STRICTLY SPEAKING, Beethoven's cello music comprises five sonatas and three variation sets, though there is another substantial work that requires our attention because of the prominence accorded the instrument, albeit in an unusual way. It dates from 1804, about four years before he composed his third cello sonata, Op. 69. The singular Triple Concerto in C major Op. 56 for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra is a most curious outlier that has befuddled audiences since its creation. In 1841 Mendelssohn confessed that he could not fathom the work, and more recently Leon Plantinga has described it as ‘probably no one's favorite piece’. Here a piano trio, as if extracted from the intimate realm of chamber music, assumes the roles of three soloists pitted against the orchestra, and, one might suppose, against themselves, were it not for the most distinctive feature of the work: the unabashed privileging of the cello. Indeed, its very key signature - C major - suggests that Beethoven regarded the acoustic properties of the cello's open C string as the starting point for his concerto. Because the composition is so cello-centered, it calls for consideration here, before we take up the masterpiece for the instrument that followed, the Sonata in A major Op. 69.

First, some issues of generic identity. What the composer called a Konzertant and what has since been characterized as ‘an interlude in the French manner’ had clear ties to the French symphonie concertante, a hybrid genre from the eighteenth century that cast various solo instruments into the spotlight and was generally calculated to please audiences rather than challenge them. This form of symphonic entertainment remained popular throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, even in musical centers beyond the French border that were affected by the rippling currents of French musical taste, such as Mannheim. But Beethoven had an ulterior design in creating a work that might appeal to French audiences: initially seduced by the idealism of revolutionary France, by 1803 he was determined to move to Paris. We need not reiterate the narrative of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, with its initial Napoleonic pretensions and alternative Promethean formulations in the finale. Leonore, the composer's sole opera, was of course based on the model of the French rescue opera, another example of the power of French music on Beethoven's imagination.