by JAYATI GHOSH
German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
It is the almost unbelievable ability of Beethoven’s music to summarise the human condition, in all its pathos, striving and glory, that makes even its saddest moments a source of exultation.
FOR many listeners, the string quartet provides at once the most intimate and the most expansive of musical possibilities. The combination of two violins, a viola and a cello playing together was first developed and then nearly perfected by Joseph Haydn in 18th century Austria. Since then its popularity has never waned and it has remained an important vehicle for musical expression even for composers in the 21st century. Because it requires musicians to play together and listen together, it creates bonds that can almost be palpably felt by listeners. There is something about these four string voices heard together that satisfies minds and pulls at heart strings, even as it allows for a range of aural possibilities that expand the idea of what music can be.
Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the greatest masters of this form. Some of his works from the “middle period”, in particular the dense and dramatic Rasumovsky Quartets dedicated to the eponymous Count Rasumovsky, are justly celebrated as masterpieces of the genre. The late quartets, among his final compositions, are the most introspective, innovative and even revolutionary music Beethoven ever wrote, breaking the bonds of form and tonality to become intensely personal statements that effectively presaged many future developments in Western classical music.
But when he first started composing string quartets, Beethoven was still a young man who was very much under the aegis of his then mentor and teacher Haydn. And he also had to contend with the long shadow cast by that other genius who had been prolific in producing quartets, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Their quartets were wildly popular, not only because they were more amenable to performance by amateur players in their own homes than pieces involving more instruments, but because the more intimate setting somehow seemed to allow more subtlety, variation and even eccentricity than pieces composed for larger groups and more public gatherings.
It must indeed have been daunting to compose in a form that already had such a wealth of completed and widely beloved works, and thereby invite potentially unfavourable comparison with them. Indeed, when Beethoven began work on his first set of six quartets (which were eventually published together as Opus 18) the great and most celebrated master, Haydn, was at work on a commission from the wealthy patron Prince Lobkowitz to produce a set of six quartets. (As it happened, the much older Haydn was ultimately able to complete only two of them and part of a third before he died.) They were published in 1800, when Beethoven was yet to turn 30 years of age, and already had a Symphony, several very fine piano sonatas (including the “Pathetique” Sonata) and much else under his belt.
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