Program Notes: Beethoven String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, no. 1

Beethoven String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, no. 1:

Performed by the Juilliard String Quartet

Library of Congress – Washington, D.C., 1982

A note on the recording:

This is the 18-1 of my childhood, my dreams, my heart. My program notes, I hope, describe the way in which 18-1 is elemental, foundational, and influential of everything that came after – and the best thing I can say is: so too, is this recording, for me. My Dad’s quartet made this recording – which is actually a live performance, with the tiniest and most minimal editing from another live performance – in 1982, four years before I was born. My Mom loves to tell the story that she brought me to my first Juilliard Quartet concert when I was two weeks old: she carried me in a basket to Carnegie Hall, and sat with me backstage, listening on speakers, while they played a Beethoven Quartet Cycle. (If you’re thinking “This explains a lot,” you’d be right.)

Forty years later (a little less for that first JSQ concert I attended, a little more for this recording), the Juilliard Quartet Beethoven Cycle recorded live at the Library of Congress continues to be a revelation: not for the nostalgia (sure!), but for the way in which it illuminates and underlines all that is a revelation about the piece. The sharp edges of Beethoven’s humor; the virtuosity of both tossing materials around instrument to instrument AND the virtuosity of having everyone say the same thing at the same time (as in the opening of the piece!); the deep, passionate intensity and emotional wildness of the slow movement; the tenderness, the comedy, the luminous exuberance – all these things one loves about the great piece that is Op. 18, no. 1, one also loves about this JSQ recording of it.

I hope you love this recording, as I do so much. I listened this fall, after many years not hearing it, for a little inspiration as I wrote the program notes you see here, above! I’ll just put it on for a moment, and it’ll give me a jolt of what each movement is about, I thought. But when I put the recording on, and heard Bobby, Earl, Sam, and Dad begin the piece, I thought: God. This is as wonderful as I remember. It is – it is. But, really, it’s more wonderful, because (dream of dreams, luck of luck), getting to carry and play this piece with my quartet this year – having my hands on this piece I love, in that way my younger self always hoped I would get to, someday – I’m also aware, more than ever, of the truly magnificent vision, intellect, and instrumental virtuosity that it takes to make the piece come alive in such an electric way. I used to watch “the guys” (we always called them - though from the same year I was born, Joel Smirnoff was playing second violin) come on stage and feel how superhuman they were – what gladiators, what heroes – and now I know it’s true.

What to say about Opus 18, no. 1? It is a myth, a parable, a miracle of creation like nothing that came before or after it — worthy of a sentence like, perhaps: In the beginning…

18-1 — Beethoven’s first-published string quartet, in F major — reflects a love and mastery of what Beethoven’s predecessors did with the genre: a brilliant sense of wit and counterpoint that evokes Haydn quartets; a luminous, vocal joy in the writing that could be Mozart. But though this great tradition is visible in 18-1, so, too is Beethoven’s unmistakable hand in changing it forever. The piece lives in magnificent high-wire: quick on its feet, in turns slapstick and bookish, coquettish and droll; aware of what it should do as it winks and turns sharply in the other direction. For every move Beethoven makes that we might recognize from Mozart or Haydn, he makes sure the next event knocks us to the floor.

Op. 18, no. 1 begins with one of Beethoven’s most irresistible mottos: a puckish question motive, played by the entire quartet in octaves, the gesture unforgettable both innately and in the masterful, joyful obsession of how Beethoven uses it over the course of the movement. We get a clear idea of what F major means for him, here, and of 3/4 meter: this first movement, marked Allegro con brio, is both deceptively plain-spoken and full of a kind of joyous quirk; it dances even when it sings, and jumps at every moment between a warm feeling of home and a kind of gleeful, unabashed virtuosity.

Beethoven’s initial inspiration for the slow movement, described in some detail in his sketchbooks, likely came from the tomb scene of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; but as the great Beethoven scholar Lewis Lockwood writes, the composer, “not wanting to be literal, destroyed all traces of any such program in the finished work.” The Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato is an unusual treasure in every way: its choice of meter (9/8, which lilts unevenly, both in every measure and inside every beat); the opening expressive marking (affectionate and passionate - a curious, vivid pairing); a wrenching sense of chromaticism that is at moments almost unbearable. He uses the first violin and cello as primary characters here, in romantic dialogue together at first and with increasing fervor and irrationality as the movement goes on; in addition to being a spectacular departure from the typical roles for these instruments, it is some of the most poignant and haunting quartet writing imaginable.

The third movement Scherzo: Allegro molto is an early glimpse into what Beethoven will later make of the role of a scherzo: this movement, which would just a decade or two earlier have typically been a simple Minuet dance in three, suddenly takes up an explicitly comic role, as well as substantial dramatic space in the arc of the piece! It is fast, buoyant, and wonderfully good-natured; especially funny is its contrasting Trio section, which — rather than juxtaposing a traditionally-gentler, more melodic music — takes the same motive that ends the Scherzo and transforms it to something even more ferocious, vehement, louder, and even a touch threatening.

The last movement Allegro is the only movement of 18-1 in a square meter: that is to say, 2/4, in which there could ostensibly be a grounded, practical steadiness of pulse, without all the unevenness that comes from dancing in three (as in the previous movements!). In some ways this movement is the most traditional of the four: a sort of final act to a comic opera, a fast scene where the whole cast comes out on stage to say a few last words before the audience gets up to applaud. But the pitch of the whole finale is heightened, with brilliant triplet material that starts out in the first violin (where such music belongs, usually!) thrown around the group at lightning speed. The sense of exhilaration and mirth of this counterpoint — alternating with the gorgeous tinges of darkness Beethoven’s chromaticism lends in contrasting material — give way to a soaring coda, marrying high comedy with even higher romance and bringing the piece to an ecstatic close.

Here’s the thing: if this was the only work he wrote — just this one piece, the irreplaceable Opus 18, no. 1, for two violins, viola, and cello — Beethoven would still be the very greatest composer ever to write a string quartet. This piece, its nooks and crannies, its ardor and despair, the way at which it at once masters the form and decides to reimagine it: it changed, defined, and enabled not only every string quartet that came after Beethoven’s lifetime, but also during the rest of his own —  the five spectacular Opp. 18, nos. 2-6, and the ten miraculous string quartets and Große Fuge that Beethoven made thereafter.

And what he made was good — so very, very good.

— Gwen Krosnick (October 2023)