Piano quartetts Wo0 36

[gprengel]

I have known and loved Beethoven's work for more than 30 years now and in this week I realy heard some of his works which I never heard before - his piano quartetts WoO 36 which he wrote as 15 year old boy!! And they are so beautiful - especially the the Adagios from the 1st and 3rd and the awesome Allegro in c minor from the 1st.
I can't believe that Beethoven wrote these works in 1785 - even before Mozart wrote the Figaro and his piano quartetts KV 478/493!
Why are the so unknown? Why didn't Beethoven publish them?

By the way, the theme of this Allegro Beethoven used 1792 in an atttempt to write a c minor symphony and one of the Adagio he used in the piano sonata op.2,1 (which to me is only half as appealing as the one from WoO 36)

Gerd

[Peter]

Yes Gerd they are truly remarkable for one so young and I've no idea why he didn't publish them. We featured some movements on the Rare works page a few years back and here is the info on them:

On his first trip to Vienna in April 1787, it is possible that Beethoven may have shown a set of three Piano Quartets (completed some two years earlier) to Mozart. By coincidence, Mozart wrote the first of his two great piano quartets (the one in G minor K.478) during that same year of 1785. All three of the Beethoven quartets were influenced by the set of six violin sonatas by Mozart (K.296 & 376-380). The publisher Artaria acquired the quartets after Beethoven's death and published them the following year in 1828 in a different order from that in which they occur in the manuscript.


No.1 in Eb Major:

The model here is Mozart's G major Sonata K.379: both works begin with an Adagio too substantial to function as a mere slow introduction, yet at the same time deliberately designed to lack the effect of a self-contained movement. Both pieces are in sonata form, though they break off before the recapitulation can get under way. Instead, there is a dramatic Allegro in the tonic minor (in the Beethoven, Eb minor). The main theme of this Eb minor section was inspired more by the Sturm und Drang style of C.P.E Bach than by Mozart and was originally sketched out in C minor, as the start of a symphony in that key. The exposition's chromatic closing theme was to find its way into another C minor work, the Piano Trio Op.l No.3. It is symptomatic of this dramatic piece, with its explosive coda, that the exposition remains in the minor throughout. The variation finale follows closely the plan of its Mozartian model, with a first variation in smooth semiquavers, and a second transforming the theme into semiquaver triplets on the violin. As in the Mozart, there is also a march-like variation in the minor, in dotted rhythm.


No.2 in D major:

The plan of Beethoven's D major Quartet, with its slow middle movement in F# minor is again unorthodox. It is borrowed from that of Mozart's Violin Sonata in E flat major K.380, and the key-scheme is one that will not readily be found elsewhere in the work of either composer - both composers wrote no more than a single F# minor movement in their mature years: Mozart, the slow movement of the A major Piano Concerto, K.488 - Beethoven, the Adagio of the Sonata Op.106. As for the rondo finale, its waltz theme has a charm all its own. Curiously, the piano part finishes three bars before the end of the movement, leaving the string players to provide their own emphatic conclusion.


No.3 in C major:

Despite some inevitable signs of immaturity, these early piano quartets contain much attractive music, and Beethoven himself thought highly enough of some of the ideas in the C major Quartet to use them again, with little alteration, in his set of three piano Sonatas Op.2. Two passages from the opening movement reappear in the first movement of the C major Sonata Op.2 No.3, and the initial theme of the slow movement is reproduced at the start of the Adagio from the F minor Sonata Op.2 No.1. Ferdinand Ries incorrectly doubted the authenticity of these works as he considered that Beethoven 'could not have hashed up his sonatas from old themes'. The finale of Beethoven's C major Quartet follows the outline of the rondo from Mozart's Violin Sonata in the same key, K.296, and the material of their central A minor episode is remarkably similar.

[Joy]

Excellent information, thanks for all that!