No String Quartet is an Island: The Stylistic Reflection of Contemporary European Views on the Function of Art in the Late Works of Beethoven

Abstract

The late Quartets of Beethoven are among the most extensively analysed works of the genre and are frequently viewed by scholars, musicians and critics as works that stand alone (Anderson n.d.; Blum 1992, 171-172; Eiseo et al. 200 I, 588-589); islands of greatness in music history. As well as being regarded by modem scholars and performers as representing the pinnacle of String Quartet writing (Anderson n.d.; Eisen et al. 200 I, 588-589), they are generally considered to be idiosyncratic (Dunhill 1970, 7) and revolutionary works; according to Joseph Kermao, their stylistic characteristics display the realist ion of "tendencies present in his [Beethoven's Quartet] writing from the beginning" (Kerman 1979, 328). This paper, however, takes a new cross-disciplinary approach to studying these works, offering fresh insights into a more detailed contextual understanding of style in the composer's late String Quartets through situating these great musical islands in their surrounding sea of art history and theory of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.