BEETHOVEN GROSSE FUGE OP.133

In the first of two articles, Belcea Quartet violist Krzysztof Chorzelski guides us on a journey that requires as much courage from the listener as it does from the performer

From Beethoven Grosse Fuge, Op.133. Urtext edition, paperbound with unmarked string parts. Ed. Rainer Cadenbach. Order no. HN741, ISMN 979-0-2018-0741-6. €30.00. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, Munich © 2007

Just as it generated controversy from its first performance, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge op.133 continues to confound and challenge. For all its rigour and formality, this is not a normal fugue. Usually the aim when playing a fugue is to bring out certain elements and make sure the texture is clear and understandable for the listener. To do that here would be contrary to the nature of this music, which is about being on the brink of coherence.

The beginning is similar to that of the finale of the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata. Beethoven sets out his ideas – the eight-note main fugue subject, trills, iambic rhythms and appoggiaturas laid out both in gentle melody and in the disjointed countersubject – as if he were a child pyromaniac diligently preparing all the elements and then, on the word Fuga, lighting a match and beginning a long, merciless journey towards destruction.

The key for me is what he wrote on the front page of the autograph manuscript: tantôt libre, tantôt recherché, which means ‘sometimes free and sometimes learned [scholarly]’. It’s very important to take that into account. While it is written with the kind of taut monothematicism typical of Beethoven, the Grosse Fuge is also utterly chaotic. I think it’s the most provocative piece of music there is.

Disorientation

The first question we ask ourselves when we start rehearsing this piece is about the first gesture. What are we to make of this octave G? In terms of the home key it is disorienting although when heard after the Cavatina – the penultimate movement of the Quartet no.13 in B flat major op.130 – it makes perfect sense as a linking note between that movement and either the Grosse Fuge or the alternative finale, which are both in B flat major.

THE QUARTET

NAME BELCEA QUARTET

NATIONALITY ROMANIAN, POLISH AND FRENCH

STUDIED WITH CHILINGIRIAN QUARTET, AMADEUS QUARTET, ALBAN BERG QUARTET

RECORDS FOR ALPHA CLASSICS

‘I think the Grosse Fuge is the most provocative piece of music there is’

MARCO BORGGREVE

Listen to the Belcea Quartet perform Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge op.133 at youtu.be/rZHQ3xRa41Y

In the case of the Grosse Fuge, it’s the most earth-shattering explosion one could imagine, but still harmonically clinging on to what happened just before in the Cavatina, whereas in the alternative finale the repeated G in the viola is a way of bringing us to a totally different end to the piece.

The first gesture ends with a natural release but it’s important to keep some density in the sound by maintaining contact at the tip of the bow. Then you make a lightning-fast retake, followed by a gigantic attack on the fortissimo syncopation in bar 2, using flat hair and coming close to the bridge so that there is a threatening quality to the sound. It’s important to count the five half-bar beats so that the listener is completely thrown by the asymmetry.

The impulse towards silence

The four sforzandos that follow need to develop, each one more sostenuto and using more bow. When we practise the end of the phrase we often play a resolution in tempo on the half-bar of bar 10, because otherwise it’s easy for the end of the trill to relax; the opposite of what’s intended. That silence, in the absence of a resolution note, is deafening and arguably the most intense part of the phrase.

Maintaining the tension with the bow is essential in the next two short phrases from bar 11, to follow the implied crescendo as each statement burns its way through the main subject towards the silences. As the music so far has been a set of declamatory statements with no established pulse, we like to keep the length of the rests in bars 10, 13 and 16 spontaneous, not measured, so that they are a surprise to us as well as the audience.

Whispered prayers

In the introduction, Beethoven throws at us all the principal motivic shapes that form the rest of the piece. They all stem from the same idea but have different personalities. And so we get to the Meno mosso e moderato, which is preparation for the slow movement of the Grosse Fuge. While the first violin plays the main fugue subject the lower strings should play the accompaniment with a really slow bow to sustain the tension until the cadence into bar 21. From here the cello picks up this intensity by stating the main subject while the upper voices gently introduce the new material. To me, these entries have the quality of someone whispering and although the music is legato, we have to get away from the idea of smoothness so that it sounds spoken.

A statement of intent

The lone voice of the first violin in the Allegro from bar 26 is a striking presentation of what is arguably the fundamental musical idea of the piece – the appoggiatura. There is so much potential in each of these pairs of notes, like two atoms striking together, and in bar 29 two different pitches are finally born of one pair. We used to perform this material with much more portato than we do now. The main point is to sustain through into the second half of each crotchet (q) beat, unlike the kind of release you would get playing simple crotchets. In this pianissimo statement by the first violin there’s space to make that pulsation a little more ‘heard’.

The viola is the first to play this material in the Fuga, starting in bar 31, and I tend to play each pair that is followed by a rest on a down bow to make them sound as arresting as possible, in contrast to the rugged subject introduced by the first violin in bar 30. The bow stroke needs to be really contained for the angular up-beat figures – for example bars 38, 39 and 41 of the viola statement – and then it can be freer as the music becomes more melodic in bars 40 and 42.

The two fugue subjects should be balanced against each other and played with equal force. There needs to be a clear hierarchy so that when, for example, in bar 50 Beethoven triples the voices on the pointed thematic material and the cello enters with the augmented theme, the inner voices do not compete but simply provide rhythm and harmony.

Journey through chaos

The arrival at E flat major in bar 58 marks the first variation, where the performers must juggle not just with two but three types of thematic material, as all four voices take it in turns to wrestle with triplets against the quavers (e) and dotted rhythms of the main subjects. However, I would say the first big climax of the piece is in bar 109 with the cadence to D minor. The two-bar bridge that follows is more aligned with the tantôt libre aspect of this piece and I would encourage anyone to play those bars quietly and with a freer tempo. They are like a window to the outside, bringing hope for a return to order. Then, that hope is shattered in bar 110 with the cello’s up-beat into the second variation of the fugue, where the brutal dactylic rhythms of the new countertheme propel us ever onwards.

The next climax in bar 138 clears the way for the main themes to appear on their own, but this time each is condensed to half its original length and changed – even mutilated – with the appoggiatura pairs yielding note changes at different points to before, and the second theme now stated in triplets rather than dotted notes. It is important to highlight these differences before the texture builds up and ultimately disintegrates in a blur of fugato at the end of the section.

Bridging the end of the section into the Meno mosso you could choose to sustain the frenetic pace to the end of bar 158, but we tend to give more space to the surprising modulation to G flat in the last bar and thus prepare the pause.

Redemption

In the wake of the chaos, bars 159–160 and also 175–176 are like two people trying to make sense of what just happened. It’s fragmented and can be played out of time: tantôt libre. From bar 161 the prayer-like semiquavers (s) are like someone trying to restore peace in the face of a merciless force. Then in bar 198 the bass-line settles on an F and from there on plays out the most wonderful circle of 5ths, culminating in bar 209 when the viola arrives on a Gflat pedal. It is a moment of stillness and, in a sense, devotion. I am not a religious person but through this music of the Meno mosso my idea of God is reached.

INTERVIEW BY HELENA RUINARD