String Quartet No. 13 (Beethoven)

The String Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major, Op. 130, by Ludwig van Beethoven was completed (in its final form) in November 1826.[1] The number traditionally assigned to it is based on the order of its publication; it is actually Beethoven's 14th quartet in order of composition. It was premiered (in its original form) in March 1826 by the Schuppanzigh Quartet and dedicated to Nikolai Galitzin on its publication in 1827.

String Quartet
No. 13
Late string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven
Coversheet of Beethoven's Op. 130 as published in Berlin on 2 June 1827
KeyB♭ major
Opus130
Composed1825
DedicationNikolai Galitzin
Published1827
Durationc. 45 min
MovementsSix
Premiere
DateMarch 1826
PerformersSchuppanzigh Quartet

Movements

Beethoven originally wrote the work in six movements, lasting 42–50 minutes, as follows:

  1. Adagio, ma non troppo – Allegro (B♭ major)
  2. Presto (B♭ minor)
  3. Andante con moto, ma non troppo. Poco scherzoso (D♭ major)
  4. Alla danza tedesca. Allegro assai (G major)
  5. Cavatina. Adagio molto espressivo (E♭ Major)
  6. Große Fuge (Grande Fugue op.133): Ouverture. Allegro – Meno mosso e moderato – Allegretto – Fuga. [Allegro] – Meno Mosso e moderato – Allegro molto e con brio – Allegro (B♭)

(Nomenclature: "danza tedesca" means "German dance", "Cavatina" a short and simple song, and "Große Fuge" means "Great Fugue" or "Grand Fugue".)

The work is unusual among quartets in having six movements. They follow the pattern of movements seen in the Ninth Symphony and occasionally elsewhere in Beethoven's work (opening, dance movement, slow movement, finale), except that the middle part of the cycle is repeated: opening, dance movement, slow movement, dance movement, slow movement, finale.

New finale

Negative reaction to the work's final movement at the first performance, and his publisher's urging, led Beethoven to write a substitute for the final movement, a contredanse much shorter and lighter than the enormous Große Fuge it replaced. This new finale was written in the late autumn of 1826, during a relapse into severe illness,[2] and is the final complete piece of music Beethoven composed before his death in March, 1827. It is marked:

Finale: Allegro in B♭ major

Beethoven never witnessed a performance of the quartet in its final form; it was premiered on 22 April 1827, nearly a month after his death.

The original finale was published separately under the title Große Fuge as opus 133. Modern performances sometimes follow the composer's original intentions, leaving out the substitute finale and concluding with the fugue.[3] British composer Robert Simpson argues that Beethoven's intentions are best served by playing the quartet as a seven-movement work, with the Große Fuge followed by the replacement finale.[4]

Judgments

The cavatina that serves as the fifth movement is generally considered the quartet's pinnacle. According to Michael Steinberg, it is "one of Beethoven’s most inward and wonderful slow movements."[5] Beethoven declared "that he had composed this cavatina truly in the tears of melancholy" and that "never had his own music made such an impression on him".[6]

Some commentators also rank very high the freshness, grace and sensitivity[7] of the third movement (Andante con moto, ma non troppo. Poco scherzando). It was Theodor Helm's favorite movement,[8] and Daniel Gregory Mason used four bars of this movement as the frontispiece of his study of Beethoven's quartets.[9]

In media

The Cavatina (performed by the Budapest String Quartet) is the final piece on the Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph record containing a broad sample of Earth's sounds, languages, and music sent into interstellar space in 1977 with the two unmanned Voyager probes.[10] It immediately follows after the gospel blues song "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson, a blind and a deaf musician side by side. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012; Voyager 2 followed suit in 2018.

The Cavatina also appears in "Love and War", an episode from the sixth season of M*A*S*H, in the background as Hawkeye has dinner with an aristocratic Korean woman.

Score manuscript saved from Nazi loot

Beethoven, who died in 1827, gave the score of opus 130's fourth movement to his secretary, Karl Holz. At least two private owners in Vienna are known to have later acquired it. In the early 20th century, it came into the possession of the Petscheks, a wealthy Czech Jewish family involved in banking and the mining industry.

Following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Petscheks fled to the United States. They attempted to send the score by post, but it was intercepted by the Gestapo. The Nazis asked an expert from The Moravian Museum in Brno to verify the score's authenticity. According to the current museum curator Simona Šindelářová, the expert recognized Beethoven's handwriting, but in order to save the manuscript from being looted he lied to the Nazis and said it was not authentic. The museum was then allowed to keep it. It remained with the Moravian Museum for more than 80 years.

The Nazis seized most of the Petscheks' assets and possessions, which Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime nationalized after the war. Franz Petschek, who had run the family's mining businesses in Czechoslovakia, tried from his new home in the U.S. to get the manuscript back but got scant sympathy from the Communist government.

In August 2022, the Moravian Museum returned the manuscript to the heirs of the Petschek family, adhering to the Terezín Declaration, which urged governments to make every effort to return former Jewish properties confiscated by the Nazis, fascists and their collaborators to their original owners.

Before returning the manuscript, the museum exhibited it for five days. It had not been exhibited during the museum's prolonged custody of it. "It's one of the most precious items in our collections", Šindelářová said. "We're sorry about losing it, but it rightly belongs to the Petschek family".[11]

See also

Notes
  1. "beethtranscending". ludwig0van0beethoven.tripod.com.
  2. Marliave, Joseph de (1961). Beethoven's quartets. Jean Escarra, Hilda Andrews. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-20694-7. OCLC 337453.
  3. Kahn, Robert (2010). Beethoven and the Grosse Fuge: Music, Meaning, and Beethoven's Most Difficult Work. Scarecrow Press. pp. 3–6. ISBN 978-1-4616-6405-5. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
  4. "Programme notes on the Beethoven string quartets – The Robert Simpson Society".
  5. Michael Steinberg, in The Beethoven Quartet Companion, ed. Robert Winter and Robert Martin (University of California Press, 1994) p. 227-244
  6. Violinist Holz, qoted in Jean and Brigitte Massin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Fayard, 1967, p. 718.
  7. "what this andante loses in solemnity, it does more than recover in freshness and grace, and it yields to no music from the last period for sensibility."(Joseph Kerman, Les quatuors de Beethoven, French translation, Paris, Seuil, 1988, p. 380.
  8. Theodor Helm, Beethovens Streichquarette, Leipzig, 1921, quoted by Joseph Kerman, Les quatuors de Beethoven, French translation, Paris, Seuil, 1988, p. 380 and 461.
  9. Daniel Gregory Mason, The Quartets of Beethoven, New York, 1947, quoted by Joseph Kerman, Les quatuors de Beethoven, French translation, Paris, Seuil, 1988, pp. 380–381 and 461.
  10. "Voyager – Music on the Golden Record". voyager.jpl.nasa.gov.
  11. "Czech museum to return original Beethoven score to family that fled Holocaust" by Karel Janicek, Times of Israel, December 3, 2022 "Czech museum to return Beethoven manuscript saved from the Nazis to its rightful owners", Euronews.Culture "A Czech Museum Is Returning a Prized Beethoven Score Looted From a Family During World War II." by Caroline Goldstein, Artnet News, December 5, 2022

Further reading
  • Vernon, David (5 September 2023). Beethoven: The String Quartets. Edinburgh: Candle Row Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1739659929.
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