7th string quartet (Beethoven)

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Beethoven portrait by Joseph Mähler from 1804.
Andrei Rasumowski, dedicatee and namesake of the quartets op. 59, on a painting by Johann Baptist von Lampi .

The string quartet No. 7 in F major op. 59.1 is a string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven . It was written in 1806 as the first of the three quartets op. 59, the so-called Rasumowsky quartets . The quartets, which are also called Russian quartets because of their Russian tone, were given this nickname after their client Andrei Kirillowitsch Rasumowski , a diplomat who was an important supporter of Beethoven.

Emergence

Beethoven wrote the Rasumowsky Quartets in an extremely productive phase. At the time the quartets were composed, Beethoven was busy revising his opera " Leonore " and composing the 4th piano concerto , the 4th symphony , the violin concerto and the Coriolan overture . The concentration of Beethoven on the genres of symphony and concert in the years 1800 to 1804 ( i.e. between the composition of the op. 18 quartets and the first Rasumovsky quartet) was - because the public perceived Beethoven to be an equal composer alongside Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wanted to be - a conscious decision by the composer to the detriment of the piano sonata and the string quartet.

In 1805 Beethoven received a commission from the Russian ambassador to the Viennese court, the diplomat Andrei Kirillowitsch Rasumowski , to compose quartets. Rasumowski was an admirer of Joseph Haydn , a promoter of quartet performances, played the second violin in a string quartet ensemble and in 1808 replaced Prince Felix von Lichnowsky as protégée of the Schuppanzigh Quartet . It is said that the Count lived “in Vienna on princely terms, encouraging art and science, surrounded by a rich library and other collections, and admired or envied by everyone; but what advantage this brought to Russian affairs is another question ”.

Beethoven had already had first plans for the quartet composition; The first negotiations also took place before 1805. Beethoven's brother Kaspar Karl, who was temporarily responsible for negotiations with Beethoven's publishers, wrote to the publisher “ Breitkopf & Härtel ” on October 10, 1804 : “Could you tell me your opinion about quartets for violin, and how high it is can probably assume 2 or 3. I cannot give you this right away, but I would determine the same for you ”.

Beethoven was probably inspired to compose new quartets by Ignaz Schuppanzigh , who was planning public chamber music concerts in Vienna for the winter of 1804/1805. Schuppanzigh was the director of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, which is close to Beethoven and premiered many of the composer's quartet compositions; He was regularly nicknamed " Falstaff " by Beethoven .

Beethoven's brother wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel on November 24th, 1804: "I can't tell you anything specific about the quartets, I will write to you as soon as they are finished". However, according to a handwritten note on the autograph of op. 59.1, Beethoven could not begin composing the quartets until May 26, 1806, as he was initially busy with the reworking of the “Leonore”. The quartets were completed in November 1806 (op. 59,1 in July 1806). Few of the sketches of the Rasumowsky quartets have survived among Beethoven 's quartet compositions.

Although Beethoven could not completely break away from the nobility (on which he was still financially dependent, as the pension granted from 1809 by Archduke Rudolph , Prince Kinsky and Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz shows), Beethoven was looking for a new audience when the quartets were composed in the bourgeoisie, because the bourgeois audience was more compatible with the socio-political ideas of the composer. This is also supported by the instrumental demands of the quartets, which only qualified professional musicians could meet.

In musical terms, Beethoven explored "a new path" in the Rasumowsky Quartets , which he had prepared in the years 1802 to 1805 in the piano sonatas op. 31 to op. 57 ("Appassionata"). Later, in the last years of the composer's life, the piano sonata op. 111 paved the way for Beethoven's last quartets (the so-called "late quartets").

Sentence names

  1. Movement: Allegro (F major)
  2. Movement: Allegretto vivace e semper scherzando (B flat major)
  3. Movement: Adagio molto e mesto (F minor)
  4. Movement: Allegro. Thème Russe (F major)

To the music

The "Rasumowsky" quartets are designed in such a way that the middle quartet is in minor and is framed by two major quartets ("Rasumowsky quartets": No. 7 in F major, No. 8 in E minor, No. 9 in C major). This was to be repeated later with the three quartets composed for the Russian prince Nikolai Borissowitsch Golitsyn (Golitsyn quartets [the numbering of which does not correspond to the order of origin]: No. 12 in E flat major, No. 15 in A minor, No. 13 in B flat major).

First sentence

The first movement is introduced by a rolling, cantable theme of the cello , which is immediately answered first by the violin and then by the rest of the instruments. This theme is varied extensively in the course of the movement right into the recapitulation . At this point there is an innovation, for example in comparison with Beethoven's String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18.4 : Both Op. 18.4 and Op. 59.1 contain eighth movements in the main themes of the opening movements first violin; in op. 18,4 the harmonies adapt to the melody, in op. 59,1 not however.

Compared to Beethoven's Quartets Op. 18, the development here increases in length. Was, for example, the clock ratio between exposure and implementation in op. 18.6 , the op in the group. 18, the longest execution had yet 121 to 83, as is shown in op. 59.1 102 to 151st

Beethoven conceived the movement from the start without repeating the exposition . In the later course of the composition work he wanted to have the complete development and recapitulation repeated, but dropped this plan shortly before the quartet was published.

The aesthetics of the first movement gave rise to the occasional designation of the first Razumovsky Quartet as the “ Eroica of the String Quartets”.

Second sentence

The second movement begins with a drumming theme performed again by the cello, which is answered by the violin. This breaks the theme of the movement down into its two simply designed elements, the rhythm and the melody. This interplay between the presentation of the theme by the cello and the response of the violin forms the basis for the rest of the movement. The secondary theme starts dotted and continues in an ascending and then descending melody. The main theme complex of the exposition also contains a cantilever motif, in which the minor theme of the third movement is hinted at. The recapitulation beginning in bar 239 divides the movement into two halves, with exposition and development on one side (238 bars) and recapitulation and coda on the other (also 238 bars).

Here, too, Beethoven thought of repeating the development and recapitulation, but then decided not to implement this idea.

The shift of the scherzo to the second movement is reminiscent of the A minor scherzo in the second movement of Beethoven's Cello Sonata op.69 .

Third sentence

According to his own statement, Beethoven was inspired to write the expressive Adagio of the third movement through his dismay at his brother Carl's marriage to Johanna Reiss (Beethoven hated his sister-in-law, with whom he later litigated for custody of his son Karl for years after the death of his brother). In this sense his note about a "weeping willow or acacia tree on my brother's grave" is to be understood.

Much of the movement is dominated by melancholy, which is only briefly interrupted even by the upset before the end. After the Adagio continues to sound for a short time, a violin cadence and a trill lead over to the final movement.

Fourth sentence

The cello begins the final movement with a timid dance-like theme that gains energy as it progresses. This theme comes from a Russian folk song that Beethoven may have known from Razumovsky's library. This song is the first song from a folk song collection made by Iwan Prach, which was published in Saint Petersburg in 1790 . The song is about the suffering of a soldier, lamented by his mother, after his return from the war and is accordingly in the key of minor and the tempo designation "Molto Andante". With Beethoven, however, the theme of the song takes a cheerful course.

The rondo forms a unit with the sonata form. The coda contains a fugato derived from the theme of the final movement . The movement ends in a gruff fortissimo presto with nine cadenced final chord bars. This is reminiscent of Beethoven's peculiarity, reported by Carl Czerny , of "usually bursting into loud laughter" after a piano improvisation and "making fun of the listener's emotion" that he caused them ".

effect

The quartet was premiered together with the other two quartets from op. 59 by Ignaz Schuppanzigh and his string quartet ensemble in Rasumowsky's palace. The exact date of the premiere is unknown, but it is possible that Rasumowski, who, as the commissioner of the quartets, had the sole right to use the works for the first year after their creation, allowed other performances at Schuppanzigh's public quartet concerts in addition to the performances in his palace.

Because of their hitherto unfamiliar complexity, the quartets marked a turning point not only in Beethoven's work and met with rejection in many places. The Beethoven student Carl Czerny reported: "When Schuppanzigh first played the Rasoumowsky Quartet in F, they laughed and were convinced that B. wanted to have fun and that it wasn't the quartet that was promised."

At the end of February 1807 the Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung wrote :

“Also, three new, very long and difficult Beethoven violin quartets, dedicated to the Russian ambassador, Count Rasumowsky, attract the attention of all connoisseurs. They are deeply thought and excellently worked, but not generally comprehensible - the 3rd from C major, for example, excluded, which must win every educated music lover through its peculiarity, melody and harmonic power "

- Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung , February 27, 1807, column 400

The Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung wrote again in early May 1807:

“In Vienna, Beethoven's latest heavy but dignified quartets are becoming more and more popular; the lovers hope to see them stung soon. "

- Allgemeine musical newspaper , May 5, 1807, col. 517

The Viennese publication of the quartets took place in January 1808 - due to Count Rasumowski's right of use over a year after completion - in the “Schreyvogelschen Industriecomptoir” with a splendid title page, solemnly quoting Rasumowsky's title and awards; the order in which the quartets were published most likely corresponds to the order in which they were created. In 1809 Simrock published a reprint in Bonn. The first edition of the quartets' scores took place in 1830.

During a performance of the string quartet by Field Marshal Soltikoff in Moscow in early 1812, the aesthetic novelty of the second movement caused Bernhard Romberg, the greatest cellist of his time, to furiously throw the bass part of the piece to the ground and trample it. During a performance of the quartet with Privy Councilor Lvoff in Saint Petersburg , the audience burst out laughing when the bass played on a single note in the second movement.

When the Italian violinist Felix Radicati went on a concert tour to England in 1810, he told the musician Thomas Appleby , who had just published the parts of the string quartets op. 59: “Did you get these here too? Beethoven, as the world says and I think, is great music; this is not music. He showed it to me in the manuscript and, at his request, I wrote in some fingerings . I told him that he could certainly not regard these works for music, to which he replied: 'Oh, they are not for you either, but for a later time.' "

The new standards set by the Rasumowsky Quartets became clear two decades after their creation. The Austrian composer and conductor Ignaz von Seyfried wrote in 1831 that Beethoven tried “with the most decisive success in the quartet style”, “that noble branch, whose reformer Haydn was, or, better said, conjured up from nothing, which Mozart’s universal genius with Even deeper and more profoundly rich in content and richly blooming imagination enriched and which our Beethoven finally potentiated to that culminating level where he would hardly ever want to be surpassed ”.

The quartet op. 59,1 drew the preferred attention of subsequent composers such as Robert Schumann , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Johannes Brahms . Cosima Wagner reported in her Bayreuth diary that Richard Wagner developed an increasing interest in this quartet in the years before his death.

literature

further reading

  • Theodor Helm: Beethoven's string quartets. Attempt a technical analysis of these works in relation to their intellectual content . Leipzig 1885, 3rd edition 1921.
  • Walther Vetter : The style problem in Beethoven's string quartets opus 59 . In: Das Musikleben , 1st year, issue 7/8, 1948, pp. 177–180
  • Ludwig van Beethoven: works. New edition of all works , section VI, volume 4, string quartets II (op. 59, 74 and 95), ed. from the Beethoven Archive Bonn (J. Schmidt-Görg et al.). Munich / Duisburg 1961 ff.
  • Joseph Kerman: The Beethoven Quartets . New York 1967
  • Walter Salmen : On the design of the »Thèmes russes« in Beethoven's op. 59 . In: Ludwig Finscher, Christoph-Hellmut Mahling (Ed.): Festschrift for Walter Wiora . 1967, pp. 397-404
  • Peter Gülke : On the musical conception of the Rasumowsky Quartets op. 59 by Beethoven . In: Jürgen Elsner, Giwi Ordshonikidse (Hrsg.): Socialist music culture. Traditions, problems, perspectives . Berlin 1977, pp. 397-430
  • Lini Hübsch: Ludwig van Beethoven. The Rasumowsky Quartets op.59 . Munich 1983
  • Walter Salmen: String Quartets op.59 . In: A. Riethmüller u. a. (Ed.): Beethoven. Interpretations of his works . 2 volumes. 2nd Edition. Laaber, 1996, Volume 2, pp. 430-438

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lewis Lockwood : Beethoven: His Music - His Life. Metzler, 2009, p. 245 f.
  2. ↑ Alexander Wheelock Thayer : Ludwig van Beethoven's life in 5 volumes, 5 volumes in German edited by Hermann Deiters, revised by Hugo Riemann, 1866 ff. Reprint Hildesheim / New York 1970, volume 2, p. 547
  3. ^ Ludwig van Beethoven: Correspondence . Complete edition, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg , 7 volumes. Munich 1996-1998, Volume 1, p. 225
  4. ^ A b Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 242
  5. ^ Ludwig van Beethoven: Correspondence . Complete edition, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg , 7 volumes. Munich 1996-1998, Volume 1, p. 230
  6. ^ A b Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven: His Music - His Life. Metzler, 2009, p. 246 f.
  7. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 240
  8. ↑ Carl Czerny : Memories from my life , ed. by Walter Kolneder (Collection d'études musicologiques, vol. 46), Strasbourg / Baden-Baden 1968, p. 43
  9. ↑ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven String Quartets: Cultural and Historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 241
  10. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 384
  11. ^ Matthias Moosdorf: Ludwig van Beethoven. The string quartets. 1st edition. Bärenreiter, 2007, p. 96
  12. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 246
  13. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 249
  14. ↑ Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven: His Music - His Life . Metzler, 2009, p. 250
  15. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 252 f.
  16. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, c p. 256
  17. ^ A b Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven: His Music - His Life . Metzler, 2009, p. 251
  18. ↑ Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven: His Music - His Life . Metzler, 2009, p. 238
  19. ^ Martin Gustav Nottebohm : Beethoveniana . Leipzig / Winterthur 1887, p. 83
  20. ^ Gerd Indorf: Beethoven's string quartets: Cultural-historical aspects and work interpretation . 2nd Edition. Rombach, 2007, p. 262
  21. ↑ Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven: His Music - His Life . Metzler, 2009, p. 249
  22. ↑ Carl Czerny: Memories from my life , ed. by Walter Kolneder (Collection d'études musicologiques, vol. 46). Strasbourg / Baden-Baden 1968, p. 45
  23. ↑ a b c Alexander Wheelock Thayer: Ludwig van Beethoven's life in 5 volumes, 5 volumes in German edited by Hermann Deiters, revised by Hugo Riemann. 1866 ff. Reprint Hildesheim / New York 1970, Volume 2, p. 536
  24. ↑ Ignaz von Seyfried : Beethoven's studies in basso continuo, contrapunct and composition theory , collected from his handwritten estate and edited. by Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried. 2nd, revised edition with completed text ed. by Henry Hugh Pierson. Leipzig etc. 1853 (first edition Vienna 1832); Reprint Hildesheim etc. 1967