The C-sharp minor Quartet by Beethoven is filled with original features and the amazing sounds that illustrate the private world of Beethoven’s late period. We have only to listen to the opening notes of the fugue that opens the work—a startlingly novel beginning—to realize that we are listening to an amazing musical soul.
The brooding, contemplative mood immediately sets the movement apart from more customary brisk-paced fugues, and suggests a link with the C-sharp minor Fugue of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier, which Beethoven had known since his youth. He takes his subject matter through numerous permutations and a wide range of keys, so that when he returns to the home key we experience a sense of recapitulation. Just prior comes a passage of great beauty, in which the transparent texture highlights the two entwined violins followed by a duet between the viola and cello.
Beethoven planned for the entire Quartet to be played without pause, though he was induced by the publisher to put in “numbers,” which correspond to what have traditionally been called its seven movements. Many, however, have commented on the fact that some of these “movements” might better be viewed as introductions or transitions to what follows, so that the first movement serves as a very extended introduction to the second movement, the very brief “No. 3” makes a transition to the Andante variation, and following the scherzo, “No. 6” serves as the slow introduction to the finale.
Thus we find a highly original, expanded conception of the traditional four-movement quartet scheme.
This is not “background music”. It requires the listener to concentrated to derive the music’s astounding value. Listen now, and see for yourself:
