Ludwig van Beethoven

For Joseph Kerman, the String Quartet in B flat, Op. 130, was Beethoven’s ‘most dissociated composition’ (The Beethoven Quartets (London, 1967), 321), the antithesis to the paradigm of ‘integration’ represented by the C sharp minor work, Op. 131. Kerman’s concern was with matters of musical design and structure, particularly the ‘special concept of coherence in this work’, one that he found ‘less instinctual than constructed, less direct than refined, less normal than paradoxical: in a word, less sure’ (ibid. 305). ‘Dissociation’ in Op. 130 is writ largest in Beethoven’s decision—still a matter of aesthetic dispute nearly two centuries after the fact—to reject the original finale, eventually published separately as the ‘Grande Fugue’, Op. 133 (the customary title Große Fuge has no source-derived authority) and in a four-hand arrangement for piano as Op. 134, in favour of the substitute movement composed in the autumn of 1826. That decision entailed physical...

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