Beethoven String Quartet, Op. 59, No.2

Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the Classical Music Podcast.

My name is Joshua Weilerstein, I'm a conductor, and I'm the Music Director of the Orkestrenassina

de Lille, and the Chief Conductor of the Alborg Symphony.

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I am currently preparing for about a month of concerts in Lille with two different programs.

One of the programs will be with Brahms' first symphony, Elzabarenne's second symphony,

and the Barbara Violin Concerto with the great violinist Renault Capisson.

And the other program will be all French with the overture to often Bach's, or fiercely

underworld, the Saint-Saint-Saint-Chelok Concerto with the fantastic Nicolas Alstedt.

And in the second half, we'll have Lily Boulanger's Dan-Mathendé-Prenten, Reveille's Mother

Goose Suite, and Reveille's Rhapsody Espagnol.

It'll be a really great opportunity to dig into all this repertoire, and we're playing

it all over France, basically, in the north of France, and then in Exome Provence with

Renault's Festival, the Easter Festival in Exome Provence as well.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

For this week's episode, I've got one of my absolute favorite pieces on the planet,

and the continuation of my exploration of Beethoven's string quartets.

I really hope you enjoy this one on Beethoven's Opus 59 number two.

A quick note before we begin, I do recommend listening, if you haven't already, to my show

on Opus 59 number one before listening to this episode, as I go into a lot of detail

about the scope of the three Opus 59 quartets that I'll only really touch on during this

episode.

That episode comes from February of 2024, and is available on all podcast platforms.

I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a

major key and in a minor key.

I've asked this question before, but I'd love to hear your answers.

I'll start you off with Mendelssohn's fourth symphony.

Well, how about this one?

How many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end in a minor key?

The answer?

One.

Opus 59 number two, the subject of today's show.

And that minor key is hugely important to this darkest of the three Opus 59 quartets.

Three towering achievements that changed the string quartet repertoire for good.

Beethoven, as I've said many times on this show before, was a revolutionary within limits,

always expanding, rethinking, and reshaping what was possible without breaking anything

beyond repair.

But make no mistake, the Opus 59 quartets were revolutionary works.

No one had written anything like this before in terms of scope, emotional intensity, difficulty,

and complexity.

In fact, like a few of Beethoven's greatest works, they were received with confusion and

in some cases anger by musicians, audiences, and critics.

Famously, the cellist of the first string quartet to receive the parts for Opus 59 number

one saw the Morse code like one note theme of the second movement of that quartet, and

threw the music onto the floor and stomped on it.

These quartets were Beethoven going out on a limb, applying the intensity and drama of

his middle heroic period to a genre that had had been at least partly the province of

amateur musicians.

But not anymore.

Opus 59 number two, as I said, is the darkest of this group.

Their movements all centered around the key of E, and with the exception of the glorious

second movement, they are all in minor, presenting a seriousness and directness of purpose that

is quite compelling.

This might be my favorite of the Opus 59 quartets, and so I'm very excited to dig into

it with you today.

We'll discuss the enigmatic and the ecstatic aspects of this quartet, as well as Beethoven's

own philosophical views on life, which come to light in the second movement, one of Beethoven's

greatest creations.

All this and more is coming right up on Sticky Notes.

Only six years passed between the composition of Beethoven's first set of six quartets,

the Opus 18s, and the three Opus 59 string quartets, nicknamed the Rasmovsky quartets,

after the man who commissioned Beethoven to write them.

In those six years, Beethoven's deafness drastically worsened.

He considered ending his own life, but then decided that art and music would carry him

forward.

This monumental moment in Beethoven's life launched his middle period, an astonishing

explosion of creativity and innovation that brought us five string quartets, the third,

fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth symphonies, as well as the fourth and fifth piano concertos,

violin concerto, several piano sonatas, including the Apostianata sonata, and Beethoven's

only opera, Fidelio.

All this in ten years.

Each one of those pieces pushed the boundaries in their own way, and many of them rank as

some of the most often performed pieces in the entire Western classical repertoire.

Why?

What is it about these middle period works, and why did the Opus 59 string quartets seem

to embody the middle period, but also stand slightly apart?

Well, part of the appeal of the middle period works is their sense of titanic struggle,

along with heroic triumph.

Beethoven's decision to carry on with his life galvanized him, and he seemed to revel in

expanding the scale of almost every genre that he wrote in.

His string quartets became much longer, his symphonies too.

Essentially, Beethoven's middle period has an immense sense of ambition.

Beethoven essentially ushered in the age of romanticism and music with these compositions,

taking music from a purely abstract and ordered classical form, though that's a huge generalization,

to one that expressed powerful and urgent personal emotions, and even could tell a story

without words.

Beethoven, in ten years, he basically changed the course of music forever.

Now, that's an extremely cursory look at the transition between the classical and romantic

period, but since our focus is on Opus 59 number two today, I want to drill down onto the

special traits of this and the three Opus 59 quartets in general.

The Opus 59 quartets absolutely expand scale.

They were the longest quartets written up to that period, and are still some of the longest

regularly performed quartets ever written.

They often reflect titanic struggle, but they don't have the same kind of heroic cast,

as some of the other middle period works.

The other thing that marks the Opus 59 quartets is their complexity.

Many of Beethoven's middle period works, think the symphonies, are remarkably direct,

but the Opus 59 quartets often aren't.

One review of the time mentioned this, saying quote, three new, very long and difficult

Beethoven string quartets are attracting the attention of all connoisseurs.

The conception is profound and the construction excellent, but they are not easily comprehended.

Now, as you know, I normally only quote critics in order to make fun of them, but I actually

think there's a lot of truth to that review, so let's go into Opus 59 number two now,

which would dress that complexity head on.

The quartet begins with an ending, two chords that grab our attention immediately.

What follows is astonishing in its audaciousness.

After these two chords, we hear nothing.

A pregnant pause followed by two bars to be played as softly as possible, like the outline

of a theme, then another pause, then another two bars of penisemo, but in a new key,

one half step above our home key of E minor, then another pause, then two bars of stabbing

dissonances, and then finally the arrival of the theme, which only lasts for two bars

before being disintegrated by two more powerful chords, and then silence.

Thirty seconds has gone by in this quartet, and we have been shocked at least four or five times.

This is what that critic meant, I think, by not easily comprehended.

But take this apart and you see what Beethoven is going to do throughout the movement.

If you follow this show for a long time, or if you know anything about Beethoven, then

you know that Beethoven is not like any other composer.

He doesn't really write themes all the time.

He writes cells, motives, ideas, that he then obsessively works over.

This motivic or cellular composing was a hallmark of Beethoven's middle and late periods,

and it's absolutely present here, but how?

Well, remember what I said about the two bars of penisemo being one half step above our

home key?

Well, if you listen to the harmony of the opening chords, you hear this.

And then the two bars afterwards are punctuated by half steps going up, and as the arpeggio

goes down, we hear one more half step.

And then we have the theme placed up by a half step.

Half steps, the most emotionally heart-rending interval, are the core, they're the backbone,

they are the cellular material with which Beethoven builds this movement.

The movement isn't Sonata form, meaning an exposition with two themes, a development

where the themes are twisted around and turned upside down, and a recapitulation where

the themes come back.

And Beethoven is clear about this form to a point.

But what might be easier to follow throughout the movement is those half steps, running

through practically every moment of the score.

Beethoven now briefly develops his first theme through a punchy and powerful series of

harmonic modulations, often involving a half step.

This is not friendly music, and Beethoven is in his most pugilistic mood for this first

theme.

The relative major in a minor key movement usually marks the second theme, and that's exactly

where Beethoven goes, to G major.

But he's there within about a minute and ten seconds, which is pretty strange in a movement

that is going to last nearly fourteen minutes.

If you know Beethoven, you're used to big development sections.

But the length of this movement actually has to do with something else, which we'll talk

about later.

The second theme is as charming as the first theme is violent.

But listen to the answer of the theme in the second violin, and how the themes character

changes instantly.

Did you hear it?

That half-step drop at the end should send a cold shiver down your spine.

This theme is not so innocent after all, and it seems to be infected with the anxiety

of the opening theme.

And then we get that sense of disintegration again.

Beethoven has written this movement in the meter of 6'8", often a kind of dance-like meter

that provides a beautiful lute and lyricism.

Well, we had about twenty seconds of lute and lyricism in this exposition, but Beethoven

doesn't let us stay there for long.

The music drops down to Pini Simo again and falls, hesitatingly, and a hall-teamly, down

and down by half steps.

We don't even know what meter we are in anymore, but the cello is going to lead us, again

with half steps, to a huge crescendo and we conclude the exposition with a kind of,

as the writer Kai Christiansen says, manic triumph.

But to me, it reminds us much more of the first theme than of the second.

But we are stopped in our tracks.

Here Beethoven writes a repeat for the exposition, which is completely normal.

And honestly is probably something we need considering the intensity and the tightness

of the exposition.

It's only been two minutes and we've been thrown from end to end of the emotional

spectrum.

And so we repeat this exposition, which gets us to about four minutes into a fourteen-minute

movement, which still seems pretty out of proportion.

Well, let's head into the development now.

Beethoven arrives into the development with another set of two chords, more shock and

awe tactics.

Beethoven actually begins the development much like he begins the piece, full of pregnant

pauses and harmonic changes, mostly by half steps.

But the harmonies are more pungent now, and they are actually a bit more emotional.

First Beethoven moves up by a half step not to a minor key, but to a brief hint of the

G major that marked the second theme.

And then we move up again by a half step to a flat.

And this is where I will quote one of my best sources on the Beethoven quartets, Mark Steinberg

of the Brentonno string quartet, who describes moments like these this way, quote,

the sense is often of escape, of being lifted out of the mortal sphere, stolen away from

the weight of reality, perhaps in recognition of a presence beyond the material.

This moment of escape is sorely needed, and Beethoven doesn't shy away from it.

It's a moment of heaven in this stormy world.

But as always with Beethoven's minor key movements, reality intervenes.

Remember that kind of weird rhythmic thing in the exposition where we couldn't even figure

out the meter?

Well, Beethoven returns to it here, and it begins a grinding kind of drama, what feels

like a pressure cooker that is about to explode.

But on the second time through the pressure cooker, Beethoven shocks us again, and arrives

not an E minor or G major, but in his traditional key of triumph, C major, with cascading scales

that can't quite escape the feeling of fantasy, but we enjoy it just the same.

And this leads to a paroxysm of rage, punctuated by half-step trills, like the music can no

longer endure this wandering and constant switching of keys.

And without much warning, the pressure cooker does finally explode, back to the E minor

of the recapitulation.

We expected an extremely long development section because of the proportions of the movement,

but Beethoven is only two minutes long.

We're now six minutes into a 14-minute movement and we finish the exposition and development.

What's going on here?

Well, Beethoven's recapitulation starts out quite similarly to his exposition as well.

There are a few small surprises here and there, but for the most part, the recap is standard

in its conception.

The second theme is even in E major, as it's supposed to be.

The only thing that's surprising is that the Coda of the recap is in E major, when it

probably should be heading towards minor now for the actual Coda of the movement.

And here comes the surprise.

Beethoven has not gone to the Coda.

He has put in a repeat of the entire development and recapitulation sections.

And here's another place where Beethoven's genius really shows itself.

This movement is complicated, and you can tell that by how much time I'm spending on

it.

It's not easy to understand, and Beethoven would have known that.

We can joke about how angry Beethoven was all the time and how he thought that people

didn't understand his music, were Philistines, but in the end, Beethoven did want his music

to be understood and appreciated.

He knew that the audiences of the time would need to hear this music again in order to fully

comprehend it.

He expected his audience to know about Sonata Form, and that they would understand that

he repeated this music for them.

Nowadays most audiences don't think in terms of Sonata Form, so this repeat actually could

serve to confuse them further, and maybe even to get bored at the length of the movement.

But a really great performance kind of points out the formal waypoints.

And even though I'm not always a big supporter of repeats, in the case of this first

movement, I think both of them are necessary.

Let's go to the Coda, where Beethoven pulls on our heartstrings with a gorgeous meditation

on one of his earliest motives.

The harmony is moving by half steps now, but so much of the dissonance is gone.

It's music of deep and personal emotion that Beethoven writes here, as if in reflection

of the storms that we've gone through.

But reality once again intrudes, and that grinding syncopation gives me the

feeling of someone banging their heads against the wall, before one of those Beethoven

quotas of remarkable inevitability and drive seems to begin.

And just like that, it fades away, it disintegrates again.

This is a remarkable movement that I recommend listening to many times.

Its power and its creativity and its complexity never fail to amaze me.

And all of the suffering we've been through in this first movement is about to be soothed

by one of the most consoling movements Beethoven ever wrote.

Beethoven marks at the top of the score for this movement, treat this piece with great

feeling.

That's not typical for Beethoven, and it's a clue to how important this music was to him.

There are many theories about this movement, though most of them are cousins of the words

of Beethoven's friend and piano-slash-composition student, Carl Charney, who said that Beethoven

told him that the second movement of this quartet was inspired by looking into the starry

skies and contemplating the music of the spheres.

There's no hard evidence that this is true, but it makes a lot of sense.

There have also been theories relating to Immanuel Kant's legendary philosophical line,

quote, two things fill the mind with ever-new and increasing admiration and awe.

The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Mark Steinberg connects this movement in the starry skies above us to Beethoven's increasing

deafness and isolation from the social world.

Whatever the inspiration was, the peacefulness and even dreaminess of this movement is almost

unparalleled in Beethoven's output.

The key is in E-major, a key that is forever associated with a kind of angelic calm, partly

because of this movement.

But before I get too sentimental, I want to point out that the main theme begins with,

you guessed it, a half step.

And actually, the way the movement begins parallels the first movement.

Remember, in the first movement had the music moved up by a half-step?

Well, here, the second violin brings it down.

This gorgeous chorale concluded.

We move on to the first quasi-variation on the theme.

The first violin is a kind of fantasy-slash improvisation over the melody that needs very

little explanation.

Now begins another of the main motifs that gently drive this movement, a ticking clock

s-currhythm that is a presence for much of the movement, even in total peace Beethoven

writes at the cellular level.

But unlike in the first movement, the harmonic motion, by which I mean the speed at which

the harmony changes, is glacial slow.

We really feel like we're floating, and the idea of contemplating the starry skies

in the movement of the planets seems completely natural in the context of this music.

In the first movement, Beethoven used those

shocking, pregnant pauses to break the relentless motion.

In this movement, Beethoven uses the absence of that dotted rhythm to create even more

of a suspended feeling.

I can't emphasize enough how rare it is for Beethoven to write in this manner.

Beethoven is the driver, the mover, the shaker.

Not here.

And then we arrive at my personal favorite moment of the whole piece.

Beethoven continues the dotted rhythm, but this time in the viola, as the rest of the

quartet slowly marks the first and third beats of each bar.

Over this Beethoven writes the word m-m-condo.

Now every classical musician, and of course every Italian, knows what diminuendo means,

yet softer.

Most know morendo, dying away.

I would say most also know perdendosi, which literally translates to losing oneself.

Very few know the word m-m-condo, because I've never seen it marked in a score before.

M-m-condo means something like fading out or disappearing, or as Chachi Petis says,

like the presence of sound disappearing.

These subtle differences in language meant a lot to Beethoven who wrote diminuendo all

the time, so this loss of presence in the sound comes almost at an emotional level.

And it results in the gentlest, warmest kind of chorale, led by the first violin in a gorgeous

songbird-like cantalena, riding over almost pucklebell-like corals in the rest of the quartet.

M-m-condo.

Beethoven now lets our first violin slash songbird come to rest, but this time over a new rhythmic

motive.

The triplets that the first violin was singing now become the rhythmic underpinning for

the coda of this first section.

We do hear some moments of the minor key, some moments of danger, but they always quickly

pass.

But these moments were hints of the sadness to come as we move into the middle section

of the movement.

The cello, as always the harmonic leader, moves slowly by half steps through a series

of harmonic changes that take us to a terrifying outburst in F-sharp minor.

The piece we have been enjoying was almost too beautiful to continue to enjoy.

M-m-condo.

Now Beethoven returns to the grinding power of the first movement.

Not in speed, but in the feeling of pushing into an immovable object.

Twice we ram into this wall and twice we are turned away.

And that M-m-condo dotted rhythm music now passes to the cello, which slowly brings the

group down to a B major chord, and a breath-taking transition occurs, all based around a half step.

I'll explain how this works on my Patreon exclusive mini episode, but for now, just listen.

And we're home.

The cello is now playing the improvisatory music from the opening, but it's now grounded

on earth. It's and forgive the sentimentality, like Beethoven has brought heaven down to us.

For much of the return of the A section, Beethoven doesn't write anything new in terms of musical

material, but he varies who plays what part in a way that almost makes it seem like new music,

though lovingly familiar. But we then arrive at the point where the music made its turn to

darkness in the first section. Where will Beethoven go now? First, his triplet rhythm returns,

and it seems that we are putting that struggle to rest.

But with that shocking crescendo, Beethoven seems to realize that peacefulness alone will not

calm the turbulence of the middle section. With profound passion and musical stabs of pain,

always on a surprising harmony, not the expected one, Beethoven breaks through the reminders of

that struggle, and the triplet ostinato and E major will carry us to the end of this divine movement.

The third movement is a curious one. One that harkens back to Mozart's time, but also to the Russian

background of Beethoven's commissioner for the Opus 59 quartets, Count Resimovsky. The Count's

condition for the commission was that Beethoven include a Russian folk song in each quartet,

and Beethoven obliged him in the first two quartets. But we won't hear that at the beginning of

the third movement, it only comes in the middle section. First, we hear an awkward confusing melody

played over an awkward limp-been accompaniment, again in E minor. This could not be more contrasting

from the divinity of the second movement. In fact, it returns us the ghostly uncertainty and

instability of the first movement.

Two more curious things about this A-section. One is that Beethoven had built himself quite a

reputation for the blinding speed of his third movements. In fact, he had basically invented the genre

of the scareczo, which literally translates to the word joke. But Beethoven, again, he didn't

really invent something, he and merely supercharged and electrified the three-to-a-bar minuet of

Heiden and Mozart's age. And here, he seems to not be willing to write a scareczo in his

serious key of E minor. So instead, we hear a minuet, but a very Beethovenian version of it.

There's no lightness or grace to be found in this music, and in fact, that brings me to the

second curious aspect of this movement. Remember in the first movement where we ran into the wall?

And it happened in the second movement as well.

And now it happens here in the third. Beethoven's internal logic is as sound is ever,

as we begin to unconsciously register these brutal moments as integral to the piece.

One more item to note is the prevalence of half steps just like in the first two movements.

They are all over the place and add to the uneasiness of the mood. And Beethoven isn't

done with the surprises. In the trio middle section, Beethoven abruptly changes the mood and the

key to an abundant e-major. Here is the Russian folk song.

Perhaps to underline its simplicity underneath these scampering triplets, Beethoven does something

that I can't tell if it's ironic or not. Every time the Russian theme appears in the score,

he writes Russian theme over it. As if we can't tell it's the theme we heard three seconds ago.

Whatever the motivation, the music is as carefree as the A section was awkward, a study in contrasts.

As the section culminates, Beethoven has the theme written in such a way that suggests peeling

bells, but just as quickly it disintegrates. And Beethoven mercilessly moves us back to the

opening music of the movement.

And now Beethoven simply repeats what we've just heard and he repeats it again.

By the end of this movement, we will have heard the A section three times and the Russian theme twice.

And Beethoven writes no Coda, which means that what we've heard now is what we get. It sends us

uneasily into the last movement, wondering what lies in store for us.

The last movement is only about five minutes long, and it begins like a musical bomb going off.

Not an E minor or major, but in C major. Now don't worry if you didn't clock that. Listen to

me play the chords in the piano, E minor, then C major, and you'll realize the musical distance

between the two. This is a rondo, meaning that the main theme will come back multiple times in

the movement, with intervening episodes in between. The main character of the opening theme is its

relicking almost boyish kind of joy. The accompaniment is actually a sped up version of the dotted

rhythm from the second movement, and it bounces along. Never really carefree, though, because Beethoven

doesn't do carefree.

But Beethoven didn't write the key signature in C major, he wrote it in an E minor. So what's

going on here? It's like the music is refusing to hit E minor, even though it sometimes hints at it.

For the first episode, Beethoven does go to a minor key, but this time it's B minor. We're in

the vicinity of E, but we're not there yet.

And then Beethoven pulls off an incredible trick that really needs to be seen to be believed.

Beethoven writes for the three note idea that a num that pervades this movement,

to be passed around the group in a fragment. It's dizzying, like watching a great tennis match,

watching the theme get passed around, and let me tell you, as a player, it's an incredibly stressful

moment, because if you miss your entrance, it's really a domino effect that can threaten to derail

the entire movement.

And actually, I have a really great story about that that comes from the fantastic late-chillist

Joel Crosnick of the Juilliard quartet. When my group was playing this quartet, Joel Crosnick

gave us a coaching, and he told us that in one of the performances of the Juilliard quartet of

this piece, that there was a very fast page turn that Joel missed. He couldn't get the page over

in time. Knowing that if he missed his baradam, it could derail the whole thing. He sang it out

loud and quite a loud voice. Baradam! He felt completely embarrassed by this, but he also said,

you know, I kept the performance going, so you know, you do what you got to do. He expected

to hear about it after the performance, but apparently none of his colleagues noticed,

and no one in the audience said a word, except for one person who was a cellist who noticed in

the audience. So, just a little ghost to show you. Sometimes we do crazy things on stage that nobody

picks up on. And in the end, these baradam, baradam, baradams are really like an engine revving us

back up to get home to see major again.

The second intervening episode is also in C Major, and it reminds us that Beethoven has already

been in this key during that attempt at triumph in the first movement. Beethoven reaches back to

the beginning of the story to continue the narrative, but it doesn't last long. With the

equivalent of a musical temper tantrum, Beethoven writes a fugal-like passage that is like

quintessential almost stereotypical Beethoven, and it's grumpiness and sense of defiant struggle.

And finally, with a return to his first intervening episode, we land on E minor. And it seems

like actually we are back home. But those ping pong-like baradams start floating around the

group again, and as if Beethoven is actually trying to escape E minor, we slam back into the wall

again in C Major.

But he can't escape. Everywhere Beethoven turns, we end up

in E minor again, and suddenly the music starts to disintegrate again, as if it was giving up.

But as we know, Beethoven never gives up. So now we hear repeated outbursts as if trying to cast

off this E minor off our back.

And in honestly one of my favorite moments of any Beethoven quartet, Beethoven writes what

became a quintessential pop and rock music chord progression and revs up the band into its most

raucous version of the C Major theme we've heard yet. But what's remarkable is that this no longer

sounds joyful and bouncy. Beethoven has found a way for C Major to sound angry, and soon we'll find

out why.

As you heard, E minor will not be denied. The tempo picks up and we rush off to the end of what has

now become a terrifying Tarantella. While this is one of my favorite Beethoven quartets, I won't lie

and pretend that it is incredibly easy to understand. It's complex, dark, and the first movement

is challenging enough that it puts off some listeners. But I do hope that today's show has shown

you what a treasure this piece is. At every moment Beethoven creates minor and sometimes major

miracles of invention, creativity, and emotional commitment. Other than the second movement,

I can't really describe this quartet as beautiful, but it's something else. It's a vision of a

slightly darker world, one that Beethoven knew how to inhabit better than anyone else.

Beethoven accessed in this piece a kind of defiant anger that no other composer really could.

But he also found ways to access the mystery within that anger, and that makes it much more

emotionally profound than just listening to a simple expression of rage. And in the middle of all

this, Beethoven takes us to heaven. Listening to a great Beethoven quartet is a life experience,

not only in the moment, but for every time you hear the piece again. I haven't heard this piece

or played it in many years. And as I was writing this show, and as you can hear by my voice as I'm

recording it, I was astonished again and again by the greatness of what I was hearing.

I've run out of superlatives, but you get the idea. There isn't anyone like Beethoven,

and I really am so excited to have gotten to share this supreme masterpiece with you today.

Thanks so much for listening to Sticking out today. We'll have some more exciting stuff for you

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