Beethoven’s nephew Karl, placed the blame of the initial failure of the work squarely on the playing of Schuppanzigh, who had just returned to Vienna after a number of years in Russia. “I know that the quartet was not completely understandable,” he writes, “because the first violin part went so badly. There were many disruptions. First nothing came together properly and then Schuppanzigh broke a string, which contributed to it a lot, because he didn’t have a second violin at hand.” Beethoven then offered the first violin part to Joseph Böhm, but as the composer was completely deaf could only guide the performers by watching their fingers and bows. A second performance of the work on 26 March went only marginally better. Beethoven apparently was pleased but it took critics and audiences substantially longer to understand that Beethoven had “transferred the formal and symbolic aspects of his two major works for chorus and orchestra—the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony—to the more intimate domain of chamber music.”
Beethoven’s nephew Karl, placed the blame of the initial failure of the work squarely on the playing of Schuppanzigh, who had just returned to Vienna after a number of years in Russia. “I know that the quartet was not completely understandable,” he writes, “because the first violin part went so badly. There were many disruptions. First nothing came together properly and then Schuppanzigh broke a string, which contributed to it a lot, because he didn’t have a second violin at hand.” Beethoven then offered the first violin part to Joseph Böhm, but as the composer was completely deaf could only guide the performers by watching their fingers and bows. A second performance of the work on 26 March went only marginally better. Beethoven apparently was pleased but it took critics and audiences substantially longer to understand that Beethoven had “transferred the formal and symbolic aspects of his two major works for chorus and orchestra—the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony—to the more intimate domain of chamber music.”
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