THE STRING QUARTETS
THE STRING QUARTETS
1st Quartet, Opus 18, No. 1, in F.
Dedicated to Prince Lobkovitz.
Allegro con brio—Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato—Scherzo—Allegro.
Composed in 1800 at the age of 30, this first set of quartets belongs to the same period as the great C minor Symphony, No. 5. The music of No. 1 is Mozartian in type, very charming, and the scoring is light and graceful. The Adagio is very beautiful, and one can feel in it the future Beethoven. Indeed we almost arrive at maturity in the episode in D flat in the Finale, where Beethoven uses the melody which he again took up in his ballet "The Men of Prometheus" and in his Third Symphony.
2nd Quartet, Opus 18, No. 2, in G. major.
Allegro—Adagio cantabile—Scherzo—Allegro molto quasi Presto.
This quartet is even more like Mozart and Haydn than No. 1, except for the fact that Beethoven keeps his music in rather higher registers. The Adagio is not so Beethovenish as the slow movement of No. 1, but it contains an episode marked Allegro. The Finale is full of spirit, but it is not the Beethoven in the "unbuttoned" mood of the later works. There is some effective work for the G string on the 1st Violin, for Paganini had already cast his glamour over Europe.