The other trios for piano and strings are the pair in D major and E-flat, opus 70, and the supremely great one in B flat, opus 97, called the “Archduke” Trio because it was dedicated to the composer’s friend and pupil, the Archduke Rudolph. The Opus 70 creations are remarkable for the somewhat restless, indeed forbidding, quality that fills some of their pages. The first has been named the “Ghost” Trio on account of an eerie figure that pervades the slow movement and lends it a strangely weird and hollow sound. The “Archduke” Trio has a spaciousness and elevation, particularly in its Largo, which is a series of five variations on a theme in the character of a hymn. Wisely enough, Beethoven placed the Scherzo before the profound slow movement, as he was again to do in the “Hammerklavier” Sonata and the Ninth Symphony. But this scherzo utilizes in its middle part a curious, winding chromatic figure which ranks with the master’s most striking ideas at this stage of his progress.
Between 1799 and 1802 Beethoven wrote eight of his ten sonatas for violin and piano. The most famous of these eight are the fifth—the so-called “Spring” Sonata in F, opus 24, which opens with a theme of lovely grace and has an adorable serenity throughout its four movements—and the set in A major, C minor, and G major, opus 30, which was published with a dedication to Czar Alexander I of Russia. The C minor Sonata reveals a heroic quality which lends it something of the spirit of the “Eroica” Symphony, and the closing Presto of the finale has about it an element of dramatic grandeur. However, none of these sonatas quite reaches the level of the “Kreutzer” or the much later Sonata in G major, opus 96. The A major, opus 47, derived its name from the fact that it was dedicated to Rudolph Kreutzer. It was first played by a mulatto violinist named Bridgetower, while the composer performed the piano part. Despite the haste with which the work was composed (Czerny spoke of “four days”), the sonata, “written in a very concertante style,” has remained probably the best-known and most widely popular of all Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano. The music has an expansiveness and plenitude that surpass any other work Beethoven designed for this instrumental combination. The finale, a whirlwind Presto originally conceived for the first sonata of the opus 30 set, influenced Schubert when he composed the last movement of his D minor Quartet. Undoubtedly it is the most original, not to say the most exciting, part of the work—more so, indeed, than the Andante, with its series of variations so arranged that each artist is given his adroitly balanced share.
The G major Sonata, composed in 1812 and first performed by the French violinist Pierre Rode and the Archduke Rudolph, is unquestionably the most intellectual and the subtlest of Beethoven’s violin sonatas. In any case it has some of the unmistakable traits of the master’s later style about it.
The sonatas for cello and piano, in F major and G minor, were composed as early as 1796 and performed in Berlin before the King of Prussia by Beethoven and the Court cellist, Duport. But the memorable cello sonatas of Beethoven’s are the one in A major, opus 69, one of his most lavish and magnificent works; and the C major and D major, opus 102. The first named, like the “Kreutzer” Sonata or the “Appassionata” of the piano series, is a creation that needs no defense and no far-fetched explanations. On the other hand, the opus 102 pair, despite their indisputable profundities, are among Beethoven’s more unapproachable and recondite works. Indeed, they have about them a certain hard-shelled quality which scarcely lends them an especially intimate or endearing effect.
String Quartets
The great series of string quartets begins with the six of opus 18, published in 1801, and concludes, officially speaking, with the masterpiece in F major, opus 135, completed only in 1826, but not printed till something like half a year after his death. The half-dozen works constituting the earlier opus had been ripening in the form of sketches and experiments of one sort or another for several years. They were finally issued in two numbers, each consisting of three scores. It is not possible to determine precisely the order in which they were written, but that fact is unimportant because the lot do not exhibit any definite line of development. It seems that one version of the first quartet, in F, was completed in 1799. Beethoven gave it to his friend, the young ecclesiastical student Carl Amenda, but asked him to show it to nobody because “I have altered it considerably, having just learned to compose quartets aright.” Bekker finds that the revision “tends to a freer, more soloistic treatment of the accompanying parts, a clearer individualization of the cello part and a greater tonal delicacy in the ensemble effects.... The main idea of the composition, however, remained unchanged. This is no disadvantage, for the fresh naiveté of the content and the unassuming clarity of structure are great charms, and more would have been lost than gained by overmeticulous revision. As the work stands it is gratifying to the performer and offers pleasant, not over difficult problems to the listener.”
The finest part of the work is undoubtedly the second movement, an “Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato.” It is the richest in texture and certainly the most poetic and emotional of the four. When the composer played it to Amenda he is said to have inquired what the music suggested to him. “It suggests a lover’s parting,” replied Amenda; whereupon Beethoven replied, “Well, the tomb scene from Romeo and Juliet was in my mind.” And Bekker insists that this Adagio is “a most moving song of sorrow such as only Beethoven could accomplish when he turned to the grave D minor key.”
The second quartet, in G major, has been christened in some German countries the “Compliment Quartet.” It is graceful and rather courtly but it reaches none of the depths of the more moving pages of the preceding work, The Finale, however, is an instance of that “unbuttoned humor” that Beethoven was to exhibit on later occasions and of which he gave us supreme instances in the last movement of the Seventh Symphony, the Eighth Symphony, and moments in the last quartets, the “Diabelli Variations,” and several of the final piano sonatas. Opus 18, No. 3, in D, is likewise marked by a quality of gaiety, though hardly of the “unbuttoned” kind.
The fourth work of the opus 18 set, in C minor, is more or less a work distinct from its companions. “A mood of deep seriousness is common to it and the C major Quintet, opus 29,” believes Bekker, “but the Quartet is full of passionate excitement,” and he alludes to its “mournful earnestness ... and restless dissatisfaction, the very opposite of the cheerful sense of concord with the world and mankind expressed in the other five.” The Quartet in A major has been termed Mozartean by some, operatic by others. Certainly it is fluent and lilting music, of which the Minuet is in some respects the most winning portion even if the final Allegro excels it in expressiveness.
The B-flat Quartet, sixth of the series, is particularly significant for the sombre adagio beginning of its otherwise jubilant allegretto Finale. Beethoven has headed this introduction (which is recalled dramatically during the movement) “La Malinconia: Questo pezzo si deve trattare colla più gran delicatezza” (“Melancholy: this piece must be played with the greatest delicacy”). This eerie and wholly romantic movement is a true glimpse of the Beethoven into whose newer world we shall presently penetrate.