Miró Quartet: Beethoven’s “Harp,” “Serioso” & Opus 127

Beethoven’s string quartets are among the most celebrated works in classical music. In this program, the dynamic Miró Quartet – whose 2018-19 season performances include appearances at the New York Philharmonic and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center – will perform Beethoven’s revolutionary Opus 74, 95, and 127 quartets as part of the quartet’s complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets. Experience the contrast between Beethoven’s warm and gentle Opus 74, nicknamed “Harp,” and the darker and more challenging Opus 95 “Serioso”, and the first of his late quartets, Opus 127.

The Old Church
Premieres Thursday, 2/6 • 7:30 pm PT

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Program

Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74, No. 10 (“Harp”)

Poco adagio — Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Presto — Piu presto quasi prestissimo
Allegretto con variazioni

These three pieces cross the greatest time span of Beethoven’s life as any in our cycle. They are perhaps the three most diverse pieces of the cycle stylistically and definitely represent the most difficult and challenging years personally that Beethoven was to experience in his lifetime. Perhaps this program can be viewed as the “mid-life crisis concert.” They also represent a gradual inward turning of the composer’s focus away from “impressive” music for the public, towards expressing his unique inner personal vision.

The year 1809 marked an important change in Beethoven’s life: he was awarded a perpetual annuity by three wealthy patrons (Archduke Rudolf, Princes Lichky and Lobkowitz), so he would no longer have to live month-to-month solely off his commissions. In a very real sense, he had “arrived.” His status as the leading Viennese composer of his day had already been firmly established in the European cultural scene, and now, as he neared forty, Beethoven had hopes for a calmer life; he even began looking seriously for a wife. The fair hopes of this year were quickly dashed by the invasion of Vienna by the French that May, and the destruction and hardship they brought with them. Beethoven reportedly spent much of the bombardment with his head wrapped in a pillow in his brother’s cellar to protect what remained of his hearing. His no longer robust general health was shaken by the experience, and once it was all over and Vienna fell, he wrote absolutely no music for the next three months. When he did begin writing again, it was with the familiar and intimate form of the string quartet, in the form of Opus 74, “the Harp.” This piece can be seen as an attempt to return to normalcy, the recapturing of a happy dream; the form and length are very similar to the three Opus 59s of a few years previous, yet the general mood is more warm and gentle than these more heroic pieces. Beethoven no longer had something to prove; but for the first time his goal was rather to attempt to bring into being a dream for something better into our harsh world. Grace and playfulness (especially the harp-like plucked arpeggios of the first movement) rule the day, and a new intimacy of expression is felt. Perhaps the scars of the bombardment can be heard in the explosive scherzo, but even this tempestuousness melts quickly into the playful, almost tongue-in-cheek theme and variations finale.

Though he planned to follow the Opus 74 with a least one other quartet (sketches for a never- written C Major quartet exist), life, full of publishers and business as usual, got in his way, and it wasn’t until 1810 that he settled down seriously to write the next quartet in F minor.

The Opus 95 quartet, subtitled “Serioso,” is one of the best known of all Beethoven’s quartets, and truly it encapsulates the stereotyped personality of his middle-aged years that we most associate with the composer today. Terse (it is one of the shortest quartets), shocking, angry, unpredictable, impetuous, and dramatic are all words that could describe the wild-haired man himself as well as this music. Gone is the dream world of Opus 74; in its place is raw emotion. Each movement is very short, almost compressed – so much coming through in such very little time. The drama of the first movement, the mystic song of the second, the heroic anger of the third and the pleading anxiety of the last all whirl by at breakneck speed. The fact that the last movement ends with some of the swiftest and most exhilarating music ever written for quartet seems in seconds to whisk the listener off his feet and into the air in a way only the middle-aged Master could accomplish.

Beethoven was clear in his letters that Opus 95 was “written for a small circle of connoisseurs, and never meant to be heard by the general public.” Indeed, though complete, Beethoven did not even pursue publishing the work until a few years later, in 1816.

If Opus 74 represents Beethoven the idealist, and Opus 95 represents Beethoven the expressionist, Opus 127 represents the fusion of these two poles: in the late quartets, the mature composer has become the Master of The Expressive Ideal.

It wasn’t until twelve years after the completion of Opus 95 that Beethoven returned to the quartet genre. Much of these twelve years are what is commonly termed Beethoven’s “dry” period, in which he barely wrote anything at all. Unsuccessful in finding a wife, and with an annuity rapidly diminishing in value through post-war inflation, he was emotionally embroiled in money troubles, his brother’s death, a failed lawsuit with his sister-in-law, and continued conflict with his nephew and ward, Karl. Despite earlier career success, by age 50 the grueling trials of real-life had caught up to him with a vengeance. To top it off, the new tastes of the Viennese public had moved on to the frothy music of Italian bel canto opera, and held little new interest in his brand of serious Germanic expression. Worst of all, he seemed to have nothing more to say musically in any case. Though still revered, perhaps the grizzled old composer was all written out. In this context it is even more astonishing that Beethoven could seemingly rebound overnight almost out of nowhere, creating in the last years of his life some of the greatest, most inspiring and monumental works of art music of all time: the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony and the Late Quartets.

In 1822 a young Russian Prince and chamber music fan named Nikolas Galitsin first brought up the idea of a new set of quartets to the famous yet completely deaf Beethoven, promising to pay handsomely for three new ones. Busy as Beethoven suddenly was with the Ninth Symphony, the first sketches for a quartet weren’t even begun until 1824. Nonetheless, the work progressed quickly and was ready for a public performance and publication later that year.

In a way the Opus 127 quartet in E-flat parallels the earlier Opus 74 quartet in E-flat: it too is the capturing of the form of a dream, yet now on an unprecedented scale of grandeur. The work was truly something entirely new and unheard of as a quartet at that time: it can be viewed almost as an inspirational symphony in scope, but with an uttermost intimacy of expression unparalleled by any other music yet written by anybody. The quartet has a majesty and glory, and even a mysterious strangeness about it that is truly otherworldly. It is a glimpse into the mind of a visionary, or rather a visionary’s glimpse into the mind of God. It is the experience of a man’s spirit dancing on the edge of the beyond.

In a sense, for me personally, this is the most powerful concert of the entire cycle. In the course of two hours on the concert stage a transformation takes place; it’s as if the composer crosses from our normal world (Opus 74) through the fire (Opus 95) and into the next world (Opus 127), bearing witness as he goes in a most powerful way to the ultimate transformative power of the human spirit, to hope itself. Perhaps it is only in the face of harshest adversity that the best of our human nature is truly revealed in all of its freedom and joy. And it is in the music of the Late Quartets that Beethoven shows us the way.

– John Largess

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95 (“Serioso”)

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127, No. 12

Maestoso – Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile
Scherzando vivace – Presto
Finale

These three pieces cross the greatest time span of Beethoven’s life as any in our cycle. They are perhaps the three most diverse pieces of the cycle stylistically and definitely represent the most difficult and challenging years personally that Beethoven was to experience in his lifetime. Perhaps this program can be viewed as the “mid-life crisis concert.” They also represent a gradual inward turning of the composer’s focus away from “impressive” music for the public, towards expressing his unique inner personal vision.

The year 1809 marked an important change in Beethoven’s life: he was awarded a perpetual annuity by three wealthy patrons (Archduke Rudolf, Princes Lichky and Lobkowitz), so he would no longer have to live month-to-month solely off his commissions. In a very real sense, he had “arrived.” His status as the leading Viennese composer of his day had already been firmly established in the European cultural scene, and now, as he neared forty, Beethoven had hopes for a calmer life; he even began looking seriously for a wife. The fair hopes of this year were quickly dashed by the invasion of Vienna by the French that May, and the destruction and hardship they brought with them. Beethoven reportedly spent much of the bombardment with his head wrapped in a pillow in his brother’s cellar to protect what remained of his hearing. His no longer robust general health was shaken by the experience, and once it was all over and Vienna fell, he wrote absolutely no music for the next three months. When he did begin writing again, it was with the familiar and intimate form of the string quartet, in the form of Opus 74, “the Harp.” This piece can be seen as an attempt to return to normalcy, the recapturing of a happy dream; the form and length are very similar to the three Opus 59s of a few years previous, yet the general mood is more warm and gentle than these more heroic pieces. Beethoven no longer had something to prove; but for the first time his goal was rather to attempt to bring into being a dream for something better into our harsh world. Grace and playfulness (especially the harp-like plucked arpeggios of the first movement) rule the day, and a new intimacy of expression is felt. Perhaps the scars of the bombardment can be heard in the explosive scherzo, but even this tempestuousness melts quickly into the playful, almost tongue-in-cheek theme and variations finale.

Though he planned to follow the Opus 74 with a least one other quartet (sketches for a never- written C Major quartet exist), life, full of publishers and business as usual, got in his way, and it wasn’t until 1810 that he settled down seriously to write the next quartet in F minor.

The Opus 95 quartet, subtitled “Serioso,” is one of the best known of all Beethoven’s quartets, and truly it encapsulates the stereotyped personality of his middle-aged years that we most associate with the composer today. Terse (it is one of the shortest quartets), shocking, angry, unpredictable, impetuous, and dramatic are all words that could describe the wild-haired man himself as well as this music. Gone is the dream world of Opus 74; in its place is raw emotion. Each movement is very short, almost compressed – so much coming through in such very little time. The drama of the first movement, the mystic song of the second, the heroic anger of the third and the pleading anxiety of the last all whirl by at breakneck speed. The fact that the last movement ends with some of the swiftest and most exhilarating music ever written for quartet seems in seconds to whisk the listener off his feet and into the air in a way only the middle-aged Master could accomplish.

Beethoven was clear in his letters that Opus 95 was “written for a small circle of connoisseurs, and never meant to be heard by the general public.” Indeed, though complete, Beethoven did not even pursue publishing the work until a few years later, in 1816.

If Opus 74 represents Beethoven the idealist, and Opus 95 represents Beethoven the expressionist, Opus 127 represents the fusion of these two poles: in the late quartets, the mature composer has become the Master of The Expressive Ideal.

It wasn’t until twelve years after the completion of Opus 95 that Beethoven returned to the quartet genre. Much of these twelve years are what is commonly termed Beethoven’s “dry” period, in which he barely wrote anything at all. Unsuccessful in finding a wife, and with an annuity rapidly diminishing in value through post-war inflation, he was emotionally embroiled in money troubles, his brother’s death, a failed lawsuit with his sister-in-law, and continued conflict with his nephew and ward, Karl. Despite earlier career success, by age 50 the grueling trials of real-life had caught up to him with a vengeance. To top it off, the new tastes of the Viennese public had moved on to the frothy music of Italian bel canto opera, and held little new interest in his brand of serious Germanic expression. Worst of all, he seemed to have nothing more to say musically in any case. Though still revered, perhaps the grizzled old composer was all written out. In this context it is even more astonishing that Beethoven could seemingly rebound overnight almost out of nowhere, creating in the last years of his life some of the greatest, most inspiring and monumental works of art music of all time: the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony and the Late Quartets.

In 1822 a young Russian Prince and chamber music fan named Nikolas Galitsin first brought up the idea of a new set of quartets to the famous yet completely deaf Beethoven, promising to pay handsomely for three new ones. Busy as Beethoven suddenly was with the Ninth Symphony, the first sketches for a quartet weren’t even begun until 1824. Nonetheless, the work progressed quickly and was ready for a public performance and publication later that year.

In a way the Opus 127 quartet in E-flat parallels the earlier Opus 74 quartet in E-flat: it too is the capturing of the form of a dream, yet now on an unprecedented scale of grandeur. The work was truly something entirely new and unheard of as a quartet at that time: it can be viewed almost as an inspirational symphony in scope, but with an uttermost intimacy of expression unparalleled by any other music yet written by anybody. The quartet has a majesty and glory, and even a mysterious strangeness about it that is truly otherworldly. It is a glimpse into the mind of a visionary, or rather a visionary’s glimpse into the mind of God. It is the experience of a man’s spirit dancing on the edge of the beyond.

In a sense, for me personally, this is the most powerful concert of the entire cycle. In the course of two hours on the concert stage a transformation takes place; it’s as if the composer crosses from our normal world (Opus 74) through the fire (Opus 95) and into the next world (Opus 127), bearing witness as he goes in a most powerful way to the ultimate transformative power of the human spirit, to hope itself. Perhaps it is only in the face of harshest adversity that the best of our human nature is truly revealed in all of its freedom and joy. And it is in the music of the Late Quartets that Beethoven shows us the way.

– John Largess

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