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Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Wylerstein. I'm a conductor and I'm the music Director of the Orchestra Nationale de Lille and the chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors, Dee Vaughn, Marty, Walter, Craig, Guy, Kevin, Deborah, Frederick, Daria and Ben, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making season 11 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com stickynotespodcast and if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated. I am currently preparing for about a month of concerts in Lille with two different programs. One of the programs will be with Brahms First Symphony, Elsa Baren's Second Symphony, and the Barber Violin Concerto with the great violinist Renaud Capucon. And the other program will be all French with the overture to Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, the Saint Sans Cello Concerto with the fantastic Nicolas Alstedt, and in the second half we'll have Lily Boulanger's Dan Matin de Printemps, Ravel's Mother Goose Suite, and Ravel's Rhapsody Espagnol. It'll be a really great opportunity to dig into all this repertoire and we're playing it all over France, basically in the north of France and then in Aix en Provence with Renaud's festival, the Easter Festival in Aix en Provence as well. So I'm really looking forward to that. For this week's episode, I've got one of my absolute favorite pieces on the planet and the continuation of my exploration of Beethoven's string quartets. I really hope you enjoy this one. I on Beethoven's Opus 59:2 a quick note before we begin, I do recommend listening, if you haven't already, to my show on Opix one before listening to this episode as I go into a lot of detail about the scope of the three opus 59 quartets that I'll only really touch on during this episode. That episode comes from February of 2024 and is available on all podcast platforms. I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key. I've asked this question before, but I'd love to hear your answers. I'll Start you off with Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony. Well, how about this? How many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end in a minor key? The answer, 1, Op. 59 2, the subject of today's show. And that minor key is hugely important to the this darkest of the three Opix quartets, three towering achievements that changed the string quartet repertoire for good. Beethoven, as I've said many times on this show before, was a revolutionary within limits, always expanding, rethinking and reshaping what was possible without breaking anything beyond repair. But make no mistake, the Opus 59 quartets were revolutionary works. No one had written anything like this before in terms of scope, emotional intensity, difficulty and complexity. In fact, like a few of Beethoven's greatest works, they were received with confusion and in some cases, anger by musicians, audiences and critics. Famously, the cellist of the first string quartet to receive the parts for Opus 59, no. 1 saw the Morse code like one note theme of the second movement of that quartet and threw the music onto the floor and stomped on it. These quartets were Beethoven going out on a limb, applying the intensity and drama of his middle heroic period to a genre that had been at least partly the province of amateur musicians. But not anymore. Op. 59 2, as I said, is the darkest of this group. Four movements all centered around the key of E, and with the exception of the glorious second movement, they are all in minor, presenting a seriousness and directness of purpose that is quite compelling. This might be my favorite of the Opix quartets, and so I'm very excited to dig into it with you today. We'll discuss the enigmatic and the ecstatic aspects of this quartet, as well as Beethoven's own philosophical views on life, which come to light in the second movement, one of Beethoven's greatest creations. All this and more is coming right up on sticky notes. Only six years passed between the composition of Beethoven's first set of six quartets, the Op. 18s, and the three Op. 59 string quartets, nicknamed the Razumovsky Quartets after the man who commissioned Beethoven to write them. In those six years, Beethoven's deafness drastically worsened. He considered ending his own life, but then decided that art and music would carry him forward. This monumental moment in Beethoven's life launched his middle period, an astonishing explosion of creativity and innovation that brought us five string quartets, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth symphonies, as well as the fourth and fifth piano concertos, Violin concerto, several piano sonatas, including the Appassionata sonata, and Beethoven's only Opera, Fidelio. All this in 10 years. Each one of those pieces pushed the boundaries in their own way, and many of them rank as some of the most often performed pieces in the entire Western classical repertoire. Why? What is it about these middle period works? And why do the OP59 string quartets seem to embody the middle period but also stand slightly apart? Well, part of the appeal of the middle period works is their sense of titanic struggle along with heroic triumph. Beethoven's decision to carry on with his life galvanized him, and he seemed to revel in expanding the scale of almost every genre that he wrote in his string quartets became much longer. His symphonies too. Essentially. Beethoven's middle period has an immense sense of ambition. Beethoven essentially ushered in the age of romanticism in music with these compositions. Taking music from a purely abstract and ordered classical form, though that's a huge generalization to one that expressed powerful and urgent personal emotions and even could tell a story without words, Beethoven in 10 years, he basically changed the course of music forever. Now, that's an extremely cursory look at the transition between the classical and romantic period. But since our focus is on opus 59:2 today, I want to drill down onto the special traits of this and the three Op. 59 quartets in general. The Opus 59 quartets absolutely expand scale. They were the longest quartets written up to that period and are still some of the longest regularly performed quartets ever written. They often reflect Titanic's struggle, but they don't have the same kind of heroic cast as some of the other middle period works. The other thing that marks the Opixix quartets is their complexity. Many of Beethoven's middle period works think the symphonies are remarkably direct, but the Opixix quartets often aren't. One review of the time mentioned this, saying three new very long and difficult Beethoven string quartets are attracting the attention of all connoisseurs. The conception is profound and the construction excellent, but they are not easily comprehended. As you know, I normally only quote critics in order to make fun of them, but I actually think there's a lot of truth to that review. So let's go into Opus 59:2 now to address that complexity. Head on. The quartet begins with an ending, two chords that grab our attention immediately. What follows is astonishing in its audaciousness. After these two chords, we hear nothing. A pregnant pause followed by two bars to be played as softly as possible, like the outline of a theme. Then another pause, then another. Two bars of pianissimo. But in a new key 1/2 step above our home key of E minor, then another pause, then two bars of stabbing dissonances, and then finally the arrival of the theme, which only lasts for two bars before being disintegrated by two more powerful chords. And then silence. 30 seconds has gone by in this quartet, and we have been shocked at least four or five times. This is what that critic meant, I think, by not easily comprehended. But take this apart and you see what Beethoven is going to do throughout the movement. If you've followed this show for a long time, or if you know anything about Beethoven, then you know that Beethoven is not like any other composer. He doesn't really write themes all the time. He writes cells, motives, ideas that he then obsessively works over. This motivic or cellular composing was a hallmark of Beethoven's middle and late periods, and it's absolutely present here. But how? Well, remember what I said about the two bars of pianissimo being one half step above our home key. Well, if you listen to the harmony of the opening chords, you hear. And then the two bars afterwards are punctuated by half steps going up. And as the arpeggio goes down, we hear one more half. And then we have the theme placed up by a half step. Half steps, the most emotionally heartrending interval, are the core. They're the backbone. They are the cellular material with which Beethoven builds this movement. The movement is in sonata form, meaning an exposition with two themes, a development where the themes are twisted around and turned upside down, and a recapitulation where the themes come back. And Beethoven is clear about this form to a point. But what might be easier to follow throughout the movement is those half steps running through practically every moment of the score. Beethoven now briefly develops his first theme through a punchy and powerful series of harmonic modulations, often involving a half step. This is not friendly music, and Beethoven is in his most pugilistic mood for this first theme. The relative major in a minor key movement usually marks the second theme. And that's exactly where Beethoven goes to G major. But he's there within about a minute and ten seconds, which is pretty strange in a movement that is going to last nearly 14 minutes. If you know Beethoven, you're used to big development sections, but the length of this movement actually has to do with something else, which we'll talk about later. The second theme is as charming as the first theme is violent. But listen to the answer of the theme in the second violin and how the theme's character changes instantly. Did you hear it. That half step drop at the end should send a cold shiver down your spine. This theme is not so innocent after all, and it seems to be infected with the anxiety of the opening theme. And then we get that sense of disintegration again. Beethoven has written this movement in the meter of 6, 8, often a kind of dance like meter that provides a beautiful lilt and lyricism. Well, we had about 20 seconds of lilt and lyricism in this exposition. But Beethoven doesn't let us stay there for long. The music drops down to pianissimo again and falls hesitatingly and haltingly down and down by half steps. We don't even know what meter we are in anymore. But the cello is going to lead us again with half steps to a huge crescendo. And we conclude the exposition with a kind of, as the writer Kai Christensen says, manic triumph. That to me reminds us much more of the first theme than of the second. But we are stopped in our tracks here. Beethoven writes a repeat for the exposition, which is completely normal and honestly is probably something we need, considering the intensity and the tightness of the exposition. It's only been two minutes and we've been thrown from end to end of the emotional spectrum. And so we repeat this exposition, which gets us to about four minutes into a 14 minute movement, which still seems pretty out of proportion. Well, let's head into the development now. Beethoven arrives into the development with another set of two chords, more shock and awe tactics. Beethoven actually begins the development much like he begins the piece, full of pregnant pauses and harmonic changes, mostly by half steps. But the harmonies are more pungent now and they are actually a bit more emotional. First, Beethoven moves up by a half step, not to a minor key then, but to a brief hint of the G major that marked the second theme. And then we move up again by a half step to ab. And this is where I will quote one of my best sources on the Beethoven quartets, Mark Steinberg of the Brentano String Quartet, who describes moments like these. This the sense is often of escape, of being lifted out of the mortal sphere, stolen away from the weight of reality, perhaps in recognition of a presence beyond the material. This moment of escape is sorely needed and Beethoven doesn't shy away from it. It's a moment of heaven in this stormy world. But as always with Beethoven's minor key movements, reality intervenes. Remember that kind of weird rhythmic thing in the exposition where we couldn't even figure out the meter? Well, Beethoven returns to it here and it begins a grinding kind of drama, what feels like a pressure cooker that is about to explode. But on the second time through the pressure cooker, Beethoven shocks us again and arrives not in E minor or G major, but in his traditional key of triumph, C major, with cascading scales that can't quite escape the feeling of fantasy. But we enjoy it just the same. And as expected, it was just an illusion, as Beethoven just as quickly goes to A minor, a key of death in the classical era. And this leads to a paroxysm of rage punctuated by half step trills like the music can no longer endure this wandering and constant sword switching of keys. And without much warning, the pressure cooker does finally explode back to the E minor of the recapitulation. We expected an extremely long development section because of the proportions of the movement, but Beethoven's is only two minutes long. We're now six minutes into a 14 minute movement and we finish the exposition and development. What's going on here? Well, Beethoven's recapitulation starts out quite similarly to his exposition as well. There are a few small surprises here and there, but for the most part, the recap is standard in its conception. The second theme is even in E major, as it's supposed to be. The only thing that's surprising is that the coda of the recap is in E major, when it probably should be heading towards minor. Now for the actual coda of the movement. But here comes the surprise. Beethoven has not gone to the coda. He has put in a repeat of the entire development and recapitulation sections. And here's another place where Beethoven's genius really shows itself. This movement is complicated, and you can tell that by how much time I'm spending on it. It's not easy to understand, and Beethoven would have known that. We can joke about how angry Beethoven was all the time and how he thought that people didn't understand his music were philistines. But in the end, Beethoven did want his music to be understood and appreciated. He knew that the audiences of the time would need to hear this music again in order to fully comprehend it. He expected his audience to know about sonata form and that they would understand that he repeated this music for them. Nowadays, most audiences don't think in terms of sonata form, so this repeat actually could serve to confuse them further and maybe even to get bored at the length of the movement. But a really great performance kind of points out the formal waypoints. And even though I'm not always a big supporter of repeats, in the case of this first Movement. I think both of them are necessary. Let's go to the coda where Beethoven pulls on our heartstrings with a gorgeous meditation on one of his earliest. The harmony is moving by half steps now, but so much of the dissonance is gone. It's music of deep and personal emotion that Beethoven writes here as if in reflection of the storms that we've gone through. But reality once again intrudes. And that grinding syncopation gives me the feeling of someone banging their heads against a wall before one of those Beethoven codas of remarkable inevitability and drive seems to begin. And just like that, it fades away. It disintegrates again. This is a remarkable movement that I recommend listening to many times. Its power and its creativity and its complexity never fail to amaze me. And all of the suffering we've been through in this first movement is about to be soothed by one of the most consoling movements Beethoven ever wrote. Beethoven marks at the top of the score for this movement. Treat this piece with great feeling. That's not typical for Beethoven, and it's a clue to how important this music was to him.
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Him.
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There are many theories about this movement, though most of them are cousins of the words of Beethoven's friend and pianocomposition student, Karl Czerny, who said that Beethoven told him that the second movement of this quartet was inspired by looking into the starry skies and contemplating the music of the spheres. There's no hard evidence that this is true, but it makes a lot of sense. There have also been theories relating to Immanuel Kantz legendary philosophical line. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe. The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Mark Steinberg connects this movement in the starry skies above us to Beethoven's increasing deafness and isolation from the social world. Whatever the inspiration was, the peacefulness and even dreaminess of this movement is. Is almost unparalleled in Beethoven's output. The key is in E major, a key that is forever associated with a kind of angelic calm, partly because of this movement. But before I get too sentimental, I want to point out that the main theme begins with, you guessed it, a half step. And actually the way the movement begins parallels the first movement. Remember in the first movement how the music moved up by a half step. Well, here the second violin brings it down.
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Sam.
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This gorgeous chorale concluded, we move on to the first quasi variation on the theme. The first violin does a kind of fantasy improvisation over the melody that needs Very little explanation.
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Sam.
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Now begins another of the main motifs that gently drive this a ticking clock esque rhythm that is a presence for much of the movement, Even in total peace. Beethoven writes at the cellular level. But unlike in the first movement, the harmonic motion, by which I mean the speed at which the harmony changes, is glacially slow. We really feel like we're floating. And the idea of contemplating the starry skies and the movement of the planets seems completely natural in the context of this music. In the first movement, Beethoven used those shocking pregnant pauses to break the relentless motion. In this movement, Beethoven uses the absence of that dotted rhythm to create even more of a suspended feeling. Feeling. I can't emphasize enough how rare it is for Beethoven to write in this manner. Beethoven is the driver, the mover, the shaker. Not here. And then we arrive at my personal favorite moment of the whole piece. Beethoven continues the dotted rhythm, but this time in the viola, as the rest of the quartet slowly marks the first and third beats of each bar. Over this, Beethoven writes the word mancando. Now, every classical musician, and of course, every Italian, knows what diminuendo means. Yet softer. Most know more dying away, I would say. Most also know perdendosi, which literally translates to losing oneself. Very few know the word mancando because I've never seen it marked in a score before. Mancando means something like fading out or disappearing, or as Chatgpt says, like the presence of sound disappearing. These subtle differences in language meant a lot to Beethoven, who wrote diminuendo all the time. So this loss of presence in the sound comes almost at an emotional level, and it results in the gentlest, warmest kind of chorale led by the first violin in a gorgeous songbird like cantilena riding over almost pachel bell like chorales in the rest of the quartet.
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Ram.
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Beethoven now lets our first violin songbird come to rest, but this time over a new rhythmic motive. The triplets that the first violin was singing now become the rhythmic underpinning for the chorus coda of this first section. We do hear some moments of the minor key, some moments of danger, but they always quickly pass. But these moments were hints of the sadness to come. As we move into the middle section of the movement, the cello, as always, the harmonic leader, moves slowly by half steps through a series of harmonic changes that take us to a terrifying outburst in F sharp minor. The piece we have been enjoying was almost too beautiful to continue to enjoy.
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Sa.
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And now Beethoven returns to the grinding power of the first movement, not in speed, but in the feeling of pushing into an immovable object. Twice we ram into this wall, and twice we are turned away. And that Moncondo dotted rhythm music now passes to the cello, which slowly brings the group down to a B major chord. And a breathtaking transition occurs, all based around a half step. I'll explain how this works on my Patreon exclusive mini episode, but for now, just listen.
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Sam.
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And we're home. The cello is now playing the improvisatory music from the opening, but it's now grounded on earth. It's an forgive the sentimentality, like Beethoven has brought heaven down to us. For much of the return of the A section. Beethoven doesn't write anything new in terms of musical material, but he varies who plays what part in a way that almost makes it seem like new music, though lovingly familiar. But we then arrive at the point where the music made its turn to darkness in the first section. Where will Beethoven go now? First his triplet rhythm returns and it seems that we are putting that struggle to rest.
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Sam.
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But with that shocking crescendo, Beethoven seems to realize that peacefulness alone will not calm the turbulence of the middle section. With profound passion and musical stabs of pain, always on the surprising harmony, not the expected one, Beethoven breaks through the reminders of that struggle. And the triplet ostinato and E major will carry us to the end of this divine movement.
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Sam.
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Sa. The third movement is a curious one, one that harkens back to Mozart's time, but also to the Russian background of Beethoven's commissioner for the Opus 59 quartets, Count Razumovsky. The count's condition for the commission was that Beethoven include a Russian folk song in each quartet. And Beethoven obliged him in the first two quartets. But we won't hear that at the beginning of the third movement. It only comes in the middle section. First we hear an awkward, confusing melody played over an awkward limping accompaniment, again in E minor. This could not be more contrasting from the divinity of the second movement. In fact, it returns us to the ghostly uncertainty and instability of the first movement. Two more curious things about this A section. One is that Beethoven had built himself quite, quite a reputation for the blinding speed of his third movements. In fact, he had basically invented the genre of the scherzo, which literally translates to the word joke. But Beethoven, again, he didn't really invent something. He had merely supercharged and electrified the three to a bar minuet of Haydn and Mozart's age. And here he seems to not be willing to write a scherzo in his Serious key of E minor. So instead we hear a minuet, but a very Beethovenian version of it. There's no lightness or grace to be found in this music. And in fact, that brings me to the second curious aspect of this movement. Remember in the first moment where we
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ran into the wall,
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And it happened in the second movement as well, And now it happens here in the third. Beethoven's internal logic is as sound as ever. As we begin to unconsciously register these brutal moments as integral to the piece, One more item to note is the prevalence of half steps. Just like in the first two movements, they are all over the place and add to the uneasiness of the mood. And Beethoven isn't done with the surprises. In the trio middle section, Beethoven abruptly changes the mood and the key to an ebullient E major. Here is the Russian folk song,
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Sam.
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Perhaps to underline its simplicity, underneath these scampering triplets, Beethoven does something that I can't tell if it's ironic or not. Every time the Russian theme appears in the score, he writes Russian theme over it, as if we can't tell it's the theme we heard three seconds ago. Whatever the motivation, the music is as carefree as the A section was awkward, a study in contrast, as the section culminates, Beethoven has the theme written in such a way that suggests peeling bells. But just as quickly, it disintegrates, and Beethoven mercilessly moves us back to the opening music of the movement.
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Sam.
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And now Beethoven simply repeats what we've just heard. And he repeats it again. By the end of this movement, we will have heard the A section three times and the Russian theme twice. And Beethoven writes no coda, which means that what we've heard now is what we get. It sends us uneasily into the last movement, wondering what lies in store for us. The last movement is only about five minutes long, and it begins like a musical bomb going off, not in E minor or major, but in C major. Now, don't worry if you didn't clock that. Listen to me. Play the chords on the piano, E minor, then C major, and you'll realize the musical distance between the two. This is a rondo, meaning that the main theme will come back multiple times in the movement, with intervening episodes in between. The main character of the opening theme is its rollicking, almost boyish kind of joy. The accompaniment is actually a sped up version of the dotted rhythm from the second movement. And it bounces along, never really carefree, though, because Beethoven doesn't do carefree. But Beethoven didn't write the key signature in C major. He wrote it in E minor. So what's going on here? It's like the music is refusing to hit E minor, even though it sometimes hints at it. For the first episode, Beethoven does go to a minor key, but this time it's B minor. We're in the vicinity of E, but we're not there yet. And then Beethoven pulls off an incredible trick that really needs to be seen to be believed. Beethoven writes for the three note idea that pervades this movement to be passed around the group in a fragment. It's dizzying, like watching a great tennis match, watching the theme get passed around. And let me tell you, as a player, it's an incredibly stressful moment because if you miss your entrance, it's really a domino effect that can threaten to derail the entire movement. And actually, I have a really great story about that that comes from the fantastic late cellist Joel Krosnick of the Juilliard Quartet. When my group was playing this quartet, Joel Krosnick gave us a coaching, and he told us that in one of the performances of the Juilliard Quartet of this piece, that there was a very fast page turn that Joel missed. He couldn't get the page over in time, knowing that if he missed his ba da dum, it could derail the whole thing. He sang it out loud in quite a loud voice. Bada dum. He felt completely embarrassed by this. But he also said, you know, I kept the performance going, so, you know, you do what you gotta do. He expected to hear about it after the performance, but apparently none of his colleagues noticed. And no one in the audience said a word, except for one person who was a cellist who noticed in the audience. So just a little goes to show you, sometimes we do crazy things on stage that nobody picks up on. And in the end, these bada dum, bada dum, bada dums are really like an engine revving us back up to get home to C major again.
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Sam.
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The second intervening episode is also in C major, and it reminds us that Beethoven has already been in this key during that attempt at triumph. In the first movement, Beethoven reaches back to the beginning of the story to continue the narrative. But it doesn't last long. With the equivalent of a musical temper tantrum, Beethoven writes a fugal like passage that is like quintessential, almost stereotypical Beethoven in its grumpiness and sense of defiant struggle. And finally, with a return to his first intervening episode, we land on E minor. And it seems like actually, we are back home. But those ping pong like bada dumps start floating around the group again. And as if Beethoven is actually trying to escape E minor, we slam back into the wall again in C major.
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Sam.
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But he can't escape. Everywhere Beethoven turns, we end up in E minor again. And suddenly the music starts to disintegrate again, as if it is giving up. But as we know, Beethoven never gives up. So now we hear repeated outbursts as if trying to cast off this E minor off our back. And in honestly, one of my favorite moments of any Beethoven quartet, Beethoven writes what became a quintessential pop and rock music chord progression and revs up the band into its most raucous version of the C major theme we've heard yet. But what's remarkable is that this no longer sounds joyful and bouncy. Beethoven has found a way for C major to sound angry. And soon we'll find out why. As you heard, E minor will not be denied. The tempo picks up and we rush off to the end of what has now become a terrifying tarantella. While this is one of my favorite Beethoven quartets, I won't lie and pretend that it is incredibly easy to understand. It's complex, dark, and the first movement is challenging enough that it puts off some listeners. But I do hope that today's show has shown you what a treasure this piece is. At every moment, Beethoven creates minor and sometimes major miracles of invention. Creativity, emotional commitment. Other than the second movement, I can't really describe this quartet as beautiful. But it's something else. It's a vision of a slightly darker world, one that Beethoven knew how to inhabit better than anyone else. Beethoven accessed in this piece a kind of defiant anger that no other composer really could. But he also found ways to access the mystery within that anger. And that makes it much more emotionally profound than just listening to a simple expression of rage. And in the middle of all this, Beethoven takes us to heaven. Listening to a great Beethoven quartet is a life experience, not only in the moment, but for every time you hear the piece again. I haven't heard this piece or played it in many years. And as I was writing this show, and as you can hear by my voice as I'm recording it, I was astonished again and again by the greatness of what I was hearing. I've run out of superlatives, but you get the idea. There isn't anyone like Beethoven. And I really am so excited to have gotten to share this supreme masterpiece with you today. Thanks so much for listening to Sticky Notes today. We'll have some more exciting stuff for you in a couple of weeks, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps the show gain more visibility. And please send any questions to stickynotespodcastmail.com or my Facebook page, ickynotespodcast. And if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, just head over to patreon.com stickynotespodcast thanks and I'll talk to you again after a while.