The Grosse Fuge (, also known in English as the Great Fugue or Grand Fugue), Op. 133, is a composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven. An immense double fugue, it was originally composed in 1825 as the concluding fifth movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. 13 in B major, Op. 130. The Schuppanzigh Quartet gave the first performance on 21 March 1826.
The fugue was poorly received, and Beethoven composed a new finale for the quartet at the request of his publisher. The Grosse Fuge was published as a separate work in 1827 as Op. 133. The work was composed when Beethoven was deaf and is part of his late quartets. The composition is now considered one of Beethoven's greatest achievements.
Composition history
Beethoven originally composed the fugue as the final movement of String Quartet No. 13 in B major, Op. 130 in late 1825. The piece was commissioned by Prince Nikolai Galitzin along with two other string quartets in January 1823. Beethoven finished the project three years later. The copy of Op. 130 that Galitzin received in early 1826 had the fugue intact.
Soon after Galitzin's commission, Beethoven set to work. After finishing the String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, he began work on the quartet in B early in 1825. On 29 August, he estimated the composition would be finished in ten days. The two previous Galitzin pieces were published by Schott and Maurice Schlesinger. Beethoven sold the publishing rights for the B quartet to in January 1826 for 80 ducats.
Beethoven ended other quartets with fugal forms, as had Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.Tepping, Susan E. Fugue Process and Tonal Structure in the String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Indiana University, 1987. 4f. Beethoven once quipped, "To make a fugue requires no particular skill...in my study days I made dozens of them. But the fancy wishes also to assert its privileges, and to-day a new and really poetical element must be introduced into the old traditional form."
As Beethoven aged, his string quartets got longer. The Grosse Fuge sprawls over 741 measures of music.Coward, Imogen. "No Quartet Is an Island: The Stylistic Reflection of Contemporary European Views on the Function of Art in the Late Works of Beethoven". In Musical Islands: Exploring Connections between Music, Place and Research. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 408. The finale dwarfs the rest of the quartet.Lockwood, Lewis. Inside Beethoven's Quartets: History, Performance, Interpretation. Harvard University Press, 2008. 192. During rehearsals at Beethoven's apartment, the Schuppanzigh Quartet struggled with the fugue. Ignaz Schuppanzigh's ensemble normally sight read music at their concerts. Second violinist Karl Holz joked with Beethoven that his was the only music that required practice.
The Schuppanzigh Quartet gave the premiere performance on 21 March 1826 at a house where the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde hosted chamber music concerts in Vienna. The other movements were received enthusiastically, and the audience requested encores of the second and fourth movement. Beethoven was informed by his brother Johann that the music delighted "the whole city". The fugue was not a success. Its length and complexity challenged both the performers and the audience. One critic described it as incomprehensible.
After performing the premiere, Karl Holz, who was also the composer's secretary and confidant, told Beethoven about the encores for the second and fourth movements. Beethoven growled, "And why didn't they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!"
Just a few weeks later on 11 April, Matthias Artaria asked Beethoven to approve a piano duet arrangement of the fugue. Publishing proofs for the string quartet were ready by August, but Artaria worried about the quartet's commercial potential. Karl Holz recalled:
Artaria...charged me with the terrible and difficult task of convincing Beethoven to compose a new finale, which would be more accessible to the listeners as well as the instrumentalists, to substitute for the fugue which was so difficult to understand. I maintained to Beethoven that this fugue, which departed from the ordinary and surpassed even the last quartets in originality, should be published as a separate work and that it merited a designation as a separate opus.
Artaria offered an additional fee for publication of the fugue, and Beethoven quickly agreed. Aside from the extra money, various justifications have been offered for why Beethoven acquiesced to Artaria. The lively final movement which replaced the fugue is in the form of a contredanse and is completely uncontroversial. Beethoven composed this replacement finale while staying at the estate of his brother Johann in Gneixendorf during the late autumn of 1826. It was the last completed score of his life.
In May 1827, two months after Beethoven's death, Matthias Artaria published the first edition of Op. 130 with the new finale, the Grosse Fuge as Op. 133, and the four-hand piano arrangement of the fugue as Op. 134. The fugue is dedicated to Beethoven's student and patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria.
Form Beethoven gave Grosse Fuge the subtitle (sometimes free, sometimes learned). Harvey Grace pointed to a similar inscription in the Hammerklavier fugue and the overlapping meanings of "recherché" and ricercar: "sought out". Its form has been widely analyzed and compared to a steroidal Baroque fugue, a suite of smaller pieces, and even a symphonic poem in sonata form., The fugue's structure transcends normal syntax.
Fugue subjects
The subject of the Grosse Fuge is an eight-note chromatic motif that climbs an octave. Its shape has been compared to a wedge that approaches the second scale degree. The motif appears in various guises in several of Beethoven's late quartets, such as the first movement of String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. Similar motifs can be found in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1774) and Joseph Haydn's String Quartet in G, Op. 33, No. 5.
The subject also bears a striking resemblance to Johann Sebastian Bach's musical spelling of his surname. The four notes of the Bach motif are spelled in reverse by the final pitches of Beethoven's subject: B–C–A–B. As Beethoven was in the thick of composing the string quartet and wrestling with its finale, Friedrich Kuhlau visited him on 2 September. Kuhlau jotted the Bach motif in Beethoven's conversation book. In reply, Beethoven drunkenly scribbled out a canon using the motif. He sent Kuhlau a finished three-part canon on the motif with some lyrics that punned on the Danish composer's name.. Bach's cryptogram appears in several Beethoven works from this period, including sketches for an overture based on the motif.
Beethoven considered several options for the fugue's second subject, including the "Ode to Joy" from his Ninth Symphony.. He settled on an exuberant melody in a dotted rhythm with a few compound interval leaps. Vincent d'Indy characterized the primary subject as emblematic of serious thought and the second as thoughtless frivolity. Second subject of the Grosse Fuge:
Overtura
The fugue opens with a 29-bar introduction that Beethoven called an overture in his manuscript. Beethoven asked for it to be played without pause after the Cavatina movement of the quartet. The final chord of the fifth movement includes the G that the quartet sounds in unison to begin the finale. The ensemble continues in unison to state the main fugue subject. The style and interval content are clearly linked to the very opening of the entire quartet. Opening bars of Grosse Fugue:
In its second statement, Beethoven transposes the subject down to F major and gives it a quiet quarter note rhythm. The cello repeats the motif for a third time down an octave as the other instruments foreshadow the fugue's busy tempo.
The overture concludes with the first violin's solo statement of the primary theme in a syncopated rhythm. Beethoven has outlined his four major treatments of the theme in reverse order. The fugue proper will begin with the last version of the subject heard in the overture.
First fugue
Following the overture is a double fugue in the key of B major that follows all the rules of a Baroque fugue: an exposition and three variations, showcasing different contrapuntal devices.
The violin's countersubject dominates the opening. The viola plays the primary subject. The disjointed beginning is Beethoven's design. Affirmation of the main fugue subject only happens at the end of the piece. The opening is disjointed and chaotic. The fugue subjects are metrically misaligned and not complementary creating a problem that Beethoven solves over the course of the work.
The first variation opens in the subdominant key of E. The second violin takes up the dotted countersubject, and the viola plays the primary subject in its original guise. The first violin introduces a moto perpetuo triplet figuration which ornaments the counterpoint. The resulting polyrhythm increases the chaos of the opening fugue.
The second variation returns to B. The section has been described as "the hardest to understand-intellectually, aesthetically, and emotionally" in the piece. Beginning in bar 79, the viola and cello play the second subject in stretto. The perpetual triplets transmute into an alternating eighth note and two sixteenths gallop.
The third variation begins with the violin taking up the second subject in an exuberant triplet rhythm. The viola plays the primary subject at twice the speed.
As the violin plays the second subject one last time, it has doubled the span of its compound intervals, leaping over two octaves. The fugue hurtles towards greater chaos, and the section abruptly modulates to G instead of resolving.
Meno mosso e moderato
The new section in G is marked Meno mosso e moderato (less quickly and moderate). This slower section resembles a sonata's traditional second movement, and it is also a double fugue..
The section has been described as a fugato because of the looser counterpoint. A flowing sixteenth note violin melody emerges as a subsidiary theme. The melody is played against sixteenth notes in the cello and second violin. Musicologist Joseph Kerman wrote about this sudden shift to a homophonic texture, "the effect is of an almost blinding innocence." When the second violin takes over the tune, the viola reintroduces the fugue's main subject.
The Meno mosso begins in a pianissimo dynamic. Leonard Ratner described the dynamic shift as a "wonderful change of color, offered with the silkiest of textures, and with exquisite moments of glowing diatonism." The quieter music comports with a tradition that dates to the rococo period where fugal passages would be marked forte and homophonic passages were rendered more gently in the galant style.
The counterpoint becomes more complex, with the cello and first violin playing the main subject in canon.
The polyphony gradually dissipates back into homophony. The quartet gently pulses a cadence in B minor that bursts into the major key for the final fugue.
Allegro molto e con brio
The third fugue section has been likened to a scherzo. The music bursts into a fortissimo giguelike statement of the fugue subject. The music grows in intensity and shifts into A major for a final learned fugue which finally gives the main subject pride of place. Initially, Beethoven is more intent on disfiguring or destroying the motif than affirming it.
When the cello states the theme in measure 273, it is augmented to fill each bar with one note. Beethoven now eschews the countersubject. The counterpoint derives instead from treatments of the subject. It is augmented, fragmented, and inverted to generate new material.
Beethoven pulverizes the theme into smaller segments until all that seems to be left is the trill. In measure 350, a continuous eighth note rhythm derived from the main subject pulses the music forward.