The Beethoven String Quartet Project: Op. 18, no. 1

As the necessary home confinement continues today and for the foreseeable future, I have turned to a project I intended to engage in at some point this year: listening to and reflecting upon the magnificent string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born 250 years ago. For each of the next 17 days, I hope to post a short paragraph or two on these stimulating pieces. I am at the same time reading a biography of Beethoven by William Kinderman, an American musicologist who taught for a time at the University of Victoria. Kinderman’s book was published in 1995 by Oxford University Press. He has subsequently — in 2006 — written a study of Beethoven’s String Quartets, a book that I now have on order.

STRING QUARTET No. 1 in F MAJOR, op. 18, no. 1
(I listened to the recording of the Emerson String Quartet, recorded in 1997 on the Deutsche Grammophon label. It’s available on YouTube.)

Allegro con brio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBVF7we-o4A

Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcb6kaNrnQc

Scherzo: Allegro molto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv44Z9jKOsw

Allegro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-9muPnvYi0

The first published quartet as part of a collection of six in opus 18, this quartet was actually composed second in 1798. Beethoven was, at the time — according to Kinderman — still remaining “cautious and even somewhat insecure when tackling those musical genres in which Haydn and Mozart reigned supreme.” Beethoven placed op. 18, no 1 at the beginning of his set of 6 string quartets “presumably because it is the grandest and most immediately impressive”. In preparing the set to be published, in 1801, Beethoven made a number of revisions to this quartets, which he had originally given to his friend Karl Ferdinand Amenda in 1798. He told Amenda to keep the original version to himself as “I have only how learned how to write quartets properly”.

It’s a brilliant work, full of energy, pathos, humour and gravitas. The first movement makes a meal out the opening turn motive, using it in myriad of different ways throughout the piece. The second movement is a devastatingly serious and dramatic musical essay, apparently inspired while meditating on the burial-vault scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The third movement Scherzo and Trio is lovely and lively and the final Allegro is an entertaining finale to the work, brilliantly riffing between triplet and duplet figures and effectively using silence to surprise and delight.