String Quartet No. 16 in F Major

Beethoven composed his last string quartet, Op. 135, in 1826. It is normally grouped with the four previous quartets, written during 1822-26, but how much does it belong with them? It is much more concise, and its four-movement form looks quite conventional—especially after the astonishing formal adventures of the other so-called "late quartets". Not only so, but in the opening Beethoven recreates the genial, witty conversational style of Haydn’s pioneering quartets, which seems worlds away from the intense inner dialogues of Opp. 127–132. There are profundities here, though, and moments of breathtaking originality. The second movement is one of Beethoven’s most rhythmically audacious scherzos, in which he seems to delight in pulling the carpet from under our bewitched dancing feet again and again. Then comes a slow movement which, though brief and simply structured, digs deep emotionally, at its heart using silence to devastating effect. Beethoven originally intended this “Lento assai" as an eighth and final movement for Op. 131 but eventually came to realise that it needed a different context. What follows seems deadly earnest: a sombre slow introduction based on a motif Beethoven marked “Must it be?” But then an allegro leaps to life with the countermotif “It must be!” The anguished opening returns, yet in the end it appears that tragedy is a mask behind which comic truth hides, ready to spring. As one version of Beethoven’s last words has it, “Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.”