<div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n68WBx91nQE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n68WBx91nQE</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>My knowledge of music theory and history is limited, yet I think anyone without a soul of stone would find this music astonishing, ecstatic, miraculous in the union of complex abstract order with furious passion and emotion of subtly and tenderness. Composed at the end of Beethoven's life, when he was deaf, I can only wonder in my limited way regarding the true nature of the soul of this genius.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Opus 133 Grosse Fuge (16 plus minutes long) was intended to be the final movement of the String Quartet No 13, Opus 130, but became a composition separated to stand on its own, for various reasons. Nonetheless, the Guarneri Quartet released a single CD that contains nothing more than Opus 130, 133 Grosse Fuge. I wonder if Opus 130, !33 Grosse Fuge, has ever been performed on the Palouse. The Grosse Fuge is very difficult to perform correctly.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>After listening to this music with full attention of body and mind, most all other music is rendered trivial, silly, inferior. especially after the Grosse Fuge! This effect fades, as the more ordinary consciousness of life asserts its demands upon action and thought, which though suggesting the ordinary consciousness we live in is limited, at least in this limitation music of less divine perfection can be enjoyed without a sneer.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Amazingly, J. W. N. Sullivan's book "Beethoven: His Spiritual Development," an excellent read that explores Beethoven's late quartets, including Opus 130, 133 Grosse Fuge, is available in full online. Highly recommended!</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.archive.org/details/beethovenhisspir002615mbp" target="_blank">http://www.archive.org/details/beethovenhisspir002615mbp</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>--------------</div>
<div>An explanation of why the Grosse Fuge became separated from the quartet Opus 130, is offered below:</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="http://www.russellsteinberg.com/press-group-18.html">http://www.russellsteinberg.com/press-group-18.html</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Op. 130 String Quartet in B flat major</div>
<div><br>During the premiere of op. 130, Beethoven sat in a bar across the street and waited nervously for his friends to tell him how it went. They told him the audience demanded an immediate encore of the two dance movements. Beethoven said, “Yes, sweet trifles, but what about the fugue?” They told him people were less enthusiastic with the concluding movement, the Grosse Fuge. It was just too massive and confusing a work for most people to hear after the already substantial 5 previous movements. Beethoven, enraged, was reported to have growled, "And why didn't they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!"<br>
His publisher begged him to write another shorter finale and enticed Beethoven by offering to pay for it and to publish the Grosse Fuge separately. Beethoven eventually agreed and even today the quartet is often played with the shorter finale. Personally I think there is a problem with this that any audience can hear almost immediately. You see, the Grosse Fuge is not really an independent piece. It is in every way a summation of what came before.</div>
<div>----------</div>
<div>The final dimension that makes the Grosse Fuge so complex is that Beethoven takes his trademark sforzandos that we’ve heard in his earliest music to their farthest horizon, so that rhythmic syncopations unfold between all the instruments with an intensity that makes it nearly impossible to tell the meter (or grouping) of the music. The opening fugue subject itself deceives our ears. It is written one beat later than we hear. In other words, it begins on the weak beats—two and four—instead of on the strong beats—one and three. Only at the cadence—the end of the subject—do we become aware of this deception. And then, instead of sounding decisive, the effect on our ears is that the music accelerates past any sense of downbeat. This last obstacle keeps many a quartet from being able to perform this piece, and many a listener from being able to follow!<br>
<br>All these dimensions led avante-garde composer Igor Stravinsky to state that the Grosse Fuge sounds eternally modern. <br>------------------------------------------</div>
<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div>