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Updated: June 24, 2025
He worked out of this vein somewhat in the other movements as not being adapted to the uses for which the symphony is designed, but it reappears again in the quartets to the extent of dominating them. The one in B Flat, opus 130, completes the three for Prince Galitzin.
The quartets once begun were carried on with ardor in the midst of most distressing occurrences, chief of which were ill health and its twin demon, poverty, as well as the waywardness of his nephew, all of which tended to draw him to the spiritual life.
His tone, too, is bad, and since he prefers a bridge that is quite plain, he can use A and D strings only in the lower positions, and even then pianissimo. We noticed this particularly in two Mozart quartets he played at my house. Otherwise he plays with a good deal of feeling, but without refined taste."
Variations occupy a prominent part in all his works, whether chamber-music, sonatas or symphonies. They are introduced perhaps with best effect in the works of his last years, in the Ninth Symphony, and in the last quartets. He accepted the order with pleasure and began work on it at once on reaching his summer quarters.
They follow each other in contracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere: they meet and cross each other, all at a moment. This New England is set apart: it is the exercise-ground of the weather. Storms bred elsewhere come here full-grown: they come in couples, in quartets, in choruses.
Chamber music originally music written for the intimate surroundings of the home, for a small circle of listeners carries out in its informal way many of the ideals of the larger orchestral ensemble. And, as regards the violinist, he is not dependent only on the literature of the string quartet; there are piano quintets and quartets, piano trios, and the duos for violin and piano.
In the midst of these ironies of fate, this satyr-play of the nether forces with the master, in which he occupies at times so undignified a position, it is gratifying to note that the artist-life goes on apace. In the last quartets which now come up for consideration, the labors of the tone-poet are brought to a close. The quartet was a favorite musical form with the master.
The artist must sink his identity completely in that of the work he plays, and though the last Beethoven quartets are as difficult as many violin concertos, they are polyphony, the combination and interweaving of individual melodies, and they call for a mastery of repression as well as expression.
The three quartets, opus 59, known as the Rasoumowsky Quartets, to which a passing reference has been made, take their name from having been dedicated to Count Rasoumowsky, who was the Russian ambassador. The Count had married a sister of the Princess Lichnowsky and was a cultivated man whose greatest delight was music.
"In other words, Hellmesberger was the quartet himself, the other three artists merely 'assisted, which, after all, is going too far! "Of course, quartets differ. Just as we have operas in which the alto solo rôle is the most important, so we have quartets in which the 'cello or the viola has a more significant part.
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