>> Stephanie Akau: Hello. My name is Stephanie Akau,
and I'm an archivist here in the Music Division at
the Library of Congress. Welcome to the (Re)Hearing
Beethoven Festival celebrating the 250th anniversary of the
birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. One of the treasures here in the Music Division's special
collections are two pages of Beethoven's sketches
for his String Quartet in C Sharp Minor,
Number 14, Opus 131. They are just two of
hundreds of existing sketches for this piece located in
archives around the world. The sketches are part of the Library's Gertrude Clarke
Whittall Foundation Collection. Mrs. Whittall was a
great philanthropist of the Music Division. In addition to contributing
the funds to build the Whittall Pavilion which houses the Stradivarius
string instruments she gifted, hosts our free concert
lectures, and many other Library of Congress events,
she purchased a number of holograph manuscripts for
the Library's collections, some from a successful
American industrialist named Jerome Stonborough. Stonborough and his wife's
family were avid art collectors. Among the manuscripts
Mrs. Whittall purchased from him are Richard
Wagner's sketches for his opera 'Parsifal,'
Clara Schumann's cadenzas for Mozart's Piano
Concerto in D minor, K. 466, in which she built on material
Johannes Brahms had composed for the same cadenza,
and these sketches for the string quartet
by Beethoven. Beethoven wrote the
String Quartet, Opus 131 after completing
a commission for Prince Nikolai Galitzin, consisting of three
other string quartets, the opuses 127, 130, and 132. He started composing the
quartet sometime near the end of the year 1825 and
completed it by summer of 1826, less than a year before
his death in March of 1827. The piece was among his
last and most favorite. The late quartets are
a return to a genre that Beethoven had composed
in nearly 15 years prior with his completion of the String Quartet Number
11 in F Minor, Opus 95. These sketches represent
the quartet in its early compositional
stages. Late in his career,
Beethoven began sketching on multiple staves at once,
a break from his early and middle period sketches on which he usually sketched
initial ideas on only one staff. Beethoven at this point
was paying more attention to the construction of the
inner voices and solving issues that arise in counterpoint, or the way that multiple voices
interact in a piece of music. A glance at the first two pages
reveal many empty measures, particularly in the
viola and cello parts, with the first violin
part the most complete. Even though Beethoven
crossed out all but the first three
measures on both pages, he actually largely
retained what he had sketched for the first violin
in the final version. What is beginning to emerge in these sketches
are Beethoven's use of short ascending scales of
whole notes that get passed between the instruments for
roughly the next 20 bars, past the end of the sketch. The scale starts in the first
violin in the last measure of the first stave with
an E sharp and continues into the next measure
with an F sharp. In the following measure,
Beethoven penciled in a G that he used in the final
version rather than the notes that appear in ink, though it
is difficult to tell if the G at this point is a half
note or a whole note. Two measures later, the
ascending scale passes to the viola and ascends
from A sharp to B to C sharp for another three measures,
then passes to the second violin where the scales become seven
bars rather than just three. The third note of the
second violin scale, a G, is again penciled in,
as is the last note of the scale four
bars later, a C sharp. Lastly, the whole note scale
is passed to the cello, who plays a D sharp, E, and again a penciled
in note, F sharp. With the addition of each
of the penciled whole notes, Beethoven removed neighboring
eighth notes on beat four in favor of keeping a slower
rhythm in one part at a time. In doing so, Beethoven not
only emphasizes beat one, but he uses the whole
notes as leading tones to quickly tonicize or imply
a number of minor keys. Having early sketches makes
it possible to compare them with later, more developed
sketches and published versions. On the second page in
the second violin part, there are what may be faint
forte markings underneath the notes G, A, and A sharp. Published versions retain these
markings underneath the whole notes with a sforzando,
typically abbreviated to sf or sfc on the first whole note
each time a different instrument takes over the ascending scale,
drawing the audience's ears to not only the whole note
rhythm but to the change in the instrumentation
of the scale. There's also a missing key
signature change that occurs in published versions before the
last measure of the first page from C sharp minor,
which has four sharps, to B minor, which has two. Since there are no substantial
changes in the parts to indicate that Beethoven had to
transpose them later, he probably already had the
key signature change in mind but had not yet written it down. Something that stands out
immediately is the inscription at the bottom of the page by a man named Ferdinand
Hiller, dated 1827. In 1827, Hiller was a
student studying composition with Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel and Beethoven were
longtime acquaintances, having both studied with
Joseph Haydn in their youth. Hummel, his wife Elizabeth, and Hiller visited
Beethoven several times in the last weeks of his life. According to the inscription,
Hiller received these sketches from Anton Schindler a few
days after Beethoven's death. Schindler was an
amateur violinist who had previously worked for
Beethoven as an unpaid secretary but later became more of
an enthusiastic devotee. Hiller's inscriptions say
that these are sketches from the erste or first movement of the C sharp minor
string quartet, but the material is
actually from early in the final movement. Schindler was unfortunately
prone to exaggeration regarding
Beethoven, so we will never know if Hiller assumed that
these sketches were from the first movement because
that's what Schindler told him or if it was an accidental
incorrect presumption on Hiller and Schindler's part. Whichever the case, this
is a cautionary tale against always taking
inscriptions at face value. Hiller would go on
to become a composer and longtime Kapellmeister
in Cologne and would tutor numerous
other musicians, among them composer Max
Bruch, whose sketches for the 'Scottish Fantasy' for
violin and piano are also part of the Library's collections. One of Hiller's works for
piano is available online in the Library's
digital collections. Hiller also contributed an
introductory essay entitled 'On the Hundredth Anniversary
of Beethoven's Birth' to the Second Edition of Elliott
Graeme's biography 'Beethoven: A Memoir' published in 1876. In the essay, Hiller writes with
much admiration on pages eight and nine, "Has there
ever existed a poet who transported our souls
into his ideal kingdom with more irresistible
force than our Beethoven? Certainly not. More universal effects have
been achieved by others, but none more deep or noble. Nay, we may say without
exaggeration that never did an artist
live whose creations were so truly new: his sphere
was the unforeseen." "To the essential
nature of our Art, which bears within itself the
all-reconciling element of love, must we attribute the fact that against it the most violent
differences in religious, political, and philosophical
opinion make no stand. It is the might of
Beethoven's genius which subdues the
proudest minds, while quickening the pulsations
of the simplest hearts." The String Quartet Number
14 was not a commission. Beethoven dedicated the piece
to Baron Joseph von Stutterheim out of gratitude for
accepting his ward and nephew Karl Beethoven
into his regiment after Karl's attempted suicide. The exact premiere date
of the piece is unknown and Beethoven would not
live to see its publication. While audiences' initial
reactions were tepid, composers such as
Schubert, Wagner, and Schumann praised the work. The quartet has been
recorded dozens of times, proving Hiller's
sentiments were correct. Beethoven's sketches for the
String Quartet in C Sharp Minor, Number 14, Opus 131 are
available to view online at the Library of
Congress's website in the Gertrude Clark
Whittall and Library of Congress Treasures
digital collections. Thank you for joining
me today and tuning in for the (Re)Hearing
Beethoven Festival.
