Tom Connor wrote: >Bernard Chasan wrote: > >>And if Beethoven did not have wealthy and musically sophisticated patrons, >>he still probably would have been in financial straits. Somehow I do not >>believe that the late quartets were big crowd pleasers. > >Is my memory wrong, or do I recall reading long ago that the late Beethoven >Quartets could not be performed during or immediately after Beethoven's >lifetime? That it was Joachim Quartet 50 or so years later which had the >technical competence to perform them. According to the jacket of my Columbia LP (ML 4006) of the Budapest String Quartet (Roismann, Schneider, Kroyt, and Schneider) playing Beethoven's Quartet No. 15 in a minor, Op. 132, it "was finished about August 1825....[and] received its first performance in November of that year by the Schuppanzigh Quartet, that notable ensemble that gave most of Beethoven's quartets their first presentation. Though the work was well received by its first hearers, it was not liked everywhere.... "*La Revue Musicale* printed the following criticism of a performance...on March 6, 1831: 'Part of the evening was devoted to one of the last quartets (in A Minor) of this extraordinary artist. Here, I must confirm, it seemed to me that genius was overwhelmed by fantastic extravagance. Without doubt the work could only have been written by Beethoven, and one recognizes his style from time to time, but these moments are few and far between. The first movement, the least involved of them all, is nevertheless full of harmonic vagueness which offends a sensitive ear. The *menuet* and *trio* recall the Master's finest period, and have the greatest novelty of effect. The *Adagio* is a thanksgiving offered to the Almighty on convalescence after a long illness; one can only express doubt as to whether the Master was yet quite restored to health....As to the last movement, comment is impossible; one must respect even the aberrations of so great a musician.' "Slightly less tolerant was H..Blanchard who, on April 15, 1849, wrote in the *Revue et Gazette Musicales de Paris*: '...one imagines that the musicians for whom it is a foregone conclusion to admire anything that Beethoven wrote, and who are forced to admire these last works of the great composer's decadent old age--one imagines that these musicians, possessing only a smattering of the knowledge of beautiful sound, will be hastened on their way to join the uncultured adherents of musical romanticism, which the great writer has thus opened out to them.'" Walter Meyer