Opus 130 String Quartet in B-flat major
I) Adagio ma non troppo – II) Presto – III) Andante con moto ma non troppo. – IV) Alla danza tedesca, Allegro assai -V) Cavatina, Adagio molto espressivo -VI) Finale, Allegro
Opus 130 Quartet in B-flat major (with final fugue), for strings, Op. 130, dedicated to Prince Nicolas Galitzin, August–November 1825, published in Vienna (with the definitive finale replacing the fugue), Artaria, May 1827. GA. no. 49 (series 6/13) – B. 130 – KH. 130 – L. IV, p. 302 – N. 130 – T. 255.
The original manuscript, the only complete one, has been lost. Only several large fragments exist: the first movement (Adagio-Allegro) in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin; the second movement in the Washington Library of Congress; the third movement in the library of the Paris Conservatory; and the fifth and sixth movements in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. The fourth movement, formerly owned by the Peczek family of Aussig, is now lost. Sketches in Nottebohm and De Roda.
This is the third and last of the quartets Beethoven composed for Prince Galitzin.
The music lacks the yearning of the Quartet in A minor (op. 132), nor the abundance of the Quartet in C-sharp minor (op. 131), but it reveals a fine work of imagination in the thematic texture and the airy polyphonic structure. The homogeneity of the animating spirit infuses the variety of the six movements with a sense of rare conceptual and musical unity. The contrast created in the first movement between the gravity of the Adagio non troppo and the lightness of the Allegro represents a quid medium between the expressive intensity of the early movements of the Quartets op. 127 and op. 132 and the humor of op. 135.
The complex structure of the Allegro (the first violin’s movement figuration over the rhythmic one of the second; a collateral theme derived from an expressive transformation of the first violin) repeatedly contrasts with the grave principle, which reappears several times. Thematic interpenetrations give rise to various modifications and interweavings of all the aforementioned elements, which appear combined at the start of the recapitulation and are peacefully composed at the conclusion. Noteworthy is the final figuration of the first part (which will provide the cue for the Meno mosso e moderato of the fourth movement: Fugue): one of those flowers of romantic perfume in the climate of deepening expressive form, which suggested to De Marliave a Schumannian reference. The second movement (Presto) casts a romantic shadow on the circle of temperate light, in which the Quartet predominantly unfolds; visions of kobolds in a wild throng, as Helm and later De Marliave wrote; and Schering, in one of his imaginative and arbitrary exegeses, deriving the entire Quartet from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sees Puck’s madness expressed there.
The third movement: unfolds in a crystalline atmosphere, sterilized, we might say, from any disturbance of passion; a fine polyphonic jaggedness envelops its phrasing in very short phrases whose repeated termination in a truncated form could be compared to a move repeated at intervals with a certain obstinacy almost to close the way to any major effusion.
This is perhaps the period in which it is most difficult to find any meaning other than that of pure and simple musical play. Certainly not arid, however, when viewed from a higher perspective. According to Rolland, Beethoven certainly wanted to “playfully treat melodies with an often moving, melancholic tenderness.” The fourth movement (To the German Dance) is one of the many inspirations Beethoven drew from the Viennese dances he heard (before deafness prevented him) and saw at the Prater gatherings; perhaps even more relished among the groups of musicians who performed them at country gatherings and for whom he also apparently wrote a few short pages.
In his later years, Beethoven especially drew upon these folk sources in their most authentic form, sometimes forcing some typical elements, sometimes persisting in certain rhythms, as if to vent a desire for forced joy. But in the present case, it is a gentle and serene vision. A striking similarity, noted by Torchi (La musica strumentale italiana dei secoli XVI, XVII e XVIII, in Rivista Musicale Italiana, 1900, fase II, pag. 249), exists between the inspiration for this theme and that of the Minuet from Ferdinando Bertoni’s First Quartet.
The Cavatina, as we know, was one of Beethoven’s favorite pieces. The title hints at a vocality and therefore a desire for more human and expressive expression, in a tone that could be described as “soberly—or reservedly—restless.” The melody exhibits variety, freedom, and modernity when compared to the most common types of Beethoven’s cantabile phrasing. Certain attitudes and the echo or refrain forms of the three voices below the violin recall a procedure from the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony. Note the elegant subtlety of the polyphonic texture, subordinated to the prominence of the main melodic element and the delicacy of the conclusion.
The Finale the quartet currently features is not the one originally conceived and written by Beethoven to conclude the work, namely the Great Fugue, later published separately by Artaria in May 1827 with a dedication to Archduke Rudolf of Austria (GA. no. 53, series 6/17 – B. 133 – KH. 133 – L. IV, p. 303 – N. 133 – T. 256). Beethoven was advised to replace this fugue with a lighter piece, but one can easily think of this powerful piece as ideologically connected to the organic, fantastical, and delicate whole for which it was originally intended. Naturally, without violating the typical form of pure music that governs it; Although Beethoven, by adding the phrase “tantot libre tantot recherchée,” wanted to sanction the extremes of the unscrupulous license of a superior artist and the austere discipline of a craftsman: imagination and discipline united in a challenge to the overly learned and the overly romantic. “Beethoven’s fugue,” wrote D’Indy, “is considerably inferior to Bach’s, in terms of plasticity of writing and architectural balance, but it possesses, despite this inferiority, or perhaps because of it, something more human: dramatic expression.”
Regarding the fugue in question, referring it to the quartet, one might think of it as an energetic affirmation of life after so many dreamlike episodes: the life of a powerful willful being who takes revenge for moments, however evocative and profound, of sweet abandon. A short introduction or Overtura, as Beethoven himself calls it, sets out the main theme in its various forms: the first “similar to a massive colonnade supporting the portico”, says Rolland (A); then another in shorter values with a leaping rhythm (B); then a longer movement (Meno mosso e moderato) (C) accompanied by a fanciful semiquaver figure, from which the second fugue will develop; finally (Allegro) a figuration of repeated and legato quavers. Then the first fugue begins, based however on a different, impetuous, hammered theme, to which the main theme, in the form of the aforementioned Allegro, acts only as a countersubject, always remaining subordinate to it throughout the long development. A change of tempo and tone (Meno mosso e moderato, D flat major) brings this fugue to a close with the entrance and development of the semiquaver figure, which brings a note of poetic fantasy into the previously violent picture, while beneath it the main theme in the form (C) begins to unfold, initially without any particular emphasis.
But all this is only the beginning of the second fugue (Allegro molto e con brio, in B flat), this time with the main theme in the form (B) as its subject. The theme of the first fugue seems momentarily forgotten, but eventually it too reappears and joins the others in various ways. As if in a fleeting memory, the impulsive theme of the first fugue and the tender theme (C) are fleetingly recalled in their original forms, then comes the energetic conclusion.
Schering interprets the quartet (with its definitive finale, that is, with the Allegro replacing the original fugue) like some scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. First movement (Act III, Scene 1): Titania asleep; Puck; the rude comedians are chased away; Titania awakens; her dialogue with the donkey-headed Bottom; the three Elves. — Second movement (Act III, Scene 2): Puck lures Lysander by imitating Demetrius’s voice. Lysander falls asleep —— Third movement (Act IV, Scene I): Oberon frees Titania from the spell. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, enchantment music — Fourth movement (Act V, final scene): Dance of the rustic comedians — Fifth movement (continuation of the previous scene): Puck’s Night Song — Sixth movement. Oberon and Titania with a wedding procession. But for the Fugue originally placed as the Finale, and considered by him to be inconsistent in meaning with the preceding movements and for this reason, rather than for the excessive length of the whole, replaced by the current Allegro, the aforementioned musicologist finds the reason in Goethe’s Faust: the Brocken Sabbath and, from the Meno mosso e moderato, the episode in which Faust enters the prison to free Marguerite, who, in the grip of madness, does not recognize him and, mistaking him for the executioner come to take her to the gallows, tries to move him to pity.
[By Biamonti Giovanni – Catalogo cronologico e tematico delle opere di Beethoven comprese quelle inedite e gli abbozzi non utilizzati, Torino, ILTE 1968]
Official title: Opus 130 Quartett (B-dur) for two Violinen, Viola and Cello Widmung: Nikolaus Borisowitsch Fürst Galitzin NGA VI/5 AGA 49 = Series 6/13
Origin and publication: Sketched around May 1825 in Vienna, initially with the fugue op. 133 as the final movement. This version was completed in December 1825. Beethoven later separated the fugue (see Op. 133) and composed a new finale from mid-September to about mid-November 1826. The original editions were published in May 1827 by Mathias Artaria in Vienna in score and parts and by Maurice Schlesinger in Paris in parts. The first ideas for a third quartet for Prince Galitzin are already found together with the sketches for opuses 127 and 132. Beethoven therefore initially planned a new quartet in C major, but did not complete it. The fourth movement was initially in A major in a shorter version that was intended to be part of the autograph of op. 132. The quartet was available for a first rehearsal of the work with the Schuppanzigh Quartet at the end of December 1825/beginning of January 1826, in a copy of the parts, now lost, which the publisher Mathias Artaria received as a basis for the engraving before 9 January 1826. In January the copy for Prince Galitzin was also made. In mid-September 1826 Beethoven decided, probably at Artaria’s suggestion, to write a new last movement for the work and to have the fugue appear separately. To contemporaries the Grosse Fuge seemed too complicated, “unverständlich, wie Chinesisch” (AmZ 28, 1826, 10 May 1826).
Beethoven began work on the new finale in late September, which he sent to Artaria via Tobias Haslinger on 22 November (BGA 2227). In December, the quartet was rehearsed with the new final movement (BKh 11 p. 39). Beethoven sent Op. 130 to Adolph Martin Schlesinger in Berlin on 19 July 1825, i.e., a few months before completion, (BGA 2015, see also Op. 132). In the months that followed, other interested parties became interested in publication. During this period, Karl Holz negotiated on Beethoven’s behalf with the Viennese publishers Sigmund Anton Steiner (or Tobias Haslinger) and Mathias Artaria (BKh 8 p. 45, 63 and 65), and Beethoven himself offered the work to Carl Friedrich Peters in late November 1825 (BGA 2093). Artaria won the work and on 9 January 1826 he noted in his „Spesenbuch“: „an Beethoven für Manuscript seines Quartetts für 2 Viol. A & B 80 #“. At the beginning of February 1826 Karl Holz, initially a proofreader for Beethoven, received the first proofs of the parts from Artaria and in July reported to Beethoven: „Heute bekam ich die Correctur-Bögen; jetzt ist es 5 mahl corrigirt worden von fremder Hand, und auf der ersten Seite fand ich gleich 3 Fehler“ (BKh 10 p. 51). The score was corrected by Johann Baptist Adalbert Traeg on behalf of Artaria based on the printed parts (BKh 10 p. 168). The publication of the op. 130 appeared in May 1827. The fugue, now separated from the quartet, also appeared as op. 133.
On the incorrect nickname “Leibquartett”: The nickname “Leibquartett,” commonly used in English-speaking countries, is based on a mistranslation and interpretation that first appeared in the original English text of Alexander W. Thayer’s Beethoven biography. The term used by Karl Holz in mid-March 1826 in a conversation book does not refer to Beethoven’s composition, but rather to its performers, namely the Schuppanzigh Quartet. Regarding the dedication, see op. 124. – In January 1826, Beethoven’s nephew Karl wrote a draft of the title: “3:ième Quatuor pour deux Violons, Viole et Violoncelle, composé aux desirs de S.A. Monseign[eur] le prince Nicolas Galitzin, et dedié au même par L.v.B.eethoven” (BKh 8 p. 287). The copy was delivered to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1826 by the Viennese courier Augustin Lipscher, who, despite repeated attempts, failed to receive the payment from the prince. In his letter of apology to Koslow dated November 22, 1826, the prince confirmed “j’ai reçu de vous deux deux nouveaux chefs-d’oeuvre [Op. 130 and 132] de votre immortel et inepuisable genie” (BGA 2230), promising, despite his current financial situation, to transfer 125 ducats before leaving for the Russo-Persian War. Failure to make this promised payment led to protracted disputes with Beethoven’s nephews and heirs, which lasted until 1852.
First performance, with the fugue op.133 as its finale, on 21 March 1826 in the hall of the Musikverein in Vienna at the final concert of the season of the “Abonnement-Quartetten”, with Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Karl Holz, Franz Weiß and Joseph Linke (the “Schuppanzigh Quartet”).
The sketches will be featured in an article specially created for the Beethoven Music Research Center, www.lvbeethoven.org
