Notes for: July 19, 2011
Like Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony, squeezed between the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, the “Harp” String Quartet is essentially a lyric, meditative work nesting among the giants of his middle and late quartets. In fact, its relaxed character seems an incongruity since it was written in 1809, the year Napoleon’s troops bombarded and then occupied Vienna.
Napoleon and his troops reached Vienna early in May, and on the night of May 11-12 the city suffered heavy bombardment. According to Beethoven’s friend Ferdinand Ries, the composer sought refuge in his brother Carl’s cellar, covering his head with a pillow to protect his weak hearing. Vienna was occupied the next day, and in the ensuing weeks its citizens suffered great hardships – rising prices, shortages of food and levies on their purse. Beethoven was despondent. His sources of income were shut off, his patrons had fled, and his favorite promenades in the public parks were now military camps.
The composer finally took refuge at the watering place of Baden, 15 miles from Vienna, where this quartet was written. The work did not come easily. According to his letters, Beethoven found it difficult to compose under wartime conditions, and he devoted 30 notebook pages to working out the quartet’s problems. Under these circumstances Beethoven lacked the incentive to break new ground or scale new heights, and this mainly easy-going quartet was the result. Fortunately for us, the mood did not last long. His next work was the “Emperor” Concerto.
The “Harp” Quartet takes its nickname from two passages in the first movement in which pizzicato arpeggios ascend through the lower three instruments. One passage leads from the development into the recapitulation, and the other underpins part of the coda. Of greater musical interest are the movement’s slow, dreamy, gently dissonant introduction, and the virtuosic passage for the first violin that overlays the second “harping” episode in the coda. Other than these features, the movement is a fairly straightforward Beethoven excursion in sonata form.
The music takes on added expressiveness in the slow movement, a beautiful adagio, whose spacious melodies are subjected to exquisite ornamentation. The movement is in abbreviated rondo form (A-B-A-C-A), but the sections are more complementary than contrasting. The overall impression remains one of restraint rather than tension.
With the scherzo, the pendulum swings for the moment to the other extreme. Marked presto, the music is propelled by a strong, vigorous rhythmic drive and is full of hammering figures and breathless scale passages. The movement bears a strong resemblance to the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony, with its obsessive use of a similar C-minor knocking motif and its long coda leading without pause to the finale.
However, instead of a triumphant peroration as in the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven gives us an unwinding theme with variations, a rare form for a Beethoven finale. The theme is graceful enough, and the six variations pursue it through varied rhythmic mazes. Beethoven adds to the interest by making the odd-numbered variations strong and active and the even numbered ones gentle and lyrical. The concluding coda steps up the pace, leading to a brilliant conclusion based on the third variation.