Beethoven: String Quartets Op. 18, Nos. 1 And 2

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) String Quartets Vol. 1 String Quartet in F major, Op. 18,No.1 String Quartet in G major, Op. 18, No.2In 1792 Beethoven left his native cityof Bonn to seek his fortune in the imperial capital, Vienna. Five years earlier hispatron, the Archbishop of Cologne, a scion of the imperial family, had sent him to Vienna,where he had hoped to have lessons with Mozart. His plans were frustrated by the illnessand subsequent death of his mother, which made it necessary to return to Bonn and beforelong to take charge of the welfare of his younger brothers. Beethoven's father,overshadowed by the eminence of his own father, Kapellmeister to a former Archbishop, hadproved inadequate both as a musician and in the family, of which his son now took control.As a boy Beethoven had been trained tocontinue family tradition as a musician and had followed his father and grandfather as amember of the archiepiscopal musical establishment. In 1792 he arrived in Vienna withintroductions to various members of the nobility and with the offer of lessons with Haydn,from whom he later claimed to have learned nothing. There were further lessons from theCourt Composer, Antonio Salieri, and from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, and an initialcareer of some brilliance as a keyboard virtuoso. He was to establish himself, in thecourse of time, as a figure of remarkable genius and originality and as a socialeccentric, no respecter of persons, his eccentricity all the greater for his increasingdeafness. This last disability made public performance, whether as a keyboard-player or inthe direction of his own music, increasingly difficult, and must have served to encouragethe development of one particular facet of his music, stigmatised by hostile contemporarycritics as "learned", the use of counterpoint. He died in Vienna in 1827. In his sixteen string quartets, thefirst set of six published in 1801 and the last, completed in 1826 and published in theyear of the composer's death, Beethoven was as innovative as ever, developing andextending a form that seemed to have already reached a height of perfection in the laterwork of Haydn and of Mozart. The earliest mention of a string quartet comes in therecorded request of Count Apponyi in 1795. This had no immediate result, but it seemsprobable that Beethoven in these years was influenced by Emanuel Aloys Forster, amusician 22 years his senior, whose proficiency as a teacher of counterpoint he admiredand recommended to others, while himself perhaps profiting from the example of Forster'sown quartets. The first group of string quartets by Beethoven, published as Opus 18, consisted of quartets written between 1798and 1800 and was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz. The third of these, in D major, was the first in order of composition,followed by what was issued as Opus 18, No.1,the Quartet in F major. This last wascompleted in its original version by 25th June 1799, the date of an inscription by thecomposer on the first vi