Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part One Context
- Part Two 1793–9
- Part Three 1800–1803
- Part Four 1804–9
- Part Five 1810–15
- Part Six 1816–27
- chapter 24 1815–24 The Late String Quartets – Context and Background
- chapter 25 1824–5 String Quartet in E flat major, op. 127
- chapter 26 1825 String Quartet in A minor, op. 132
- chapter 27 1825 String Quartet in B flat major, op. 130
- chapter 28 1825–6 Grosse Fuge, op. 133
- chapter 29 1825–6 String Quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131
- chapter 30 1826 String Quartet in F major, op. 135
- Appendix 1 Early Chamber Music for Strings and Piano
- Appendix 2 Variations
- Appendix 3 Chamber Music for Wind
- Appendix 4 Arrangements
- Bibliography
- Index of Beethoven's Music by Opus Number
- Beethoven Index
- General Index
chapter 29 - 1825–6 String Quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131
from Part Six - 1816–27
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part One Context
- Part Two 1793–9
- Part Three 1800–1803
- Part Four 1804–9
- Part Five 1810–15
- Part Six 1816–27
- chapter 24 1815–24 The Late String Quartets – Context and Background
- chapter 25 1824–5 String Quartet in E flat major, op. 127
- chapter 26 1825 String Quartet in A minor, op. 132
- chapter 27 1825 String Quartet in B flat major, op. 130
- chapter 28 1825–6 Grosse Fuge, op. 133
- chapter 29 1825–6 String Quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131
- chapter 30 1826 String Quartet in F major, op. 135
- Appendix 1 Early Chamber Music for Strings and Piano
- Appendix 2 Variations
- Appendix 3 Chamber Music for Wind
- Appendix 4 Arrangements
- Bibliography
- Index of Beethoven's Music by Opus Number
- Beethoven Index
- General Index
Summary
Full circle
‘a kind of community life with the von Breuning family’
In contrast to Beethoven's frequent bouts of illness and worries over Karl, his domestic circumstances were remarkably settled when composing his last two string quartets. Quite by chance, his move in October 1825 to a splendid set of rooms in the Schwarzspanierhaus brought him to within a stone's throw of the apartment of his old friend Stephan von Breuning. Beethoven was twelve years old when he first met ‘his guardian angels’ as he described the von Breuning family. Their widowed mother, Helene, had asked him to give piano lessons to her two youngest children, and it was not long before he was treated as a member of the family – Eleonore, ‘his first serious love’, Stephan, Julie and Lorenz – spending ‘not only the major part of the day, but even many nights there’.
In the mid-1790s, Stephan moved from Bonn to Vienna and spent his entire professional life as a lawyer there in the war ministry. He wrote poetry in his spare time and it was he who revised the original libretto for the 1806 revival of Fidelio. Beethoven dedicated the Violin Concerto to Stephan and the piano version of the concerto to his first wife, Julie, with whom he often played piano duets; as described in Chapter 17, he was distraught when Julie died after only a year of marriage. There were quarrels from time to time, some bitter and prolonged, but they were all forgotten when Stephan, with his second wife, Constanze, and their children, Gerhard and Marie, met Beethoven by chance just before he moved into his new lodgings. Gerhard, who later became a doctor, was an observant twelve-year-old and recalled the meeting fifty years later in his Memories of Beethoven: From the House of the Black-Robed Spaniards, a book which he was inspired to write after attending various Beethoven centenary celebrations in 1870.
No sooner had we caught sight of one another, than there were the most joyful greetings on both sides. [Beethoven] was powerful looking, of medium height, vigorous in his gait and in his lively movements, his clothes far from elegant or conventional; and there was something about him overall that did not fit into any classification. He spoke almost without a pause, asking how we were, what we were doing.
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- Information
- Beethoven's Chamber Music in Context , pp. 262 - 273Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010