Ludwig van Beethoven

Born: December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany
Died: March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria

String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3, Razumovsky

• Composed: 1806
  
• Premiere: Unknown
  
• Duration: approx. 31 minutes

Beethoven’s set of three string quartets Op. 59, known as the “Razumovsky Quartets” after the Russian ambassador to Vienna who commissioned them, all challenged prevailing notions of what the string quartet was and what it could become. Not that Beethoven was any stranger to trying new things: his previous quartets, Op. 18, had tap-tap-tapped on the door to revolution. With Op. 59, Beethoven bashed that door in with a crowbar. The works flew in the face of the popular conception of chamber music as light, genteel entertainment for domestic consumption and instead challenged the listeners while also making extraordinary demands on the performers.  

The quartets’ length, scope and intensity not only puzzled listeners, but openly subverted their expectations. Indeed, this was not wallpaper music meant to provide an agreeable acoustic backdrop to the salons in which they were performed: this was a medium for the composer to openly confront and thwart societal conventions.  

By 1806 Beethoven had a handful of noteworthy achievements under his belt in several genres, opera and piano works among them, which he felt gave him license to explore the expressive potential that was present, albeit dormant, in the late quartets of Haydn and Mozart. By then he knew the rules governing Viennese taste well enough to bend and twist them, and he could subtly manipulate his audiences into accepting degrees of drama and emotion in their music that previous generations would have rejected.  

The dedicatee of the quartets, count Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky, is largely celebrated as a dilettante and patron of the arts. Like many aristocrats of the time, Razumovsky was an excellent musician, “amateur” only in the sense that he had no financial need to earn money performing yet possessing of a high level of technique and musicianship. He had fit in easily among his Viennese contemporaries Mozart and Haydn and had even sporadically studied composition with them. He had his own in-house string quartet, bearing his family name, which provided a stable venue for regular performances of the newest offerings from the Viennese publishers. 

Yet Razumovsky’s lasting contribution to music history was the economic foothold he provided for the establishment of the string quartet as a concert genre, rather than a domestic one. His own string quartet eventually merged with the quartet led by Beethoven’s friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh to form what they deemed the first truly professional string quartet in Europe. The recognition they garnered was pivotal in the durability of the chamber music repertoire and prompted aspirations of artistic sophistication and musical excellence. 

In early 1806, Razumovsky approached Beethoven to commission a set of three string quartets. The two knew each other only tangentially—the count had once requested composition lessons from Beethoven, and the composer had just waved him aside. This commission came with a proviso: the count wished to honor his native land through the inclusion of Russian folk tunes in each of the quartets. Beethoven complied for the first two quartets of the set, but not the third, for which he resorted to fabricating a faux-Russian theme. All three motives feature prominently in the quartets, giving Op. 59 a clear Slavic flavor. 

One external factor is crucial to understanding Beethoven’s works during this period: his sporadic hearing problems. He had already mentioned his concerns five years previous in letters to friends, but his tone had been matter-of-fact rather than despondent, noting some awkwardness in social situations. “l will seize fate by the throat; it shall not crush me completely,” he had written. 

By the time he began work on the quartets, he had resorted to giving himself regular pep-talks, and he wrote mantras in the margins of his musical sketches: “Let your deafness no longer be a secret— even in your art!” says one in the notes for the quartet Op. 59, No. 3. Thus, his disability was meant to propel him forward as a catalyst for creativity rather than a hindrance: his music must not simply be a by-product of his struggle, it should instead testify to the heroism of overcoming it. 

Beethoven's 1805 opera Fidelio had been an important part of his journey toward the Razumovsky quartets. In spite of its structural flaws and the frustrations of its production, it had confronted and enlarged the established forms of melody, rhythm and harmony. But the fundamental themes that anchored the story had also become increasingly significant to Beethoven, who now saw his music as ethically bound to humankind. Fidelio had been an affirmation of the connection between art and morality, between the acoustic and the dramatic, that his new set of quartets would further explore. 

The C major quartet is the shortest and yet the most complex of the three. It begins with the shock of a diminished seventh chord and gradually unfolds outward over a span of four octaves, harmonically suggesting C minor rather than C major. The upbeats to the Allegro establish a rhythmic pulse. The violin solo that follows, although improvisational in character, furnishes the thematic material for the remainder of the movement in a way characteristic of mature Beethoven, who often managed to get the most mileage out of the fewest notes.  

The introduction and theme of the opening movement seem to be musical allusions to Mozart’s quartet, K. 465, “Dissonance.” Likewise, the Andante movement seems to relate to the second movement of Mozart’s quartet in E-flat, K. 428. It is here that Count Razumovsky’s Slavic origins are made evident: its basis is a gentle, rocking 6/8 minor melody, folk-like in flavor but not in pedigree. 

The opening of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59, No. 3

Mozart’s spirit is present in the third and fourth movements as well. The third is not a scherzo, as had become the norm, but rather an old-fashioned minuet in C major, fully Viennese in flavor, and complete with a trio in F. Lulling the listener into a false sense of security, Beethoven has one final trick up his sleeve: he leaves the movement hanging, unfinished. 

The fourth movement is an artful marriage of sonata form with fugue, along the lines of Mozart’s G major quartet, K. 387. The viola begins with nervous energy on a theme created by inverting the Minuet. Violins and cello follow, building to a double climax on a C major triad and a final, decisive cadence that ends the movement, the piece and the Razumovsky cycle in triumph. 

In the early 1800s, as the string quartet came increasingly to be seen as an intellectual rather than a mindless genre, discussions of its merits in music journals of the day took on a new tone. The compositional strength of quartets was as subject to evaluation as their appeal, first in reviews of publications and eventually in theoretical treatises. By 1811, the name “Beethoven” on the title page of a work implied high technical demands. One reviewer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote, “one scarcely needs to be reminded that this quartet is difficult to perform.” And as the violinist Karl Holz later wrote to Beethoven in one of his conversation books, “We rehearse only your quartets, not those of Haydn and Mozart, which work better without rehearsal.” 

The Razumovsky quartets reflect a period of political uncertainty and military tension, as parsed by a man experiencing a profound personal loss: his ability to hear. But they also signal a change in how chamber music would be heard by the public, how it would be experienced, how it would be appreciated, and how it would be taken from the page by an ensemble of four instrumentalists to engage the intellect as well as the heart. 

—Dr. Scot Buzza