Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74 and 95 by Nancy November (review)

Nancy November’s Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74, and 95 is the first full-length study of Beethoven’s five “middle-period” quartets since Gerald Abraham’s 1942 monograph for Oxford’s Musical Pilgrim series (Beethoven’s Second-Period Quartets [London: Oxford University Press, 1942]). While the 71 years separating these two publications have yielded numerous and diverse studies of Beethoven’s quartets— most notably Joseph Kerman’s groundbreaking exegesis of the entire cycle (The Beethoven Quartets [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1979])—scholars have tended to conceive of the middle-period quartets as “transitional” works, works that forecast but do not quite achieve the complexity and expressive depth of the last five quartets (plus the Grosse Fuge), the beating heart of Beethoven’s “late period.”

Until recently, the literature has also had relatively little to say on these quartets’ historical and cultural context. In part because of the string quartet’s symbolic status as the epitome of abstract, absolute musical expression, the notion that these works ought to be studied in relation to the time and place of their composition was long thought to be superfluous. The introductory essays in The Beethoven Quartet Companion, edited by Robert Winter and Robert Martin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), represented an important first step toward a more holistic approach. Such an approach, however, has been slow to emerge. Angus Watson’s survey of the entire chamber music oeuvre (Beethoven’s Chamber Music in Context [Wood bridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Boydell Press, 2010]) perhaps comes closest, but as a practical listening guide, it necessarily sacrifices depth for breadth.

November’s book addresses both of these scholarly lacunae, but it also does more than this. Drawing together reception history, music analysis, social and cultural backgrounds, historiography, performance practice, and sketch studies, it offers sophisticated and original perspectives both on individual quartets and on the five quartets as a group. It also contributes new insights to a growing literature that considers how our understanding of Beethoven’s music has been mediated by ideological forces that emerged during his lifetime and have remained intrinsic to musical culture ever since.

The book is divided into an introduction and eight chapters. The introduction and first two chapters establish the book’s agenda and explore the middle-period quartets in broad outline, focusing on such issues as genre, function, canonicity, historiography, and performance. Each of the next five chapters is devoted to a single quartet. The final chapter weaves together a number of loose strands regarding the quartets’ reception and offers some provocative concluding thoughts.

November begins by critiquing three core paradigms in Beethoven studies: the division of his career into three style periods, the notion of “heroic” Beethoven, and the persistent analytical focus on the musical score, as opposed to the music’s “physicality, visual codes, and social meanings” (p. 3). While all three critiques will be familiar to Beethoven scholars, they have particular resonance in the context of these five quartets, works that have often been understood in relation to Beethoven’s middle-period symphonic style rather than on their own terms. She seeks to “carve out some new aesthetic spaces” (p. 2) for these works by considering each quartet alongside the contemporary theories, practices, and ideas that informed its design.

In lieu of the traditional tripartite view of Beethoven’s career, and crucially for her thesis, November posits a “theatrical epoch” (roughly 1800–1815) during which Beethoven “was particularly engaged with, and sought further involvement with, theatrical works and theatrical concepts” (p. 5). During this period, she notes, Beethoven not only composed several large-scale theatrical works but also sought employment (in 1807) as a salaried stage composer at the Viennese Hoftheater. Though he was unsuccessful in this regard, his experience as an opera composer clearly had a strong...