Pablo Masso replied to Mike Leghorn:

>>I can't help but believe that someone must have thought of the possible
>>connection between Mozart's Jupiter and Beethoven's Late Quartets.
>
>Those works (Mozart's and Beethoven's) don't share the same motive!!!.  So
>tell me someone please where the connection lies?

I believe that they do share the same motive.  As I've pointed out before,
the similarity is most striking when you compare measures 68 through 75 of
the 3rd mvt of the Jupiter with the the opening measures of Beethoven's op.
132.  It is generally accepted that the middle three of the late Beethoven
quartets are associated by the use of this motif.  Op. 132 is the first of
these three quartets (even though it's numbered after Op. 130 -- Beethoven
wrote the quartets in the order: op. 132., op. 130, op. 131) and it
opens immediately with this motif.  I think of this as sort of a
fortelling, similar to how the whole harmonic structure of his 7th Symphony
is revealed in the slow introduction of the first movement.  Of all the
incarnations of this motif in the middle three of the Beethoven late
quartets, here is where the motif and the trio of the Jupiter matches the
most closely.

Why would Beethoven take a motif from Mozart to open these three quartets
(and even use the same key)? As I've suggested, he was foretelling -- and
so was Mozart in the trio of the Jupiter.  Mozart's first introduction of
the motif in the Jupiter is in the trio of the third movmement.  The finale
of the Jupiter ended up being Mozart's full realization of that motif.
Beethoven took the same motif, right out of the trio, and came up with a
completely different realization.  In the Grosse Fugue, he used the motif
so exhaustively as if to say, "This is my theme!"

That brings me to another subject: my take on op. 132.  Remember, this
was the first of the middle three.  He wrote it when he was very ill, and
it has a ghostly undercurrent.  When I listen to it, I imagine Beethoven
almost delirious with illness, watching fleeting images of music pass in
front of him -- music by other composers.  The opening is kind of like the
foggy void before the images appear.  The second movement is the most
ghostly.  If this were a fleeting image of music, who would be the
composer? Mozart perhaps? Well, I thought I heard some similarities between
it and the third movement of the Jupiter -- the rhythm of the themes in
both 'A' and 'B' (i.e.  trio) sections.  Then I asked myself: Mozart uses
the 4-note motif (with a 4-note answer) in the middle of the trio -- does
Beethoven do the same thing? Upon listening, I discovered that he does
indeed use the 4-note motif in the middle of the trio section of the 2nd
movement.  (These are my favorite kind of discoveries -- the kind that
gradually unfold).  The fourth movement also makes sense to me in the
context of Beethoven being like an impartial observer.  It's mysteriously
trivial for such a serious quartet.

So, Beethoven starts the first three quartets in a foggy haze, and
gradually injects himself into the music.  At first, the 4-note theme
is distant (really it's eight notes).  But, by the time he gets to Grosse
Fugue, he has arrived, and there is not mistake about who owns the 8-note
theme.  I believe that in the Grosse Fugue, Beethoven meant it as a
signature.

I have to go now. I see the people in white suites coming after me.

Mike