Rasumovsky Revised
Rasumovsky Revised
Rasumovsky Revised
Since their earliest performances, the Rasumovsky quartets of Beethoven, op. 59,
have been a source of great interest to performers and scholars alike. The pieces’
led to the medium’s apotheosis. Though many of these progressive elements have been
researched and discussed in scholarly literature, little attention has been granted to
Beethoven’s remarkably prominent use of sonata form (ten of the quartets’ twelve
movements are in this form), especially in the first of the Rasumovsky quartets, op. 59/1
in F Major. While it is commonly known that this quartet is the first piece to comprise
four sonata movements, the wider implications of such a compositional decision have yet
to be explored.
The sonata’s relatively complex nature lends it a dramatic character that is much
more clearly defined than those of the simpler binary and ternary forms. While this
irrespective of any of the piece’s variable characteristics (tempo, affect, texture, etc.).
lengthy as op. 59/1, makes rigorous demands on a listener’s patience and interest. One
must also note that by the time the Rasumovsky quartets were composed, the string
quartet had already been established as a medium that appealed to more sophisticated and
Of Deviant Developments and Recondite Recapitulations – 2
musically educated patrons, some of whom would surely have noticed and grown weary
of the hackneyed use of sonata form. Thus, Beethoven may have felt that it would
behoove him to disguise the form of each movement in order to engage his audience for
The thought that Beethoven would modify accepted formal design is not
particularly startling. Much scholarship – from the analyses of Tovey to more recent
articles by Jack Adrian, Timothy Jackson, and James Hepokoski – has noted and
expounded various samples of the composer’s formal alterations; some literature has also
broached the dramatic possibilities of such alterations. These, however, are usually
a connection drawn between them. Yet the nonconformities of the first Rasumovsky
quartet can hardly be regarded as isolated incidents: their almost motivic prominence
alone lends them greater significance. Furthermore, the quartet’s composition at the
I maintain that many of the first Rasumovsky quartet’s eccentricities are means by
which Beethoven obscures the composition’s formal design. Using both Schenkerian
methods and techniques of formal analysis put forth by William Caplin, Warren Darcy,
and James Hepokoski, I will analyze these peculiarities and discuss their function within
the harmonic and rhetorical context of the classical sonata. I will also show the quartet’s
role as a link between earlier works of Beethoven’s middle period, which already show
preliminary signs of formal experimentation (the quintet op. 29 and piano sonatas op. 31
and 53), and the later, more developed works of the same period and of the last period
Of Deviant Developments and Recondite Recapitulations – 3
(the last Rasumovsky quartet op. 59/3, the Archduke trio op. 97, the piano sonata op.
of compositional elements, Beethoven leads the listener to anticipate certain motivic and
harmonic events indicative of formal boundaries. These are then either evaded or
replaced with events of a completely different nature, thus disrupting the listener’s sense
of form. Wide use of this technique can be observed throughout the entire work. The
development section of the first movement (Ex. 1) alone contains several striking
circumvent the predicted recapitulation (Exx. 2, 3, 4). In each instance, the sense of
closure is amplified by either the appearance of the opening theme (mm. 162, 229), the
prolongation of the dominant (mm. 162, 242), or simply by the sheer proportions of the
development section, which – by any previous standards – would have already ended.
The listener is thus left to puzzle over the events of the development and ponder what
Beethoven’s procedures further belie the form with tonally ambiguous passages
and the displacement of defining harmonic occurrences, which temporarily throw the
listener’s tonal orientation into a state of disarray. At the onset of three of the quartet’s
movements, for example, 5̂ is emphasized while the tonic pitch remains elusive,
obfuscating the home key (see the beginnings of movements I, III, and IV); in the outer
movements, a proper sense of tonic is not achieved until the very end of the first theme.
Of Deviant Developments and Recondite Recapitulations – 4
This grants the opening theme an unusual instability that leads the listener to question its
true function until a strong tonic is heard (see I: mm. 1-19; IV: mm. 1-18), and causes its
interest do not properly align with their motivic counterparts, as in the recapitulation of
the finale where the opening theme reenters atop subdominant harmony and the expected
cadence in the tonic occurs only two measures later. (Ex. 5) While such tonal treatment
only ephemerally offsets the listener’s understanding of the form, it adds a great degree
of interest that prevents the sonata rhetoric from ever becoming monotonous.
curiosities. Perhaps arising from an intent to disguise the well-known sonata form, it
offers insight into the rhetorical and dramatic understanding of form in Beethoven’s time,
demonstrates the flexibility that has contributed to the form’s success and popularity for
nearly three centuries. In addition to its historical and theoretical value, an understanding
current and future composers. Beethoven’s phenomenal creativity within the confines of
a set structure provides an invaluable example of how innovation and tradition can be
1
Donald Francis Tovey, Beethoven (London, 1944): 82
Of Deviant Developments and Recondite Recapitulations – 5
Selected Bibliography:
Adrian, Jack. “The Ternary-Sonata Form.” Journal of Music Theory 34/1 (1990):
57-80.
Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59, No. 1.” Music Theory Spectrum 7 (1985): 114-38.
Hepokoski, James. “Back and Forth from ‘Egmont’: Beethoven, Mozart, and the
1975.
Longyear, Rey M. “Beethoven and Romantic Irony.” The Musical Quarterly 56/4
(1970): 647-64.
Salzer, Felix. Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music. New York: Boni, 1952.