‘Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age!’ Beethoven told the Italian violinist Felix Radicati, who, at his request, had just added some fingering to the violin parts of his three new string quartets. Radicati had found them incomprehensible – not surprisingly perhaps, as the op. 59 quartets are about as far removed from the op. 18 set, completed six years earlier, as is the Eroica from the Second Symphony. Nonetheless, Beethoven himself was pleased with his ‘new violin quartets’, as he called them in a letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, dated 5 July 1806: ‘Indeed I am thinking of devoting myself entirely to this type of composition.’

His confidence proved to be justified and, in Vienna at least, the ‘later age’ dawned sooner, perhaps, than he had expected. His circle of friends, among them the loyal Schuppanzigh and members of his quartet, had learnt from experience that all his new compositions were challenging to start with; whatever their initial reactions, it was their job to catch up with him. They set to work, at first with many misgivings and even some boisterous laughter, suspecting that Beethoven was springing one of his practical jokes on them, and gave the premiere of all three quartets in February 1807. The concert was respectfully reviewed soon afterwards by the Vienna correspondent of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, who found them ‘very long and difficult … deep in thought and well worked out, but not generally comprehensible, except perhaps the third, whose originality, melody and harmonic power will surely win over every educated music lover.’ Three months later, the same journal noted that ‘in Vienna, Beethoven's most recent, difficult but fine quartets have become more and more popular.’

Count (later Prince) Andreas Razumovsky

Count Andreas Razumovsky (1752–1836) commissioned the quartets late in 1805 and they were probably composed between May and November 1806. Under the usual arrangement by which a patron commissioning a work had possession of it for six months or a year before it could be released for publication, those two concerts (and many others, no doubt) would have been given with the Count's active support and perhaps occasional participation.