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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2016
Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, published in 1827 after being detached from his string quartet Op. 130, appears to be the first work ever to have been allocated rehearsal letters. These were added by Beethoven’s friend Karl Holz at the request of the composer and his publisher Mathias Artaria. The rehearsal letters can be compared with the work’s structure, which is best perceived as dividing into three main ‘movements’, the third being much the longest. A different approach is necessary for analysing each of the three. In the first, reference to medieval rhythmic modes helps to clarify Beethoven’s procedure. The second is essentially a fugue, albeit unusually homophonic. The third is multi-partite but mainly in 
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, and includes a 32-bar theme that returns intact – the only substantial exact reprise of material. This movement also include two fugal expositions. Thus there are four full fugal expositions altogether, and each is a double fugue in which the exposition is more or less regular. Holz’s letters match up well but not perfectly with the structure of the work.
1 Kinsky, Georg (completed Hans Halm), Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlicher vollendeten Kompositionen (Munich: Henle, 1955): 392 Google Scholar.
2 ‘Holz schläft jezt ein, das lezte Stük hat ihn caput gemacht’. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 8, ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Grita Herre (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1981): 246.
3 ‘Gestern wurde das Quartett bey Artaria probirt; Tobias war auch eingeladen; wir haben es zweymahl gespielt; Artaria war ganz entzückt, und die Fuge fand er, als er sie zum drittenmahl hörte, schon ganz verständlich’. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 10, ed. Dagmar Beck (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1993): 104.
4 I am grateful to Jonathan Del Mar for this information. See also Escott, Angela, ‘Orchestral Performance Practice Revealed in a Conservatoire’s Historical Collections’, Fontes artis musicae 55/3 (2008): 484–494 Google Scholar, at 492, where it is suggested that rehearsal letters were invented by Louis Spohr in the 1830s. There is currently no article on rehearsal letters in Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com or in any musicological journal (as far as can be traced), though there is one, also claiming they were introduced by Spohr, in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehearsal_letter (both accessed 2 December 2015).
5 ‘Es wäre ihm lieb, wenn Sie gewisse Abschnitte in der Fuge mit Buchstaben bezeichnen möchten, für die Dilettanten zum Einstudiren. A B C D’. Beck, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 10: 104.
6 ‘Wenn sie auseinander kommen, oder wenn es schlecht geht, zum wiederhohlen von dem Buchstaben angefangen[.] Beyläufig 4 oder 6 Zeilen.’ Beck, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 10: 104.
7 ‘Die Buchstaben habe ich darauf geschrieben, 13 Abschnitte’. Beck, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 10: 135.
8 For a discussion of the date when Beethoven decided to detach the Grosse Fuge, and his reasons for doing so, see especially Cooper, Barry, ‘The Two – or Two Dozen – Finales for Beethoven’s Quartet Opus 130’, Ad Parnassum 8/16 (October 2010): 7–52 Google ScholarPubMed.
9 van Beethoven, Ludwig, Ouvertüre “Egmont”: Dirigierpartitur, ed. Helmut Hell (Munich: Henle, 1998)Google Scholar.
10 van Beethoven, Ludwig, Symphonie Nr. 9 in d-moll, ed. Jonathan Del Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1999)Google Scholar. Del Mar has reproduced the letters added to earlier editions, while recognizing that they are not authentic.
11 See Cooper, ‘The Two – or Two Dozen – Finales’, 34–35.
12 Grew, Sidney, ‘The “Grosse Fuge”: An Analysis’, Music & Letters 12 (1931): 253–261 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; here 257.
13 See, for example, Lockwood, Lewis, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York: WW Norton, 2003): 463 Google Scholar.
14 The rhythmic modes are described in detail in many general books on medieval music; see, for example, the pioneering study Reese, Gustave, Music in the Middle Ages (London: Dent, 1941): 206–11 and 272–281 Google Scholar.
15 For a penetrating study of the implications of this aspect of Beethoven’s notation, see Platen, Emil, ‘Kleine Anmerkung zur Grossen Fuge ’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (2006): 151–159 Google Scholar.
16 ‘The Seventh Symphony and the Rhythms of Antiquity’, in Solomon, Maynard, Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003): 102–134 Google Scholar.
17 These locations match almost exactly the structural divisions proposed for this movement in Grew, ‘The “Grosse Fuge”’.
18 Kerman, Joseph, The Beethoven Quartets (London: Oxford University Press, 1967): 279 Google Scholar.
19 Kirkendale, Warren, ‘“The Great Fugue”: Beethoven’s “Art of Fugue”’, Acta Musicologica 35 (1963): 14–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lockwood, Beethoven, 464–5.
20 Lockwood’s two schemes suggest either bars 414–492 as a ‘Fantasy’ (again following Kirkendale, who calls it a ‘free phantasy’) or 273–492 as ‘equivalent of a Scherzo’: see Lockwood, Beethoven, 464–5. Grew calls bars 414–452 ‘a fantasia on the two subjects’, without drawing attention to any regular fugal procedures (Grew, ‘The “Grosse Fuge”’, 258). Kerman observes that there is a ‘fugal exposition’ at this point, but quickly moves on to the next section: see Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, 292.
21 Stephen Husarik aptly describes this version of the theme as a ‘hideous parody’. See Husarik, Stephen, ‘Musical Direction and the Wedge in Beethoven’s High Comedy, Grosse Fuge Op. 133’, The Musical Times 153/1920 (Autumn 2012): 53–66 Google Scholar, at 61.
22 A start at assessing the sketches in detail has been made in Caplin, William, ‘The Genesis for the Counter-subjects for the Grosse Fuge ’, in The String Quartets of Beethoven, ed. William Kinderman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006): 234–261 Google Scholar; but this investigates only the two thematic pairs found in the first two movements, as revealed in the early sketches for the work.
23 In contrast, what Lockwood calls a ‘Double Fugato’ (Lockwood, Beethoven, 464), referring to bars 493–510, bears none of the characteristics of a standard fugal exposition.
24 Kirkendale suggests that the A-flat fugue theme is an augmentation of the G-flat one (‘“The Great Fugue”’, pp. 15 and 17); but it is not a strict augmentation and is more a transformation of it.
25 Köhler and Herre, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 8: 19.
26 See Cooper, ‘The Two – or Two Dozen – Finales’, especially 15–29, for the precise chronology and Beethoven’s numerous early ideas for the finale.
27 See Beck, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 10: 54 and 107.
28 See Gingerich, John M., ‘Ignaz Schuppanzigh and Beethoven’s Late Quartets’, The Musical Quarterly 93 (2010): 450–513 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
