Finally getting back to chamber music after what feels like a long break (I was on vacation in California and didn't bring any instrument with me). And, of course, starting back up with Haydn. I took advantage of a quartet with an excellent violinist and an obliging cellist to cross off another of the Opus 17 quartets, No. 2 in F major. Haydn wrote these quartets for the virtuoso violinist at Eszterhazy, Luigi Tomasini, so the first violin parts are filled with double stops and intricate passage work. And these were written before Opus 20, when Haydn realized that the violist and cellist might want to have interesting things to play, too. :-)
But even so, this is a beautiful quartet. I find the closing theme of the first movement enchanting: there's just something about the harmony that moves me, even though the passage is just a few measures long. (Our second violinist claims it was her B natural, and I have no reason to doubt her). And as much as I enjoy the more equal distribution of interest in the later Haydn quartets, there's something wonderful about the pure first-violin arias that you often get in the slow movements of the early works, and this is a fine example. And in the last movement, Haydn shows himself, as always, inventive in his sonata forms, turning a simple bass line, shared by the cello and viola in the exposition, into a much more involved example of counterpoint in the recapitulation.
Staying in F major, we moved to Beethoven's last string quartet, the Opus 135. Oh, I wish I had had more time to practice this: I really shouldn't have scheduled late Beethoven only a few days after I'd returned from vacation. But it was okay, and we had fun.
It's hard to describe how bizarre and outlandish the late Beethoven string quartets are. It feels as if they were written a century before their time. Certainly Beethoven's contemporaries could make nothing of them: I've previously quoted Louis Spohr's remark that they were "an indecipherable, uncorrected horror". And while Mendelssohn modeled his Op. 13 after them, he only used the least unconventional ideas. I think it's fair to say that the rest of the nineteenth century ignored these quartets: it isn't until Bartok that you feel a continuation of the compositional ideas of the late Beethoven quartets.
Just one example of one of the oddities in Opus 135: in the trio of the scherzo, the second violin, viola, and cello play, in octaves, the same measure over forty times in succession, while the first violin plays a kind of melody above. (The passage is just after the two minute mark here). It's bad enough for the poor second and viola, but because the cello is a larger instrument, one can't easily play the passage in one position. You can see on the video how the left hand of the cellist is frantically moving up and down, while the two inner strings can keep theirs still. Last night, our cellist tried thumb position, not usually used for notes so low on the instrument. It seemed to work, although she said that it would be very difficult to get to thumb position there reliably and quickly.
The slow movement is in the wonderful key of D-flat major, with five flats. The middle section goes from major to minor, but Beethoven chooses the enharmonic key of C-sharp minor, which has four sharps. Confusing: a bit like crossing the International Date Line (or a branch cut for you math geeks out there). Beethoven has to do this because D-flat minor doesn't exist as a key, because it would have eight flats and you can only have seven in the key signature. Although I think it would be really cool to have a B-double-flat in a key signature. And, yes, I know that I have a very strange sense of what would be really cool. :-)
I have to admit, I don't get the last movement at all. It's subtitled "Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß" ("The Difficult Decision"). The slow introduction is marked "Muss es sein? (Must it be?)" and the succeeding Allegro "Es muss sein! (It must be!)" I've always heard this explained that Beethoven, months away from death, is wrestling with the eternal question. And the introduction is as anguished as anything he wrote. But the Allegro! I could have understood a feeling of resignation, of acceptance, of maybe even joy. But what you get is something happy, maybe even mischievous. And the pizzicato ending is downright silly. If anyone can help me come up with a way of understanding this, I'd appreciate it!
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