Beethoven completed the second part of Prince Galitzin’s commission in July 1825 with his String Quartet in A minor. But it was published as Opus 132 and numbered as Beethoven’s 15th Quartet, making it a confusing numerical anomaly in an otherwise chronological sequence.
Even if we didn’t know that Beethoven was seriously ill for a month during the composition if his Opus 132 String Quartet, he essentially tells us so in the score, titling the middle of five movements:
Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart
Holy Song of Thanksgiving from a Convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode
It is exceptionally rare for Beethoven to include hints in the published scores of his instrumental music that disclose or even hint at possible meanings or narratives connected with the music. The only previous example is the Pastoral Symphony (Day 211).
But this title is very different. This is personal. With this title Beethoven is compelling us to listen to music that is intimately connected with his illness. It even tempts us into going beyond the concept of a “Holy Song” and consider the music as a narrative of sorts.
Even without that provocative title, the long central movement of Opus 132 would still be one of the most extraordinary pieces of music in all of Beethoven — a transcendent time-stopping chorale contrasted with a lilting dance of sublime joy.
In a four-movement architecture, usually the middle two movements are a slow movement and a dance movement, but the order can vary. In Opus 132, Beethoven has it both ways with a five-movement architecture:
Fast — Dance (scherzo) — Slow — Dance (march) — Fast
#Beethoven250 Day 346
String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor (Opus 132), 1825
The always engaging Ariel Quartet in performance at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music.
The Opus 132 String Quartet begins with a slow introduction starting from the cellos and working up. The first four notes are eventually reused in various forms as a basis for other movements. A sudden aggressive violin cadenza interrupts the serenity.
The first movement Allegro of the Opus 132 String Quartet is agitated and tense, almost wracked with indecision as if not quite certain what it wants to be and where it wants to go. Adagio sections and tender themes mix with forceful violin cadenzas and nervous fits.
The second movement Allegro of Opus 132 might be a Minuet, but it’s mostly labeled a Scherzo and sometimes even a Waltz, full of free-form contrapuntal play with numerous variations on little motif nuggets interspersed with lyrical sections.
The Trio section begins with the first violin playing a high-pitched country dance while holding a steady drone on the open A string, and continues with wonderful winding melodies to steady-beat chordal accompaniment, and harder-edge rhythms.
The 3rd movement of Opus 132 is a set of double variations in the form ABABA: Adagio sections in F Lydian mode alternating with D Major Andantes.
But that bland description doesn’t at all convey the emotional impact of the Heiliger Dankgesang, the “Holy Song of Thanksgiving.”
Joseph Kerman calls the Heiliger Dankgesang movement of Opus 132 “utterly radical in conception, a fantastic vision — devastating, unerhört [outrageous].” He writes that the Adagio and Andante sections of the movement
do not mix, they do not understand each other, and it is only by a sort of miracle that they do not wipe each other out or simply collapse. This is one measure of the seriousness of the musical contrast. (The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 253, 4)
The Heiliger Dankgesang begins with an exceptionally slow harmonically static quasi-canonic passage that leads into an even slower chorale, suspended in time and space with such a seemingly fragile existence that it might dissipate in a wisp of smoke.
The chorale sections of the Heiliger Dankgesang are in an ancient church mode called Lydian. It's almost F major but with a B♮ rather than B♭ — in other words, the octave succession of white keys starting with F.
Lydian is one of the traditional modes that Beethoven had been studying in recent years. He used the Dorian mode (a white-key scale starting with D) in the “Et incarnatus” section of the Credo in the Missa Solemnis (Day 327).
In Warren Kirkendale's article on the Missa Solemnis, he suggests that Beethoven chose Lydian for Opus 132 after reading in a book by sixteenth-century Renaissance composer and music theorist Gioseffo Zarlino “that the Lydian mode is a remedy for fatigue of the soul, and similarly for that of the body.” (p. 677)
This might have seemed to Beethoven ideal for music meant to convey both illness and recovery, as well as his more long-term struggle with deafness and despair.
Short sidebar:
Of all the possible diatonic (white note) scales in western music, the major and minor are special:
In the major scale, the tonic triad (C-E-G), the dominant triad (G-B-D) and the subdominant triad (F-A-C) are all major triads.
In the natural minor scale, the tonic triad (A-C-E), the dominant triad (E-G-B) and the subdominant triad (D-F-A) are all minor triads.
None of the other diatonic scales have this consistency.
In the Lydian scale, the tonic triad (F-A-C) is major, and the dominant triad (C-E-G) is also major, but the subdominant triad (B-D-F) is diminished, and hence would be avoided in traditional harmony. This characteristic tends to inhibit traditional chord progressions and cadences that rely on the subdominant. Modulation to the dominant (C major) is easy enough, but Beethoven introduces a C♯ (the only accidental in these Lydian passages) to modulate to A major.
Following the first Lydian section in the Heiliger Dankgesang is a section that Beethoven labels Neue Kraft fühlend (“Feeling New Strength”). There are changes in tempo (to Andante), meter (3/8), and tonality (D major) for a contrasting supple dance. The phrase “Feeling New Strength” suggests a narrative that then implies that the Lydian section is not only a post-illness “Holy Song of Thanksgiving” but also a portrayal of a certain aspect of illness itself — a kind of time-distorting half-awake sickbed delirium.
The second Lydian section in the Heiliger Dankgesang is the same length as the first, but it’s more rhythmically varied. This could be a relapse, but as we slip back into the dark seductive comforts of illness, it’s not quite the same, and a varied Feeling New Strength returns.
The final Lydian section of the Heiliger Dankgesang is the most thrilling. The music is still recognizable as a variation of the chorale that began the movement, but it's torn loose from the confines of the sick bed. Melodies emerge. The window shades are opened. We peer out into the world of the living. Recovery has progressed to the point where a fugue becomes possible. New strength and a tender happiness suffuse the music, there is almost triumph, and finally, a greater understanding of one's own life.
The Opus 132 String Quartet is full of contrasts, but none greater than the 4th movement March that follows the Heileger Dangesang. After such a transcendent experience, a March seems almost vulgar, but how quickly we forget sickness and pain and move on with life's trivialities!
The short March in Opus 132 is followed directly by a startlingly violent Più Allegro recitative combining a violin cadenza, tremolos, and sharp chords that reminds us of the recitative cleansing process in the Ninth Symphony Finale. Nicht diese Töne!
The Opus 132 songful Rondo Finale seems bittersweet at first, but goes through myriad moods, grappling with issues left unresolved by the first movement, but once the tempo is ramped up to Presto, and it blossoms into A major, we know that all’s right with the world.
#Beethoven250 Day 346
String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor (Opus 132), 1825
The wonderful Esmé Quartet performing in October 2020 in a church in Brixen.
The first private performance of the Opus 132 String Quartet was on 9 September 1825 with the Opus 127 personnel of Ignaz Schuppanzigh and Karl Holz (violins), Franz Weiss (viola), and Joseph Lincke (cello), this time with adequate rehearsals and better results. They played it twice for an audience that included Sir George Smart visiting from London where he had conducted the first performances of the Ninth Symphony six months earlier.
In his book The Interior Beethoven (1975), Irving Kolodin writes about a more literary introduction to Beethoven’s Opus 132 String Quartet:
Thousands of persons who know little else about the chamber music of Beethoven came to know about this work from the part it plays in Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point, and the author’s eloquent description of its appeal for his character, Maurice Spandrell.
I’m not so sure that’s true now, but reading Huxley’s description in Point Counter Point was an important part of my coming of age, as I discussed in my blog post “Exquisitely Slow Music”), written on the 50th anniversary of Huxley’s death.
In Point Counter Point, Spandrell believes that the Heiliger Dankgesang “proves all kinds of things — God, the soul, goodness — unescapably.”
I discovered only recently that in the 1920s, Huxley knew J. W. N. Sullivan, author of the influential Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, published in 1927, a year before Point Counter Point. It might be that Huxley was inspired by Sullivan’s book, or even parodying Sullivan’s idiosyncratic depiction of spirituality in Beethoven’s music.