A Hero ‘Till the End

Ludwig van Beethoven is a giant in practically every sense of the word - well, except for maybe his five-foot-two stature! His late string quartets (No. 12-16), which characteristically transformed the genre, were written after a 15 year hiatus. It’s easy to romanticise the notion that a dying Beethoven, raging with guilt over his estranged nephew Karl, suddenly had this calling to compose a genre as intimately woven as his innermost world. Although Beethoven’s likely motivation lay in publishers’ high demand for quartet writing during those years, he satisfied the impossible ideals of an artist through what would become his single favorite creation: his fourteenth quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 131.

Together with Opus 132 in A Minor and Opus 130 in B-flat Major, Opus 131 in C-Sharp Minor comprises a trio that musicologists call the “ABC Quartets.” The “ABC” quartets are thematically linked by the second tetrachord - or last four notes - of the harmonic minor scale. Those four notes are the backbone of Opus 131. Beethoven’s genius resides in his ability to use those four notes in an opening fugue subject that sets the saga for the entire quartet. This melody reaches up from the leading tone (B-sharp) to tonic (C-sharp) - aspiring towards something divine - then devastatingly falls back down. Beethoven foreshadows that peace, that home key of C-sharp, but ruthlessly reiterates that this peace lies at the end of a long tunnel.

This tunnel seems dark at first, shadowed by an intimately woven fugue that “reveals the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music” according to Richard Wagner. The gentle lift into the second movement, a lilting folk dance in D-Major, seems miraculous. But it’s still not the miracle - the C-sharp major home - Beethoven searches for. An operatic recitativo leads into the fourth movement, a wild theme and variations disguised as an A-major oasis. Characteristic of Beethoven, he mocks the variations until they morph into menacing tritones hammered out by the cello. The eccentric scherzo to follow contains sul ponticello, a novel tone color conceived of by a man who couldn’t hear a single sound. Then, a short aria invokes standing at the peak of a mountain, questioning what lies ahead.

This question is abruptly answered by a unison C-sharp, commencing the seventh movement. In this breakneck race through the underworld, Beethoven faces the demons set forth by the opening fugue. He wrestles with those four notes of the subject - quotes it, rearranges it; buries subtle reminders of it within the labyrinth of parts. Right as the race seems to die down, Beethoven picks up an elixir of light and finally arrives home in C-sharp major.

This sudden reach towards C-sharp major feels not like the end of Beethoven’s saga, but an entirely new realm of light. Sudden as it is, however, this miraculous ending to the Opus 131 saga epitomizes Beethoven just as well as the Fifth Symphony would. Even in his last days, Ludwig van Beethoven never shed the heroism that carried him through the toughest of turmoil.