Beethoven's Janus-faced Quartet: Opus 130, the Groâe Fuge and the Allegro

Abstract

When I began this project, I had little notion of the enormity and complexity of my chosen topic. Without the guidance, encouragement, and patience of my advisors Yonatan Malin and Neely Bruce, I would surely have lost my way in the Beethovenian wilderness. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their unwavering love and support, and in particular my father, whose enthusiasm for music of all kinds first inspired me to play and to listen. fugal finale with the sonata-rondo Allegro? Such a biographical question is difficult to answer with absolute confidence, though historical evidence suggests that a mixture of financial inducement, pragmatism, and artistry influenced Beethoven's decision. As Alexander Wheelock Thayer notes in his biography of the composer, "Mathias Artaria, the publisher, who seems in this year [1826] to have entered the circle of the composer's intimate associates, presented the matter to him in a practicable light," offering to "remunerate him separately" for the publication of the Fugue as Op. 133. 2 Drawing on an account of Beethoven's fierce disappointment after the B-flat Quartet's premier, Michael Steinberg assures the Fugue's supporters that "Beethoven of course never doubted the intrinsic quality of his fugue, only its function in the context [of the quartet]." 3 To this, Joseph Braunstein adds that the composer had previously demonstrated a willingness to revise his work at his friends' request, citing his changes to the opera Leonore twenty years earlier. Pragmatism, Braunstein argues, won the day: "He probably realized that the audiences of 1826 … could not understand the language he spoke in the finale of the B-flat quartet," yet "he wished this work to be accepted by the musical world at large." 4 Artaria's offer both enabled the quartet to succeed and earned him extra income. Braunstein goes on to say that Beethoven "did not consider this task a chore" and that on the contrary, the composer "wrote this movement in good spirit and even penned it with gusto." 5