String Quartets in Beethoven’s Europe

276 Pages·2022·14.999 MB·English

by  Nancy November (ed.)

String
Quartets
in
Beethoven’s
Europe

String
Quartets
in
Beethoven’s
Europe
Edited by Nancy November
B O S TO N
2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: November, Nancy, editor.
Title: String quartets in Beethoven’s Europe / edited by Nancy November.
Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2022. | Includes
   bibliographical references and index. 
Identifiers: LCCN 2021053590 (print) | LCCN 2021053591 (ebook) |
   ISBN 9781644697870 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644697887 (adobe pdf) |
   ISBN 9781644697894 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: String quartet—18th century. | String quartet—19th century. 
Classification: LCC ML1160 .S84 2022  (print) | LCC ML1160  (ebook) | DDC 
   785/.7194—dc23 
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021053590
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021053591
ISBN 9781644697870 (hardback)
ISBN 9781644697887 (adobe pdf)
ISBN 9781644697894 (epub)  
Copyright © 2022 Academic Studies Press
All rights reserved
Book design by Tatiana Vernikov
Cover design by Ivan Grave
On the cover:  String quartet (Lithography, 18th century). Mozart Museum, Prague, Czech
Republic. Reproduced by permission. 
Published by Academic Studies Press
1577 Beacon Street
Brookline, MA 02446, USA
[email protected]
www academicstudiespress.com
Contents
Acknowledgments 6
Introduction 7
1. His Master’s Voice? Ries, Reputation, and the String Quartet
Allan Badley 14
2. The “Middle-Period” String Quartets of Spohr and Beethoven
Nancy November 43
3. Counterpoint without Anxiety? Andreas Romberg’s String Quartets Op. 2,
Dedicated to Haydn
W. Dean Sutcliffe 66
4. On the Fugues in Anton Reicha’s Quatuor Scientifique: Between Tradition
and Innovation
Mai Koshikakezawa 108
5. The Other “Razumovsky” Quartets: Franz Weiss’s Op. 8 and the Formation
of Vienna’s Kennerpublikum
Mark Ferraguto 130
6. Hyacinthe Jadin and the Sound of Revolution: Recovering French String
Quartet Aesthetics in 1790s Paris
Callum Blackmore 170
7. “One for the Rode”: The Contribution of Pierre Rode and the Quatuor
Brillant to the Early Nineteenth-Century String Quartet
Sam Girling 207
8. A Surprise to the Ears, an Amusement for the Eyes: Compositional Strategy
and Audience Response to String Quartets ca. 1800
Yoko Maruyama 228
9. The Canonization of Beethoven’s String Quartets in the Musikalisches
Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1803
Christian Speck 248
Contributors 268
Index 271
Acknowledgements
This book was supported by a generous grant from the University of Auckland
Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries Research Development Fund. I am
grateful to Sam Girling for his invaluable assistance with the preparation of this
volume, and to Janet Hughes for editorial advice.
Nancy November
Introduction
In 1793 Heinrich Christoph Koch observed that the string quartet was the “dar-
ling of small musical establishments.”1 Yet today the only works we regularly
hear, perform, and study from this rich repertory of chamber music ca. 1800 are
original string quartets by a handful of canonic composers. When it was pub-
lished, such chamber music circulated in a format designed for performance,
not study (that is, it was published as performance parts, not in score). So much
of this music did not enter readily into the channels of musical canon formation
that opened up in the public sphere of concert life, review culture, and music
scholarship in the early to mid-nineteenth century.
Who composed string quartets ca. 1800 other than the Viennese canoni-
cal Classical composers—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven? Where were they
played, why, and by whom? These largely private-sphere repertoires have all but
disappeared from view, except for the canonical “Viennese Classical quartets,”
so there is no easy way to answer these questions. And a fascinating repertory
of varied string quartets, which blur boundaries between public and private
spheres, and resist traditional notions of classical chamber music as autono-
mous works of “pure” instrumental music, has hardly been studied or heard
to date.
This book helps to answer these questions and fill this gap. It is the first
detailed study of string quartets in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth cen-
tury Europe. The book brings together the work of nine scholars who explore
little-studied aspects of this multi-faceted genre. Together, this book’s chapters
deal with compositional responses to Beethoven’s string quartets and the pres-
tige of the genre; varied compositional practices in string quartet writing, with
a particular emphasis on texture and performance elements; and the reception
of Beethoven’s string quartets ca. 1800. They include discussion of quartets
composed for the amateur and connoisseur markets in Beethoven’s Europe;
virtuosity, the French Violin School, and the quatuor brillant; the relationship
between quartet composers and their audiences during Beethoven’s era; and the
1 Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Einleitung zur Composition, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Böhme,
1793), 325.
8 Introduction
cross-pollination of quartet styles in Europe’s musical centers such as Vienna,
Paris, and St. Petersburg.
The emphasis on the Viennese string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven dates back to the seminal but narrowly-couched late nineteenth-
century work of Ludwig Nohl (1885).2 Recently scholars have started to
expand our understanding of classical chamber music, taking in a broader
variety of composers, and producing scholarly editions of chamber music
by lesser-studied composers of the early nineteenth century. But the empha-
sis remains on canonical composers. The authors in this volume expand the
scope in terms of composers and attention to context, considering the vari-
ous kinds of string quartets composed at this time, and their performance and
reception.
Most other investigations of chamber music in this era are repertory studies:
the emphasis is firmly on the music, and “context” means musical context. Thus
chamber music is understood to be “autonomous”—cut off from social mean-
ings—and the chance to explore how it functioned in society, and even helped
shape society, is missed. Part of the problem is that scholars tend to downplay
the act of performance, so this chamber music’s essential “social” (interactive)
nature is not well understood. Recent work on sociability, aesthetics, and per-
formance in chamber music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-
ries provides models that the book extends.3
Regarding social context for this repertoire, key books on musical life in Aus-
tria and Germany pertaining to this era are social histories, dealing mainly with
public-sphere music making. This emphasis is typical, dating back to Eduard
Hanslick’s 1869 study.4 This book gives private-sphere music-making, and in-
deed the concepts of “public” and “private” with regard to musical life in Vienna
2 Ludwig Nohl, Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Kammermusik und ihre Bedeutung für den
Musiker (Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn, 1885).
3 See, for example, Mary Hunter, “To Play as if from the Soul of the Composer: The Idea of
the Performer in Early Romantic Aesthetics,” Journal of the American Musicological Society,
58 (2005): 357–398; Elisabeth Le Guin, Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicol-
ogy (Berkeley, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); Giselher Schubert, “Kammermusik
und spielerischer Impuls: zum Streichquartett in der Weimarer Republik,” in Ereignis und
Exegese: Musikalische Interpretation—Interpretation der Musik, ed. Camilla Bork, Tobias
Klein, and Burkhard Meischein (Schliengen: Argus, 2011), 635–643; and W. Dean Sutcliffe,
Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociablity: Haydn, Mozart and Friends (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2019).
4 Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien, 2 vols. (Vienna: Braumüller,
1869–1870).
Introduction 9
at this time, much-needed critical scrutiny. More broadly, the overall aim of the
book is to challenge and critically evaluate our historical, ideological, musical,
and sociological understanding of the string quartet in Beethoven’s era. These
essays add considerably to our understanding of chamber music around 1800, in
four main ways. First, they permit several new perspectives on the cultivation of
string quartets in his era, and chamber music more generally: we move beyond
canonic repertoire and composers to discover a broader frame of reference for
considering chamber music and its contexts in the crucial period around 1800,
when concert life was beginning, but “private” music was still flourishing and
serving important social and musical functions.
Second, this book takes a critical look at the idea of the string quartet as an
“autonomous” genre, one largely shut off from social moorings. The works that
are discussed become much more meaningful, socially and musically, when we
pay attention to the end users (virtuosos, connoisseurs of and especially ama-
teurs) for whom they were written, and the various circumstances and inspira-
tions for their creation. The nine chapters help us to see the wide range of works
that fall under the generic heading “string quartet.” The field was not dominated
by “connoisseur” music or by music that was relatively difficult to play (unlike
the canonical middle- and late-period Beethoven quartets). Rather, works des-
tined for amateur performance in the home were still vitally important to the
culture of chamber music.
There has been much weight on Vienna in histories of chamber music
around 1800. But this book permits an understanding of the reception of “Vien-
nese classicism” in chamber music, as well as a critique of that term. The work of
composers and arrangers from Berlin, Braunschweig, Paris, London, and other
important centers of musical activity in Europe during the era are studied, and
their approaches to the genre compared.
In terms of benefits to performers and amateurs of music, the book broadens
understanding beyond the currently available offerings of chamber music from
this era. There are numerous modern editions of string quartets from the period,
including recent editions of little-studied works. But the coverage of composers
and works is not yet great enough to give a good sense of the different types of
quartet that were in vogue at the time. Composers such as Anton Reicha, Louis
Spohr, Pierre Rode, and Ferdinand Ries were all important composers of string
quartets, whose works are hardly known today. This research into their works,
and their contexts, allows us to study string quartet types in detail, providing us
with a better understanding of relationships between audience, style, and social
function in this repertory.
10 Introduction
In chapter one Allan Badley considers the work of Beethoven’s friend and
erstwhile pupil Ferdinand Ries, who composed string quartets throughout his
career. The quartets of opp. 126 and 150 are fascinating for a number of reasons.
Their varied dates of composition place them between the publication of the
last of Beethoven’s middle-period quartets (op. 95) and the composition and
publication of his late quartets. On the one hand, these works represent a pos-
sible response on Ries’s part to the challenge offered by Beethoven’s middle-
period quartets; however, they also reflect different influences, a reminder that
however much Ries might have admired Beethoven, the professional environ-
ments in which he worked were very different and demanded a different style
of music.
Nancy November considers the interaction and quartet-related exchange
between Beethoven and another well-known contemporary, Louis Spohr.
Chapter two places quartets by Beethoven and Spohr in the context of the de-
velopment of the genre during Beethoven’s lifetime. Despite the different cir-
cumstances of their careers, the string quartets of Beethoven and Spohr offer
some points of comparison with regard to the most important quartet types of
the time: virtuoso quartets, which are intended to showcase the first violin; con-
certante quartets, which are suitable for performance at home, and connoisseur
quartets, which bring compositional skill to the fore and challenge the listener.
Stylistically, both composers cultivated vocal and melancholy aspects that reflect
the mood and aesthetics of the times. The chapter considers two string quartets
in E flat major as a starting point for compositional comparison: Beethoven’s op.
74 (“Harp”) and Spohr’s op. 29, no. 1.
We turn to “anxiety of influence” in chapter three. Influence has been a topic
of considerable interest with regard to the music of this era and especially the ca-
nonical composers of Viennese classicism. But two other recent areas of interest
in scholarship for music of this era, the topic and schema theories, have served
to undermine the all too easy identification of thematic and formal ‘borrowings’
as ‘influence’.
Still, emulation, modelling, and homage were and integral part of string
quartet culture in the era in question. Composers after Haydn often set out to
engage with his achievements. The most obvious cases involve those many com-
posers who dedicated a set of quartets to Haydn. For example, Andreas Romberg
(1767–1821) honored Haydn with his three String Quartets op. 2, published in
1799. Dedication, in these circumstances, acknowledges influence and invites
comparison. But how does the younger composer aim to impress; how does he
show that he has understood the quality of the original? These questions are