i. Assai sostenuto–Allegro
ii. Allegro ma non tanto
iii. Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart. Molto adagio (‘A Holy Song of Thanksgiving offered by a convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode’)
iv. Alla Marcia, assai vivace (attacca)
v. Allegro appassionato–Presto
‘I have the A minor Quartet on the gramophone, and I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly, or at least more than human gaiety, about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.’ These were the words of T.S. Eliot, writing to his friend Stephen Spender in 1931. Whether any or all of the Four Quartets, started in 1935, were inspired by Beethoven’s Op.132 is open to speculation, but given the letter to Spender and the fact that each of Eliot’s Quartets is in five parts, the evidence is certainly intriguing. (Incidentally, in 1931 Eliot had a very limited choice of recordings to have on his gramophone; the Léner Quartet recorded Op.132 in 1924, and the Deman Quartet recorded it in 1927). In a lecture delivered in New Haven in 1933, Eliot spoke again of his quest ‘to get beyond poetry, as Beethoven, in his later works, strove to get beyond music’, a remark prompted by D.H. Lawrence’s comment that ‘the essence of poetry’ was its ‘stark, bare, rocky directness of statement’. This phrase could equally well be applied to Beethoven’s late works. Composed in 1825, Op.132 is an extraordinary work even by the standards his late music.

William Kinderman has described the whole work as ‘laden with pathos of a particularly painful, agonized quality’ and at its heart is long central movement, in which Beethoven gives thanks for recovery from a serious illness. This ‘Song of Thanksgiving’ is interrupted by a ray of hope and recovery, marked ‘with renewed strength’, and on either side of it there are short, dance-like movements to provide contrast – though until a very late stage in the work’s composition Beethoven planned to use what became the ‘Alla danza tedesca’ movement familiar from Op.130 as the fourth movement of Op.132, before deciding to move it (and transpose it down a tone). There was equally intriguing traffic the other way, importing an idea into Op.132 from another work: the main theme for the finale was originally intended as a possible instrumental finale for the Ninth Symphony, and was only once Beethoven decided to write a choral movement and subsequently used in this astonishing string quartet.

Nigel Simeone © 2010