The String Quartets

Sixteen quartets in three groups — the apprentice set, the heroic middle set, and the late five that still sound like music from the future.

The six early quartets, Op. 18 (1798–1800)

Dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz and written as a deliberate apprenticeship — Beethoven studied Mozart’s and Haydn’s quartets bar by bar. No. 1 in F already shows his restlessness (he rewrote its slow movement after a friend called it too sentimental). They are Classical in form, Beethovenian in energy.

The middle quartets (1806–1810)

• The three “Razumovsky” Quartets, Op. 59 (1806) — commissioned by Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador, who asked for Russian folk themes (Nos. 1 and 2 oblige). Longer, denser, harder than anything before: the C-major quartet’s finale is a near-symphonic fugue. The violinist who first saw them reportedly laughed, thinking Beethoven was joking — reported anecdote; the work’s difficulty is documented fact.
• Op. 74 — “Harp” (1809) and Op. 95 — “Serioso” (1810). The “Harp” nickname (pizzicato passages) is a publisher’s invention. Op. 95 is the shortest, most compressed — “never to be performed in public,” Beethoven wrote on the manuscript, “written for a small circle of connoisseurs.”

The late quartets (1824–1826)

Five quartets — Opp. 127, 132, 130, 133, 131, 135 (in order of completion: 127, 132, 130, 131, 135) — plus the Große Fuge (Op. 133), originally the finale of Op. 130, published separately when the publisher balked at its difficulty. Features that baffled the 1820s:

• Op. 131 in C-sharp minor — seven movements played without a break; Beethoven’s reported favorite among them.
• Op. 132 in A minor — the slow movement is headed “Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity” (Heiliger Dankgesang), written after an illness in 1825.
• Op. 135 in F major — the last completed work; its finale asks, in the music’s own inscription, “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!” (“Must it be? It must be!”) — Beethoven’s own heading, documented in the autograph.

Wagner called the late quartets the revelation of “the innermost dream-world of the spirit.” Stravinsky called the Große Fuge “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever.” The late quartets are explored in depth in The Late Quartets.

Source notes

• Opus numbers, dates, and the Op. 133/Op. 130 publication history follow the Kinsky–Halm catalogue.
• Op. 95 “for connoisseurs” inscription: documented on the autograph manuscript.
• “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!”: Beethoven’s own inscription in the Op. 135 autograph.
• The Heiliger Dankgesang heading: Beethoven’s own title in the Op. 132 manuscript (1825).
• The violinist’s laughter at Op. 59: traditional anecdote, reported — flagged.