The Late Quartets

Five quartets written by a deaf man in two years — the strangest, most inward music of the 19th century, and the summit of the form.

The commission

In 1822 Prince Nicolas Galitzin of St. Petersburg commissioned three quartets; Beethoven delivered Opp. 127 (E-flat, 1824–25), 132 (A minor, 1825), and 130 (B-flat, 1825–26) — then kept going: Op. 131 (C-sharp minor, 1826) and Op. 135 (F major, 1826), his last completed work. The Große Fuge (Op. 133) began as Op. 130’s finale.

What makes them “late”

• Form dissolved and remade: Op. 131 has seven movements played without pause; Op. 132 alternates keys and moods like a spiritual diary; Op. 130 originally ended with the most uncompromising fugue ever written for strings.
• The slow movements: the Heiliger Dankgesang (“Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity”) of Op. 132 — Beethoven’s own title, written after his 1825 illness — and the cavatina of Op. 130, marked beklemmt (“oppressed”), music of almost unbearable tenderness.
• The Große Fuge: when the publisher balked, Beethoven replaced Op. 130’s finale with a lighter movement and published the fugue separately (Op. 133). Stravinsky’s verdict — “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever” — is reported but apt.

Reception: then and now

The 1820s didn’t know what to do with them. Players found them unplayable; critics found them incoherent — one Viennese reviewer heard “a confusion” where we hear revelation. They waited decades for understanding: the 20th century, from Bartók to the modern quartet renaissance, finally caught up. Today they are the repertoire’s holy of holies.

“Must it be? It must be!”

Op. 135’s finale carries Beethoven’s own inscription over its opening question-and-answer: “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!” (“Must it be? It must be!”) — the last words he ever set to music, playful and grave at once. He finished it at Gneixendorf in October 1826, weeks after his nephew’s suicide attempt, months before his own death.

Source notes

• Galitzin commission (1822); composition order 127, 132, 130, 131, 135 (1824–26): Kinsky–Halm catalogue and correspondence.
• Heiliger Dankgesang: Beethoven’s own heading in the Op. 132 autograph (1825).
• Beklemmt marking in the Op. 130 cavatina: in the autograph.
• “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!”: Beethoven’s inscription in the Op. 135 finale autograph.
• Stravinsky on the Große Fuge: reported remark — flagged.
• Contemporary bewilderment: documented in 1820s Viennese reviews and players’ accounts.