Steve Scwartz replies to Mike Leghorn:

>>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).
>
>Having just listened to this with Mike's comment in mind, I can find no
>use of this sequence at all either in the trio or in the entire movement.
>Measure numbers?

Unfortunately, my score doesn't have measure numbers.  The motif (or
whatever you call it) appears towards the end of the 'B' part, 12 measures
before the marking "L'istesso tempo" (where it changes to 4/4 time).  This
instance of the motif is a little disguised, and can easily go undetected.
I have no doubt in my mind that there is a significant thematic connection
between this segment and the motif that begins the work.

>>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.
>
>Except the sequence is not in the Grosse Fugue.  There *is* a four-note
>motive, but it's not c-d-f-e; rather (if the quartet were in the key
>of C instead of Bb) G#-A-G'-F#' in its opening form.  Furthermore, it
>never becomes c-d-f-e in this piece.  So now, in effect, we've come from
>"Mozart's 4-note theme," to any 4-note theme that rises by a whole or
>half-step, skips x number of notes, and falls a whole or half-step.  It's
>a real stretch to say that anyone after Mozart who constructs this kind of
>motive gets the idea specifically from Mozart's Jupiter (since the motive
>occurs in other Mozart works) or even specifically from Mozart.

Are you saying that there is no relationship between the sequence at the
beginning of op.  132 and the 8-note theme that is the basis of the Grosse
Fugue? I thought the fact that there is a relationship had been established
by the scholars, and is now considered old news.  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)".  [Text in
brackets is mine.] Note that in Cooke's article, he refers to op.  127 as
no.  1, op.  132 as no.  2, op.  130 as no.  3, op.  131 as no.  4, and op.
135 as no.  5.

To my ears, the opening to op.  132 is closer to the Mozart trio than it
is to many of the other occurrences the 8-note theme throughout the late
Quartets.  What does this prove? Nothing.  It's just a theory.  Theories
can't be proved.  They can only be disproved.

Mike