Beethoven: String Quartet No.7, Op.59 No.1

Introduction

Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 7 in F major was published in 1808 as opus 59, No. 1.

Overview

This work is the first of three quartets commissioned by prince Andrey Razumovsky, then the Russian ambassador to Vienna. This quartet is the first of Beethoven's middle period quartets and departs in style from his earlier Op. 18 quartets. The most apparent difference is that this quartet is over forty minutes long in a typical performance, whereas most of Beethoven's earlier quartets lasted twenty-five to thirty minutes. Furthermore, this quartet notoriously requires a greatly expanded technical repertoire.

Form

It consists of four movements:

The first movement is in an expansive sonata form, including a fugato in the development and lasting nearly twelve minutes even though it forgoes the then-customary repeat of the exposition. The opening cello melody is tonally ambiguous, with the first cadence establishing the key of F major only occurring several bars into the movement.

Another feature of the first movement is the delayed emotional recapitulation. As became one of Beethoven's many tools for emotional manipulation, delaying the grandiosity of the recapitulation for several bars after the establishment of the tonic key allowed Beethoven to heighten expectation of a definitive statement.

While both the majestic slow third movement and the fourth are also in sonata form, the second movement scherzo is formally one of the most unusual movements of Beethoven's middle period, easily classifiable as being also in sonata form.

The final movement is built around a popular Russian theme, likely an attempt to ingratiate the work to its Russian commissioner.

Masonic symbol

On the last leaf of the sketches for the Adagio, Beethoven wrote, "A weeping willow or acacia tree on my brother's grave" (Einen Trauerwiden oder Akazien-Baum aufs Grab meines Bruders). Both of his brothers were alive when this work was written so these words are interpreted as having a masonic significance, for the acacia is widely considered the symbolic plant of Freemasonry.