The String Quartet No. 8 in E minor by Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

, opus 59, no. 2, was the second of three of his "Razumovsky

Andreas Razumovsky

Count Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky was a Russian diplomat who spent many years of his life in Vienna.-Life :Razumovsky was the son of Cyril Razumovsky, the last hetman of Ukraine, and nephew of Aleksey Grigorievich Razumovsky, called the Night Emperor. The elder Rasumovsky's late Baroque palace...

" cycle of string quartets, and is a product of his "middle" style period. He published it in 1808.

It is in four movements:

1. Allegro, 6/8
2. Molto adagio (Si tratta questo pezzo con molto di sentimento), common time
   Common Time
   "Common Time" is a science fiction short story written by James Blish. It first appeared in the August 1953 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and has been reprinted several times: in the 1959 short-story collection Galactic Cluster; in The Testament of Andros ; in The Penguin Science Fiction...
   
    in E major
   E major
   E major is a major scale based on E, with the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has four sharps .Its relative minor is C-sharp minor, and its parallel minor is E minor....
   
   
3. Allegretto (second section "Maggiore — Theme russe"), 3/4, E minor - Maggiore - Minore
4. Finale, Presto, cut time, starting in C major and finishing in E minor

According to Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny was an Austrian pianist, composer and teacher. He is best remembered today for his books of études for the piano. Czerny's music was profoundly influenced by his teachers, Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Antonio Salieri and Ludwig van Beethoven.-Early life:Carl Czerny was born...

, the second movement of the quartet occurred to Beethoven as he contemplated the starry sky and thought of the music of the spheres (Thayer

Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Alexander Wheelock Thayer , was a librarian and journalist who became the author of the first scholarly biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, still after many updatings regarded as a standard work of reference on the composer.-Life:Originally a librarian at Harvard law school, Thayer became aware of...

, Life of Beethoven); it has a hymnlike quality reminiscent of a much later devotion, the "Heiliger Dankgesang" hymn to the Divine in the Quartet Op. 132

String Quartet No. 15 (Beethoven)

The Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, by Ludwig van Beethoven, was written in 1825, given its public premiere on November 6 of that year by the Schuppanzigh Quartet and was dedicated to Count Nicolai Galitzin, as were Opp. 127 and 130...

.

The scherzo movement of the quartet, the third movement (Allegretto), uses a Russian theme also used by Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...

 in Boris Godunov

Boris Godunov (opera)

Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...

. The original song, Glory to the Sun, was recorded by Nikolay Lvov

Nikolay Lvov

Nikolay Aleksandrovich Lvov was a Russian artist of the Age of Enlightenment. Lvov, an amateur of Rurikid lineage, was a polymath who contributed to geology, history, graphic arts and poetry, but is known primarily as an architect and ethnographer, compiler of the first significant collection of...

 and Jan Prac; sheet music

Sheet music

Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...

 was published in 1790 (second edition 1806), verses in 1770s. However, Beethoven used it in an ungentle way. According to Kerman

Joseph Kerman

Joseph Wilfred Kerman is an American critic and musicologist. One of the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He is...

, "It sounds as though Count Razumovsky had been tactless enough to hand Beethoven the tune, and Beethoven is pile-driving it into the ground by way of revenge." In an extremely unusual example of melodic setting prior to the 20th century, portions of the tune with strong tonic harmonic leanings are harmonized with the dominant, and vice versa; the harmonic clash is harsh, and many listeners have found this portion of the quartet to be quite amusing, especially as contrasted with the prosaic, almost "exercise-book" counterpoint which precedes it (another example of Beethoven parodying a student counterpoint exercise can be found in the scherzo of the Quartet No. 10

String Quartet No. 10 (Beethoven)

Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E major, nicknamed the "Harp", was published in 1809 as opus 74.- Naming :The nickname "Harp" refers to the characteristic pizzicato sections in the Allegro of the first movement, where pairs of members of the quartet alternate notes in an arpeggio,...

, opus 74).

Sources

• Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1966. ISBN 0-393-00909-2
• Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Life of Beethoven. Princeton, rev. 1964.
• Sir George Grove, "Beethoven" Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Volume I. New York: Macmillan. 1904.