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