothing like contrast to sharpen your ears. Anything works which offers a point of connection. With Op 127 you could find other quartets written in the early 1820s (Schubert?) or an utterly different quartet (Shostakovich?) or – the answer to health warning above – find very different performances: one from the 1950s, one by a young quartet, one by an acclaimed ensemble, a Viennese, French, American performance…. YouTube is a great source of rarities.

Change focus: now and then, set yourself a goal for a particular listen. Focus on the bassline, perhaps; or on how many kinds of texture are deployed; or how speed fluctuates – anything you find interesting.

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.

BEETHOVEN’S LATE QUARTETS

In June 2025 at the 20^th ENF the 4 string quartets who have made the greatest impact at ENF over the past 20 years (alphabetically: Belcea, Castalian, Elias, Pavel Haas) will come together to perform all of Beethoven’s late quartets in chronological order: 5 masterpieces written around 200 years ago that have awed, inspired, terrified and intimidated generations of musicians and listeners since. Many claim them to be the greatest music ever written. That praise can be a forbidding obstacle when it comes to enjoying these works, so  between now and next June, I will be spending a lot of time getting to know them as well as I can (mostly a personal thing), and writing about them: these are pieces I have heard countless times yet still find mysterious, often mind-boggling.

I can’t be doing with a lot of the pretentious and frankly self-regarding tosh I have read about them: there is a whole priesthood of people (nearly all men, it has to be admitted) who love the idea of themselves as special because they listen to The Late Quartets, but their lofty language usually fails to measure up to the task of illuminating Beethoven. Many times I have just had to shut the book and turn back to the music to remind me what is most important – which is every individual’s encounter with it. So this will not be lofty: I claim no special expertise, just my own curiosity and love of the music. I offer facts, context, ways in, thoughts, insights I want to share.

This blog will be updated every few weeks with my latest thoughts – if you would like to be alerted to new posts, please sign up to the mailing list to receive emails and we will send you updates.

BEETHOVEN’S LATE QUARTETS 2

‘All things counter, original, spare, strange’

[This line of from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty leapt out at me as I was writing about Beethoven’s Late Quartets, and chimes with a lot of what I feel is so wonderful about them…. ]

Mulling on the broad outlines of Beethoven’s Late Quartets leads in many fascinating directions, so while I aim to make this post as tight as possible… There Is Just So Much To Think About. Apologies, up front, for the length. This post will focus solely on one question: how extraordinary are the long form structures of the Late Quartets? Apologies also to those who may feel that much of this post states the patently obvious (as I am not presuming that anyone who reads this is familiar with any of the quartets) but to me this is all stuff worth dwelling on. First…

A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF LONG FORMS 

By long form, I mean a piece with multiple movements.

The earliest long forms in Western music were built on texts, on ‘scaffolding’ tunes like plainchant or on dances…. or on a combination of these. Let’s divide them into two broad types – rigid and flexible. Settings of the mass (probably the earliest long form) are rigid by virtue of setting ritual text that dictates structure: most have a Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei in that order. But a suite (one of the next earliest long forms) has no text, and is simply a sequence of dances strung together to the satisfaction of the composer. It is as flexible as that. Also, composers commonly find ways to unify the musical material in a mass setting. They might use a tune to underpin the musical invention of all the movements; so if you ever see ‘L’homme armé’ in the name of a mass, you know that all of its movements draw on that tune. In contrast, the dances of a suite very rarely share any musical DNA.

Beethoven wrote masses but no suites; by his time type key long forms were opera (in vocal music) and two key structures which dominated instrumental music’s long forms for at least 200 years. The lesser was a 3-movement form which you hear in most concertos: Fast, Slow, Fast. Much more pervasive was the 4-movement form: Haydn’s 51^st quartet is typical:

The overwhelming majority of string quartets, sonatas, duos, trios… all sizes of instrumental works right up to symphonies from around 1760 to the present day use this 4-movement form. The one regular variant is that the middle 2 movements can be the other way round. One other thing to note is that the movements used to tend to be approximately similar lengths, but as time went on this could vary considerably. To listeners, this consistency has given the double gift of a familiar road map to navigate any new piece of this shape; and also a point of reference from which to compare and critique. It has nigh on inculcated in me, at least, a subconscious expectation of what a 4-movement piece of music will do for me:

1. Upbeat Engagement: a first movement full of ideas, explored at some length to draw me in while I am at my freshest and most attentive. A proper weighty and engaging main course. (Allegro)
2. Leisurely Reflection: Now I am hooked, seriousness of different, more lyrical or spiritual sort. Music to be moved by. (Adagio)
3. Wake-up call: the sorbet of the quartet – light relief: pithy, jokey, rumbustious (Minuet)
4. Culmination and sign-off: an exhilarating dash to the finish but not without a bit of meat to chew on (Finale)

If you want to test this, pick any Haydn quartet after Op. 3 and give it a listen. In fact, here’s a gem to enjoy – Haydn’s 51^st quartet played in proper old Viennese style by the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet in 1954.

THE LATE QUARTETS 

If this 4-movement form was so ubiquitous, where did Beethoven’s Op. 131 come from?

5 remarkable things you can see at a glance:

1. There are 7 movements not 4
2. They are not in any order that resembles the 4-movement template.
3. They vary in length from 52 seconds to almost 13.5 minutes (timings taken from a recording by the Alban Berg Quartet as benchmarks)
4. Their proportions vary so widely that the longest movement lasts almost 18 times as long as the shortest.
5. There is a lot of slower music: 2-and-a-bit Adagios plus 1 Andante. This accounts for more than half of the piece.

Bearing these in mind, consider the shapes of all the Late Quartets and the durations of the movements (in square brackets, and all from the ABQ recording)

The only Late Quartet to fit the Haydn-esque 4-movement pattern is the last, Op.  135. Otherwise, they share the same 5 remarkable characteristics as Op. 131 and are truly ‘counter, original… strange.’ Op. 127 may have 4 movements, but its slow movement lasts almost as long as the remaining 3 movements put together; meanwhile, Op. 130 has 6 movements and Op. 132 has 5. Every single piece differs more from its fellows than 50 of Haydn’s quartets do from each other.

There is one well respected theory of why Beethoven’s thinking tended towards these extraordinary forms in the 1820s, and it is that he was inspired by the suite genre. This came to go by many names including serenade, partita, divertimento, cassation… but they were essentially the same. and Haydn’s earliest quartets, Op. 1-3, clearly grew out of it. Compare the movements of Haydn’s Quartet, Op. 1 No. 4 on the left, with his Divertimento Hob.II.22 on the right.

You remember that the suite was a very flexible genre: Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik has only 4 movements and looks almost exactly like a little symphony; but Gran’ Partita has 7 movements, long and short, and looks a lot like Beethoven’s Op. 131. So there is undeniably kinship between Beethoven’s quartets and the suite. But if it is possible that he, in his 50s, decided to turn his back on the previous 60 years of quartet evolution to return to this earlier genre (even though he didn’t write ‘suites’ as such), then his reasons relate to longer-standing preoccupations we ca spot throughout his life. Consider these factors:

First: Beethoven wrote many 4-movement works (most of his sonatas, trios, quartets and symphonies) but he was never a slave to it. Throughout his piano sonatas you will find 2 or 3 movement pieces and this tendency away from 4-movements increased in his later years. Only 1 of the last 5 piano sonatas has a conventional 4-movement shape. And where he did write 4 movements – as in his 9^th symphony – he disregards every previous idea of what a symphony was. In short, unusual long form is not unusual for him.

Second: Beethoven had been fascinated for decades with the musical and poetic possibilities of making a long form more than the sum of its parts i.e. shaping it into a greater musical and poetic trajectory. Quite how interesting that is is thrown into relief when you consider how differently Haydn’s, Mozart’s or Beethoven’s audiences behaved from audiences like us. We – until recently at least – have tended to respect the integrity of a long form piece by not clapping between the movements. We think of a symphony/sonata/trio etc as an integrated work. Their audiences? They would not only clap but demand immediate encores of any movement they especially enjoyed: if the slow movement was a hit, it could be played again, 2 or 3 times before everyone moved on to the next movement. Also, it was perfectly normal to split a piece up and distribute the movements across a concert evening. The first movement could act as a kind of overture, and the finale might close the first half, but you will have had a couple of arias, solos, chamber music or improvisations in-between. Soloists commonly inserted whole pieces to show off between the movements of a concerto. None of this suggests that performers, audiences (or composers?) saw, say, a symphony, as more than a sequence of discreet movements. Yet, as early as 1800, Beethoven asks them all to attend to an entire piece as a unified entity. In his piano sonata Op. 27 No. 1, he segues all of the movements into an un-interrupted sequence; not so much as a chink light in which to add an extra trill. A few years later, his 5^th and 6^th symphonies, and then his 5^th piano concerto all link their later movements to create expanses of music greater than just a single movement. He does this in every case to express a special poetic/musical idea. Later he went further and wrote single movements that sounded like several movements played without pause because they had multiple sections in a variety of speeds, moods and genres – just listen to the finale of 9^th Symphony.

SO…?

Having gone on far too long, this leads me to a star-struck conclusion of sorts. 

Beethoven’s inspiration for the long forms of the Late Quartets may have arisen from suites or from some other source, but what makes them unique and powerful (as well as ‘…counter, original, spare, strange’) is his intent with them . If every movement has its own mass, energy, emotional and spiritual weight, it – critically – only truly makes sense in the context of the whole piece. Each quartet becomes a magical balancing of weight and counterweight which allows for extreme contrast, mystery, surprise and, ultimately, resolution. This is as true of the finale of the 9^thSymphony as it is of the Late Quartets. I leave you with a wonderful performance of Op. 132 by the Quatuor Ebene, wherein he a sublime and vast (15-minute-long) spiritual hymn with a jolly march whose shocking, almost glib energy is just what he requires to pave the way to the deeply satisfying and fervent finale which follows. There is no suite in history, nor was there any string quartet before his that attempted this – and there have been very few ever that can stand comparison.

[The sequence described above starts at 19’48 on this video – or you can enjoy the whole thing…]

Return to Blog Post 1

BEETHOVEN’S LATE QUARTETS 1

EPISODE ONE: THE BASICS

Here is a brief overview. Best viewed in landscape format.

Beethoven’s Quartets: Beethoven wrote 16 quartets over the course of about 29 years: 6 in his ‘Early’ period, then 5 each in his ‘Middle’ and ‘Late’ periods.  His output is patchy as you can see in the table – the Early works were published in a group (as Haydn and Mozart had done, usually in sixes) and were written over 3 or 4 years around his 30^th birthday. Then he turned to other things before returning to the genre in his later 30s – his Middle Quartets. After the last of these, Opus 95, there was a 14 year-gap before a commission prompted Beethoven, now in his 50s, to write the Late Quartets.

“Late”? : Beethoven was just 57 when he died, so arguably middle-aged still. But he suffered extremely bad health and quite a bit of his treatment involved drinking wine and brandy. So, his Late period is not his most prolific… It is generally accepted to have started around 1815, so, as he died in March 1827 it lasted around 12 years in total. These are the main works from those years: 

If these were not Beethoven’s most prolific years, it must be remembered that individual works were generally longer and cost him greater effort: in them he was reinventing genres, techniques…even the fundamentals of musical language. There is huge diversity: the 9^th Symphony or Missa Solemnis may each last an hour but the shortest Bagatelle is little more than a scrap of a thought, maybe 20 seconds.

Why Quartets Then?

Rich Russians were surprisingly important to Beethoven’s quartets.  One – Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky – commissioned the 3 (Middle) quartets that carry his name; another, Nikolai Borisovich Galitzin, begged Beethoven for new quartets in 1822, offering to pay “whatever amount you would deem adequate”. Beethoven asked 50 ducats per quartet – very modest by today’s standards: a ducat is now valued at around £110, so approximately £5,500 per quartet: you would not find many composers of Beethoven’s stature happy with that fee today. 

Galitzin commissioned in 1822, but Beethoven did not set to work in earnest until 1824, and he eventually delivered 3 quartets to his patient patron – Op 127, Op 130 and Op 131. This triggered further work on Op 132 and Op 135. It is astounding how much music there is in them: 

That adds up to around 3.5 hours of music written over 2 years or so – and remember, he was pretty ill for most of the second year. Nowadays it is not unusual for a healthy and fit composer to consider that producing between 1 and 2 hours of music in a year is pretty good. And while many composers earlier than Beethoven produced vastly more than this, most of them were working within very clearly defined conventions and forms, all of which had their own short-hands which speeded up production: so Vivaldi may have written 500 concerti, and each has  its own character, but not one of them is as different from the other 499 than any of the Late Quartets is different from the other 4. Going further: all of them, except possibly the very last, belong to a different world from any quartet by any previous composer.

Where to start?

For the first few posts, I am going to stick to overview and navigation. We are dealing with 5 exceptionally unusual pieces, composed in a relatively short time, and for all their differences, they share a strong family resemblance – so understanding that before focusing on individual works is helpful.

You can sense just how unusual these pieces are from a quick survey of their shapes: only 2 have the kind of 4-movement patterns typical of all of Mozart’s and Haydn’s (and their many quartet-composing contemporaries’) quartets. No 2 are alike, and the bald statement of movements below conceals a wealth of idiosyncrasy and invention.  

Here’s the starting point for what I am going to look at and listen for next: what types of movements make up the late quartets?  Thanks for reading.

Go on to the second post.

Take the easy way…

We know that some long-time ENF attenders are finding the drive to the East Neuk an unwelcome obstacle to coming to enjoy the music and warm welcome of the festival  and we are keen to make it as easy possible. If you have ideas do fire them over to us at ian@eastneukfestival.com.

For this year we have arranged a coach trip which will take you from central Edinburgh to Crail for two concerts then back to Edinburgh.  Click on the bus to find our more:

If you want more, there are also still spaces available on ACE Study Tours trip which includes most of this year’s concerts find our more at…

WE’RE CELEBRATING 20 GREAT YEARS IN 2024 & 2025

ENF embarks on 2 years of celebrations in 2024: the 20th anniversary of its founding next June followed by its 20th festival in 2025. We’re celebrating with old friends and new faces in favourite venues and new found spaces in the East Neuk of Fife.

20 Years is quite the landmark for any festival: when we started we were warned that few even make it past their first year, so we’re proud to be still here, still fresh and true to what we set out to do.

The full 2024 programme will be launched on 25 January 2024, with booking opening right after that.

Download our preview brochure

Sample the spirit of the festival in this snapshot of ENF2023

Support ENF

Every year hundreds of people donate to ENF : without them we would not be able to do what we do. If you would like to join them, you will find some info HERE

WE are grateful to Creative Scotland for supporting our double anniversary with extended funding over the two years.

ENF 2023 in Pictures

Thanks to photographer Neil Hanna (www.neilhannaphotography.co.uk) who went behind the scenes this year to capture the artists and team preparing for performances EWNF2023

A message from ENF Director, Svend McEwan-Brown

[Colin Hattersley Photography]

Over the past year, as we worked towards ENF2022, the whole team was keenly aware that it would take no more than a fresh wave of COVID to overturn all our plans. I did not anticipate that I myself would miss two thirds of it due to testing positive, but before that happened I was delighted to see both many familiar faces and new faces come together to enjoy one of our most ambitious programmes to date. I heartily thank everyone – performers, audience, team, funders – who helped make it such a success. 

Elisabeth Leonskaja in rehearsal [photo by Neil Hanna]

I have been reliving highlights of ENF2022 through the reviews which have been warm and enthusiastic:

“Unquestionably, though, the greatest day in this or (in my experience) any other festival came in three extraordinary concerts from 11.30 in the morning to about 9.30 at night.“ [The Arts Desk about Saturday]

“this was a year of great riches…” [Vox Carnyx]

“Every year Svend McEwan-Brown, the festival’s director, entices some of the finest musicians to this sleepy corner of Scotland, and they keep coming back.” [The Times]

We’ve put links to all the review at eastneukfestival.com/about-enf/press-media/ 

Rihab Azaar in concert [photo by Neil Hanna]

IN 2022, more people than ever made personal donations to ENF, and I give my profound thanks to every one of them. ENF simply could not happen without you, and I hope you will support us as we turn to our plans for 2023. Tempting fate it may be, but I suspect ENF2023 will be a proper feast of treats. At the heart of our programme, we welcome back the Belcea Quartet who return with a host of international friends, all major artists in their own right, to play solo, duo, quartet and sextet. As ever, there will also be new faces, music of different traditions, quirky happenings and unexpected surprises (in a very good way).

If you would like to support us, the simplest way is to use our online DONATION FORM – and I thank you in advance.

Perhaps the most important reflection I took from this year’s event is how happy festivals make us – from a seven year-old horn player to the most senior among us, I saw pleasure and smiles wherever I looked. That’s quite a thing, especially after recent years.

Thunderplump rehearsals [Neil Hanna Photography]