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Of Deviant Developments and Recondite Recapitulations: Sonata Form and Formal

Ambiguity in the First Rasumovsky Quartet of Beethoven.

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’

numerous idiosyncrasies, which puzzled Beethoven’s contemporaries, are now widely

acknowledged as insightful and revolutionary developments in string quartet writing that

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

quality by no means limits a composer’s creative possibilities, it does prescribe a fairly

specific narrative structure that a knowledgeable listener could easily identify,

irrespective of any of the piece’s variable characteristics (tempo, affect, texture, etc.).

Consequently, a work consisting entirely of sonata form movements, especially one as

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 duration of the entire piece.

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

presented as miscellaneous illustrations of Beethoven’s progressive writing, and rarely is

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

nexus of Beethoven’s middle period – a time of great evolution and experimentation –

highlights its historical importance in the composer’s development.

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.

101). Representative elements of my analyses are discussed below.

One of Beethoven’s most effective dissimulative devices entails the preparation of

psychological expectations and their subsequent disappointment. By making typical use

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

instances: this unprecedentedly lengthy section thrice threatens to come to a close by

emphasizing a strong dominant harmony at the end of a developmental core, only to

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

wondrous surprises have yet to manifest themselves.

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

“logic to become apparent in the retrospect.”1 In other instances, points of harmonic

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.

The F Major Rasumovsky quartet is much more than an amalgamation of formal

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,

and displays an important development in the composer’s treatment of the sonata. It

furthermore chronicles a momentous stage in the evolution of the sonata and

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

of Beethoven’s compositional techniques in the F Major quartet is of consequence to

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

juxtaposed in order to achieve eminent artistic expression.

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.

Caplin, William E. Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the

Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998.

Churgin, Bathia. “Beethoven and the New Development-Theme in Sonata-Form

Movements.” The Journal of Musicology 16/3 (1998): 323-43.

Headlam, Dave. “A Rhythmic Study of the Exposition in the Second Movement of

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

Nonresolving Recapitulation.” 19th-Century Music 25/2&3 (2001): 127-54.

Jackson, Timothy L. “The Tragic Reversed Recapitulation in the German Classical

Tradition.” Journal of Music Theory 40/1 (1996): 61-111.

Kerman, Joseph. The Beethoven Quartets. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1967.

Kinderman, William, ed. The String Quartets of Beethoven. Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 2006.

Lam, Basil. Beethoven String Quartets. Seattle: University of Washington Press,

1975.

Longyear, Rey M. “Beethoven and Romantic Irony.” The Musical Quarterly 56/4

(1970): 647-64.

Radcliffe, Philip. Beethoven’s String Quartets. London: Hutchinson, 1965.


Of Deviant Developments and Recondite Recapitulations – 6

Salzer, Felix. Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music. New York: Boni, 1952.

Reprint, New York: Dover, 1962.

Tovey, Donald Francis. Beethoven. London: Oxford University Press, 1944.

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