# Late quartets #2: Op. 132



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Now the second written, Op. 132 in A minor. Comments? Like it? Not?

There's a pretty famous movement in here. Read Huxley, or see the 2009 movie "The Soloist."


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

As a young discoverer of classical music (high school age, maybe 16) I was so amazed by Beethoven's late quartets that I wrote a rather lengthy, rapturous, and probably embarrassingly florid essay on the slow movement, the "heilige Dankgesang," of Beethoven's Op. 132. I've unfortunately lost that essay, but I remember it as an attempt to argue that the music went beyond the expression of nameable emotions to an evocation of something beyond emotion and beyond categories, something transcendental. Not very original (though at 16 I must have felt terribly insightful writing it), but pretty much the way I still feel about late Beethoven, especially in the quartets. I remain to some degree baffled by this profound, original, unsurpassable music, but I'm sure that "liking" would be too weak a term for how I feel about it. Indeed it seems irrelevant to me how much I actually like it. In burning letters it says "I AM," and I fall down and believe.


----------



## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

Woodduck pretty much sums up my feelings better than I can express. These late Beethoven works are probably the peak of all music for me, if only inches higher than Mozart and Bach's highest peaks. They are probably my best reason to believe there is something else out there that science can't even begin to describe.


----------



## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

> Woodduck pretty much sums up my feelings better than I can express. These late Beethoven works are probably the peak of all music for me, if only inches higher than Mozart and Bach's highest peaks. They are probably my best reason to believe there is something else out there that science can't even begin to describe.


Well said sir. Op. 132 is a grand composition that is part of my weekly musical diet. The "Heiliger Dankgesang" is extraordinary in that it is brilliantly innovative with its use of a rather bland church mode the Lydian. What Beethoven does with it is absolutely astounding and Beethoven shows he's still a master dramatist with music. He started composing it after a very bad sickness that left him bedridden for many days and its his way of thanking the deity for his recovery. My rank: Masterpiece.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

That illness during the work's gestation period may have caused the sidetrack that 132 almost is. Beethoven managed to bring it back online, but it was a near thing. The Heileger Dankgesang is glorious, but it's an outlier.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Fugue Meister said:


> Well said sir. Op. 132 is a grand composition that is part of my weekly musical diet. The "Heiliger Dankgesang" is extraordinary in that it is brilliantly innovative with its use of a rather bland church mode the Lydian. What Beethoven does with it is absolutely astounding and Beethoven shows he's still a master dramatist with music. He started composing it after a very bad sickness that left him bedridden for many days and its his way of thanking the deity for his recovery. My rank: Masterpiece.


What do you think of the music that comes before and after the heiliger dankgesang? There is rather a lot of it. And the title heiliger dankgesang does seem to rather invite a narrative view of the whole quartet.

The last movement especially is very odd emotionally. I don't get the feeling in that final movement that his joy on having recovered from illness is altogether unmitigated - as if the experience of serious illness had tainted him for ever. The dancing music at the end seems to me to be wearing a rictus grin.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ukko said:


> That illness during the work's gestation period may have caused the sidetrack that 132 almost is. Beethoven managed to bring it back online, but it was a near thing. The Heileger Dankgesang is glorious, but it's an outlier.


Well can you say some more please. A sidetrack from what?


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> Well can you say some more please. A sidetrack from what?


The Plan. You may as well ignore anything I write, _Mandryka_. We are not on compatible wavelengths.

Ships passing in the night.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ukko said:


> That illness during the work's gestation period may have caused the sidetrack that 132 almost is. Beethoven managed to bring it back online, but it was a near thing. The Heileger Dankgesang is glorious, but it's an outlier.


I too am curious about this statement. Beethoven's late works are full of strange contrasts which some (including a musically sensitive friend of mine) find baffling. B. jokingly described his Op. 131, the c-sharp minor quartet, to his publisher as "bits and pieces of this and that" (free paraphrase from memory), which apparently alarmed the poor man. Do you find the "heiliger Dankgesang" incongruous or unsatisfying in its context? Is it any odder than a lot of the other music in the late quartets and sonatas?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Duplicate post. Poof!


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Some musicologists have seen the entire Op. 132 as the history of a serious illness.
Mvmt 1 - Feverish, anguished, tossing and turning in fever
Mvmt 2 - The low point, no energy, just this boring silly tune playing over and over...
Mvmt 3 - I feel better, thank the powers that be!
Mvmt 4 - In fact, I feel like marching around my apartment
Mvmt 5 - Back to work! Time to resuscitate this great tune left over from the Choral.

:lol:


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I too am curious about this statement. Beethoven's late works are full of strange contrasts which some (including a musically sensitive friend of mine) find baffling. B. jokingly described his Op. 131, the c-sharp minor quartet, to his publisher as "bits and pieces of this and that" (free paraphrase from memory), which apparently alarmed the poor man. Do you find the "heiliger Dankgesang" incongruous or unsatisfying in its context? Is it any odder than a lot of the other music in the late quartets and sonatas?


It ain't odd; it just wasn't in the plan.


----------



## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> What do you think of the music that comes before and after the heiliger dankgesang? There is rather a lot of it. And the title heiliger dankgesang does seem to rather invite a narrative view of the whole quartet.
> 
> The last movement especially is very odd emotionally. I don't get the feeling in that final movement that his joy on having recovered from illness is altogether unmitigated - as if the experience of serious illness had tainted him for ever. The dancing music at the end seems to me to be wearing a rictus grin.


The first and last movements are my favorites op. 132, I just am fascinated by what he was able to achieve out of this "white key only" church mode.

Agreed with you on your idea he somehow felt a permanent weakening in himself even after the recovery. It's imbued with a major sense of melancholy but Beethoven's optimism in the face of insurmountable odds always wins out and it's definitely true of op. 132.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ukko said:


> It ain't odd; it just wasn't in the plan.


I see ..........


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I see ..........


You probably don't. It seems fairly obvious to me, but then I have powers similar to the Shadow's.

[Edit: Well, maybe not all that similar. What I do have is a brain abnormality that 'sees' relatedness, often where it doesn't exist (so the doubters inform me). In the late sonatas the subject movement doesn't fit the... whatever it is that I see.]


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

As a note -- my wife is quite a fan of late Beethoven. Some time back I played the Op. 132 and Op. 131 for her back to back and asked which one was "better." Her verdict: A tie.

Another note, re Woodduck's earlier post: Beethoven wrote his publisher that the Op. 131 was “cobbled together out of various things stolen from here and there,” alarming the poor fellow. Turns out that the publisher had earlier objected to the Op. 119 Bagatelles because they contained quite a few older pieces (and thus the Op. 126, all new work), and had pointedly asked for "something new" this time. So Beethoven was poking a bit of fun, I think.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Some musicologists have seen the entire Op. 132 as the history of a serious illness.
> Mvmt 1 - Feverish, anguished, tossing and turning in fever
> Mvmt 2 - The low point, no energy, just this boring silly tune playing over and over...
> Mvmt 3 - I feel better, thank the powers that be!
> ...


A _program_! How utterly nineteenth-century!

It works for me. Momentarily, at least.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ukko said:


> You probably don't. It seems fairly obvious to me, but then I have powers similar to the Shadow's.
> 
> [Edit: Well, maybe not all that similar. What I do have is a brain abnormality that 'sees' relatedness, often where it doesn't exist (so the doubters inform me). In the late sonatas the subject movement doesn't fit the... whatever it is that I see.]


Ah. Now I _really_ see.


----------



## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Ah. Now I _really_ see.


Hahahahahahahaha


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Fugue Meister said:


> The first and last movements are my favorites op. 132, I just am fascinated by what he was able to achieve out of this "white key only" church mode.
> 
> Agreed with you on your idea he somehow felt a permanent weakening in himself even after the recovery. It's imbued with a major sense of melancholy but *Beethoven's optimism in the face of insurmountable odds always wins out* and it's definitely true of op. 132.


Not IMO. At least not in a good performance. I don't think 5 is optimistic, and it's 5, not 3, which is the climax. I think that the quartet as a whole is Beethoven's profoundest quartet.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> A _program_! How utterly nineteenth-century!
> 
> It works for me. Momentarily, at least.


But where Ken's program is unimaginative is in the second half of the quartet.


----------



## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Not IMO. At least not in a good performance. I don't think 5 is optimistic, and it's 5, not 3, which is the climax. I think that the quartet as a whole is Beethoven's profoundest quartet.


Yes 5 is the climax and it is melancholy... until the very end that's where the optimism seeps in and takes over.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The greatest string quartet ever written.

Beethoven "discovered" Mahler before Mahler was even born in the incomparable "Hymn of Thanksgiving" movement.

The fourth movement anticipates Brahms.

A work at the very summit of human creation.


----------



## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

hpowders said:


> The greatest string quartet ever written.
> 
> Beethoven "discovered" Mahler before Mahler was even born in the incomparable "Hymn of Thanksgiving" movement.
> 
> ...


Not meaning to detract from this but I think the op. 131 or op. 130 fits that bill better. Op. 131 was Beethoven's favorite composition he ever wrote besides the Missa Solemnis. So powders, why does op. 132 speak to you so deeply?


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Seems to me that the finale of Op. 132 is a tad ambiguous. Those who expect it to be either "triumphant" or "tragic" will be disappointed. It reminds me of several of Shostakovich's final movements in fact.

Since the theme was originally intended for the finale of the 9th Symphony, it's interesting to listen to it here and imagine how it might sound played by a full orchestra. Hear how Beethoven pulls the music around rather violently early on, with all kinds of rhythmic dislocations? We could have had something akin to the Grosse Fuge wrapping up the Choral...


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Since the theme was originally intended for the finale of the 9th Symphony, it's interesting to listen to it here and imagine how it might sound played by a full orchestra. Hear how Beethoven pulls the music around rather violently early on, with all kinds of rhythmic dislocations? We could have had something akin to the Grosse Fuge wrapping up the Choral...


I'm not sure we don't already. Some of the fugal sections in the Ninth's finale remind me of the B-flat major Great Fugue, and the music is certainly filled with violence, compound intervals, and dissonances.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Fugue Meister said:


> Not meaning to detract from this but I think the op. 131 or op. 130 fits that bill better. Op. 131 was Beethoven's favorite composition he ever wrote besides the Missa Solemnis. So powders, why does op. 132 speak to you so deeply?


Go back and re-read my post. No other explanation needed.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Seems to me that the finale of Op. 132 is a tad ambiguous. Those who expect it to be either "triumphant" or "tragic" will be disappointed. It reminds me of several of Shostakovich's final movements in fact.


Indeed. That's what I was trying to get at by suggesting that any optimism there is like a rictus grin. And it's that complexity which makes me think that the quartet as a whole is a very deep response to sickness and recovery. You know - you're ill, you recover, you're pleased to have recovered but . . . a very disturbing side of life has made itself real to you.


----------

