Beethoven composed his three Quartets, op. 59, in 1805–06 for the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Andreas Kyrilovich Razumovsky. The count was an excellent amateur violinist, who played second violin in his own house string quartet, except when Louis Sina stepped in so he could sit back and listen. His first violinist was the illustrious Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whom Beethoven had known since 1794 and who premiered many of the composer’s works.

The three Razumovsky Quartets represent an entirely different world than Beethoven’s six early Quartets, op. 18, published only four years before. In between he had written his never-mailed letter, the heartrending “Heiligenstadt Testament,” which dealt with the anguish of his deafness and solitude, and such innovative new works as the Eroica Symphony, the Appassionata Sonata, and the first version of Fidelio. His radical new style, with its expanded sonata forms, epic themes, complexities, and individualities, met with hostility and derision from early performers and critics. “Perhaps no work of Beethoven’s,” wrote his famed early biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer, “met a more discouraging reception from musicians than these now famous Quartets.”

The first movement of the second Razumovsky Quartet is just as remarkable for its tautness, agitation, and lean-but-dramatic gestures as the first Razumovsky was for its lush expansiveness. In the second Quartet’s first movement the opening idea actually comprises three elements—arresting opening chords, eloquent silence, and a short arpeggiated phrase—all of which Beethoven puts to inspired use in the course of the movement. Particularly memorable are the alternating chords and silences that begin the development and the coda, which itself serves almost as a second development. The very end shows Beethoven’s penchant for repeating a hushed motive—here the arpeggiated phrase—at a loud dynamic level, though he orchestrates a quick fade for a calm conclusion.

Apparently Beethoven’s student Carl Czerny reported that the nobly serene slow movement in E major occurred to the master “when contemplating the starry sky and thinking of the music of the spheres.” This kind of contemplation, not surprising from an educated European Romantic, certainly seems plausible as the inspiration for the chorale-like opening, which unfolds into a full, songful sonata form. Toward the end Beethoven again recalls a soft theme loudly when he introduces a strangely accented, harmonically distorted version of the “chorale”—ecstatic passion that dissolves into the sublime.

Beethoven’s Allegretto is a scherzo in form, but its syncopated, almost ghostly main theme projects a disquieting rather than joking demeanor. The composer incorporated a Russian theme into each of the first two Razumovsky Quartets, making an audible connection to his patron, though it is uncertain whether the idea and the choice of theme was Beethoven’s or the count’s. Here the Russian theme—a patriotic hymn famously used later by Musorgsky in his opera Boris Godunov—provides jovial contrast in the trio section. Beethoven elaborates the tune to an amazing degree, introducing all manner of contrapuntal devices and an element of parody that together strip the tune of any ceremonial connotations. In order to extend the proportions of the typical scherzo-trio-scherzo he asks for a literal repeat of the trio and second repeat of the scherzo.

The Presto finale sweeps the listener away on a wild romp that only occasionally asserts the E minor home key, preferring boisterously, optimistically, and humorously to stress C major. His sonata-rondo main theme with its irresistible galloping rhythm and forward motion came to him after he had already sketched his innovative key scheme. He presents the refrain four times, each time wittily shortening the subject from the previous hearing. Beethoven’s delight in building suspense and laughingly moving on culminates in the final return to the main theme and its even faster conclusion.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe