Steve Schwarz replies to me:

>In fact, ever since you began this thread, I've been listening to the
>quartets with the general shape of the motive in mind (thanks for that,
>incidentally!).

You're welcome!  That's one of the things I like about being in this
"community".  I get exposed to other people's ideas on classical music
and it inspires me to investigate those ideas further.  For example,
Someone asked what everyone thought was the worst Strauss tone poem.
Steve, I think you said "Aus Italian" (?) So I got my dusty Strauss CDs
out, and started listening to "Aus Italian" and Macbeth, and wouldn't
you know it, I started getting interested in Straus again.

>I do hear the shape throughout these quartets.  My only question is
>whether Beethoven is in aesthetic dialogue with Mozart.  If so, is
>Shostakovich when he uses D-S-C-H (especially in the form D-Eb-C'-B)?
>It's a coincidence, but is it really a coincidence worth pointing out?
>That is, do these four notes point to Mozart? It seems to me that the
>function of these notes is quite different, more on the order of B-A-C-H
>(Bb-A-C'-B) -- in other words, it's musical iconography, signature, but
>probably not the finale of the Jupiter.

I'm glad you brought up Shostakovich and D-S-C-H, and Bach's B-A-C-H.
We generally acknowledge these uses by their respective composers as
"signatures".  How do we know it though? Did Bach ever tell us? I don't
think Shostakovich told us (I could be wrong).  I think two factors make
easy for us to assume that they are signatures:  1) Their extensive use
-- in Bach's "Art of the Fugue", and in Shostakovich's 10th Symphony and
string quartet (I don't remember which quartet); and 2) The notes match
the first four letters of the composers' names.

I believe that the 8-note motif in the Grosse Fuge is Beethoven's
signature.  Since Bach came before him, this practice wasn't unprecedented.
Of course, that alone isn't a compelling argument, and I'm afraid that I
can't come up with any evidence for this, except that when I listen to the
last five, especially the Grosse Fuge, it all makes sense to me in this
context.  In the Grosse Fuge, Beethoven really beats us over the head with
this motif.  It kind of reminds me of when my 17 month old daughter trying
to communicate something to me by pointing, and gesturing, and she gets
frustrated and starts jumping up and down.  Towards the end of the Grosse
Fuge, this motif is stated with very boldly, in octave unisons (is that how
you say it?).  It strikes me as a sort of resolution, like, "Finally, this
really is me!" But, the resolution is somewhat tempered in the closing
bars.  (That's part of the beauty of the late five -- they're riddled with
paradoxes.)

Bach's and Shostakovich's signatures come from Bach and Shostakovich,
and no where else (although you might say that Shostakovich was borrowing
the idea of using a signature from Bach).  (If you believe that the op.
132 comes from the Jupiter trio, and that it eventually becomes Beethoven's
signature in the late five:) Beethoven's signature, on the other hand, pays
tribute to Mozart, who had significant influence on him.  Perhaps (and this
is just another crazy idea that I'm putting out there) Beethoven was making
a reference to the creative journey that he had embarked upon when he first
set out to be a composer.  Along these lines, the last five trace that
journey from youth to maturity.  In the liner notes for Quartet Italiano
CD set of the last five, regarding the 2nd movement of op.  132, "The main
theme [..] is said to be an adaptation of a tune in a German dance that
Beethoven composed some 30 years earlier." In the op.  132, there's still
some Mozart -- the Grosse Fuge is all Beethoven (which, btw is more than
most people can handle!  hence the alternative finale).  Food for
thought...

>>In fact, Deryck Cooke, in his article "The Unity of Beethoven's late
>>Quartets" proposes that the last five quartets "constitute a single
>>continuous act of creation".  In this article, he sites Nottebohm's
>>assertion that "Beethoven had used the same pitch-pattern as a principle
>>thematic idea, in the first movement of no. 2 in A minor [meaning op.
>>132] (as a kind of opening motto-theme) and in the finale of no. 3 in B
>>flat [i.e.  the Grosse Fugue](as a kind of opening motto- theme, and as a
>>subject of the Grosse Fugue)".
>
>All respect to Deryk Cooke, that opening to op. 132 is a little vague
>(essentially it's more harmony than motive), but I'd love to know how he
>argues for it.

It wasn't just Deryck Cooke who said that, he was agreeing with someone
else who said it (Nottebohm -- whoever he or she is).  In case that isn't
enough to convince you, I scanned the liner notes to some of the recordings
I have of the Grosse Fugue, and come up with the following:

The Fine Arts Quartet -- notes for the Grosse Fuge:

   "In Beethoven's sketchbooks, this opening is inextricably intermingled
   with sketches for the opening of the A-minor Quartet, op. 132. No
   wonder, for they are almost identical. Op. 132 begins G#-A-F-E; the
   Fugue begins G-G#-F-E, which is close anyway, and then it continues
   with G#-A, which are the first notes of Opus 132."

Borodin Quartet -- notes for the Grosse Fuge:

   "Vincent d'Indy described it as 'a fugue on two subjects and with
   variations', the theme which generates them, almost identical with
   that of the first movement of the fifteenth quartet [op. 132], being
   a counter-subject of the first fugue and the subject of the second."

Even without the support from these sources, my ears tell me that the
openings to op.  132, and the Grosse Fuge use roughly the same motif.

Mike