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STRINGÌýQUARTET INÌýF MAJOR, OP.18 NO.1


Smetana Quartet


The Lindsays
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Anyone who writes about Beethoven's sixteen string quartets (seventeen, if we include the 'Grand Fugue' originally destined for the Quartet Op.130, but eventually published as an independent work) divides them into three groups, consisting respectively of 'early', 'middle' and 'late' works. The labels are convenient, but rather misleading when it comes to Beethoven's first set of quartets, Op.18. It's true that at the time he composed it Haydn was busy writing his last string quartets, which he dedicated to the same aristocratic patron, Prince Lobkowitz; but Beethoven's first six quartets are hardly early pieces. He was in his thirtieth year when he completed them, in 1800, and he already had an impressive tally of works to his name. They included nearly a dozen piano sonatas, two cello sonatas, three violin sonatas, three piano trios, and no fewer than five string trios. Beethoven's hesitation in approaching the medium of the string quartet reflects his awareness of the rich legacy of Haydn and Mozart. His string trios (they are masterly, and sadly neglected, works) were his means of dipping a toe into string quartet waters without running the risk of invoking direct comparison with his great predecessors.

The numbering of Beethoven's Op.18 quartets doesn't reflect their chronology. The work we know as No.1 was probably the second of the six to be composed (following No.3 in D major), but it may have been among the last to reach its definitive form. In June 1799, Beethoven sent a copy of it to his theologian friend Karl Amenda, but two years later he asked Amenda not to lend it to anyone. "I have greatly changed it," Beethoven told him, "for only now have I learned how to write quartets properly."
The revisions Beethoven carried out were particularly far-reaching in the opening movement, where he rendered the music's texture more transparent, and reduced the number of appearances of the opening motif during the course of the piece. All the same, that motif - the very first thing we hear in the work - makes itself felt throughout the movement even in its familiar form.

.If Beethoven chose to place this F major work rather than any of its companions at the head of his Op.18 set, it may well have been in view of its fine slow movement - one of the great tragic utterances in his earlier music. According to Karl Amenda, Beethoven wrote it while thinking of the scene in the burial-vault from Romeo and Juliet . Amenda's claim is borne out by a remark found among the sketches for the piece - "les derniers soupirs" (the last sighs).

© Misha Donat

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