Beethoven: String Quartet in F major, 0p.59 No.1 (“Rasumovsky”, 1806)
Allegro
Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
Adagio molto e mesto
Thème Russe:- Allegro – adagio ma non troppo – presto
Of course the Sinfonia Eroica is one of the major landmarks in the history of Western music – and Beethoven himself was surely aware of its significance when he wrote about its unusual length. Like so many iconic creations it has attracted its fair share of Romance and Fable: the very title, the association with Napoléon, the presence of a Funeral March, all have inevitably set minds and imaginations to work, conjuring up any number of programmes and meanings. If the Eroica has enabled succeeding “heroic” or “conflict” works to be born, then it cannot be solely because Beethoven’s example taught his followers how to think and create on this scale: a scale made possible by his own developing mastery of harmony and harmonic movement – involving a spreading apart of tonal poles and the consequent slowing down of harmonic pace (one need look no further than the first page of this F major quartet to get a clear idea of how he was able to achieve this). This apart, surely the symphony’s pictorial and spiritual vibrations are no less mirrored in the string of masterpieces it gave rise to? Perhaps it was indeed with the Eroica that Beethoven finally broke free from the conventions and artifices of the eighteenth century; and with the F major Rasumovsky that the revolution was first transferred to the quartet medium.
The three quartets of Op.59 followed the Eroica after a period of two years, and were commissioned by (and dedicated to) Count Andrey Rasumovsky, who had come to Vienna in 1792 as Russian Ambassador. As a tribute to his patron, Beethoven incorporated a Russian folk tune into each of the quartets, and these melodies are easily identified in both the F major and E minor quartets (drawn from Ivan Pratsch’s collection of Russian and Ukrainian folk songs, published in 1790). He may have become familiar with them when the allied Russian/Austrian armies passed through Vienna after their victorious campaign in Italy. The fourth piano concerto had not long been completed, with the violin concerto on the horizon – both of them revealing the more lyrical side of Beethoven’s musical character. This huge F major quartet belongs in many respects to that company – particularly in comparison with its terse E minor successor. Indeed, there is much in the first violin writing that foreshadows the concerto – not least in the scalic quasi cadenza which links the Adagio to the finale.
Nowadays we are well used to vast quartets and symphonies, and we can readily talk about how works like the first Rasumovsky helped bring them about – without necessarily experiencing the impact it must have made in 1806. Yet to approach it on eighteenth century terms, as if with eighteenth century ears, really does serve to underline that impact. Those of us who have worked regularly with period style instruments can at least apply what we learn to the forces available, particularly in matters of phrasing, articulation, timbre – and tempo: Beethoven’s metronome marks have always aroused controversy, the usual justifications being that they were added later (indeed they were, as a result of his friend Johann Nepomuk Mälzel’s prototype of 1815); that Beethoven’s own machine was inaccurate; that the markings were dictated to his nephew Karl; that he couldn’t hear properly anyway! Whatever actual truth there may be in these statements, can we honestly hold our hands up and deny a natural reluctance to throw out the security of the familiar, or to face the uncompromising assault on our techniques?! To take but one example: by following the composer’s instructions we find that the third movement is actually one of the slowest he ever wrote (with a metronome mark expressed in semiquavers!) – but at the same time a piece which, through its extraordinary dramatic and expressive language, looks far ahead into the later nineteenth century. This in contrast to the outer movements, which are only just playable at Beethoven’s tempi! (interestingly, the pace of the crotchets in the opening Allegro is exactly the same as in the Eroica). Conversely, the Allegretto scherzando comes over steadier than in some performances – far removed from the usual very brisk Beethovenian scherzo – and it is this strange movement which we have found to be the most elusive, with its obsessive drum-like rhythm and weird excursions into remote keys and sound worlds. Unusually, all four movements of the quartet are cast in sonata form, so this piece assumes a far more extended scale than virtually any previous scherzo movement.
It would be hard to believe that any performance of this work should ever be mounted that did not attempt to project in some way its innovatory stance; and no sensitive listener can surely fail to be moved and astounded by the mind blowing originality of both the Eroica and these Rasumovsky quartets. But as they have become ever more familiar, along with over two hundred years’ worth of music which succeeded them, our perspectives become distorted, our perceptions blurred. This is the price we pay for our musical saturation, for hearing music of the past with ears tuned to the present – or, at least, to the late 19th century. The point is that in the Op.18 quartets Beethoven was still working with the tools of the eighteenth (and living through the final years of it, of course) – not only the musical vocabulary of the epoch but the musicians as well, together with their deeply rooted conventions of performance practice. It is this which we have most lost sense of, and which would throw into startling relief the boldness with which he was challenging those very conventions: their regularity of phrase structure, their non-aggressive articulation and attack, hierarchy of the bar line, controlled dynamic range, purity of sound, concept of tempo: we need to be fully aware of these and all other aspects of the status quo, in order fully to grasp the energy and sheer arrogance with which he was openly confronting them, and burying them for ever as new instrumental techniques (and instruments as well!) had to be evolved to meet his demands.
And so it is in the context of performance that we can most readily appreciate these ground breaking quartets and symphonies – just as the early piano sonatas should be approached in the light of their birth via the composer’s own questing fingers. So long as we are able to exhume those traditions, which Beethoven himself ultimately dismantled, there is much here to rediscover, much excitement to experience afresh. It is to be hoped that listeners will be swept back to the heady fervour of central Europe at the dawn of a new century: post 1789, but still mid-Revolution!
© Alan George
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