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