Beethoven, String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127

Beethoven premiered this piece today, in 1825.



Ultimately, everyone concerned agreed that Schuppanzigh should give the first performance, which took place on March 6, 1825, led by Schuppanzigh, with Karl Holz on second violin, Franz Weiss on viola, and Linke on cello. Beethoven and the players signed a rather curious agreement drawn by the composer’s nephew Karl: 'Each one is herewith given his part and is bound by oath and indeed pledged on his honor to do his best, to distinguish himself to vie each with the other in excellence. Each one who takes part in the affair in question is to sign this sheet.

Beethoven
Schuppanzigh
Weiss
Linke, the great master’s accursed cello
Holz, the last, but only with this signature'

The performance was a near-disaster; there were several copying errors, Schuppanzigh’s strings broke, and while asserting that individual passages were not a problem for him, he confessed ensemble was difficult to achieve, especially in the Adagio. It reportedly took him a whole year to make sense of the movement. In all fairness, however, seeing only the first violin part rather than a full score, Schuppanzigh could not have discerned that the movement was a set of unnumbered variations, much less realize that the entire work was, as a Beethoven scholar describes it, 'filled with mysterious suggestions, hints, and allusions to voices that come and go in the four-instrument texture, which is perpetually resonant with content, infused with even more motivic and thematic material than it overtly presents.'

The work was subsequently played, this time with a new first violinist, Joseph Böhm, who later wrote about a rehearsal:
"[T]he unhappy man was so deaf that he could no longer hear the heavenly sound of his compositions. And yet rehearsing in his presence was not easy. With close attention his eyes followed the bows and therefore he was able to judge the smallest fluctuations in tempo or rhythm and correct them at once. At the close of the last movement of this quartet there was a meno vivace, which seemed to me to weaken the general effect. At the rehearsal, therefore, I advised that the original tempo be maintained, which was done, to the betterment of the effect. Beethoven, crouched in a corner, heard nothing, but watched with strained attention. After the last bow-stroke he said, laconically, 'Let it remain so,' went to the desks and crossed out the meno vivace in the four parts."

Read the rest here.