I have been reading an astonishing (i.e. weird, alarming, subtle, absorbing) book by Sebastian Faulks. Published in 2007, ‘Engleby’ is about a super-intelligent but utterly individual character who in the book tells his own story. It begins when he was an eight year old, beaten by his father, and it ends when he is a convicted psychopath, incarcerated without promise of ever being released in a High Security Special Hospital. At so many different levels the novel depicts a man with a brilliant but totally insular and amoral mind. Hardly bed-time reading,written with an unerving detachment.

I was struck by the following observation early in the book….’ I listened to Beethoven’s late quartets yesterday. They’re quite wintry, aren’t they? But they have the feeling of a man thinking about death. And he can’t keep out a slight sense of pleasure – of smugness. I’m old; I have the right to fear no more the heat of the sun. Feel sorry for me. Indulge me. I’ve deserved it’.

I thought I would try and test this critique by listening to the last quartets, as recently I have reflected on his 32 piano sonatas. So I unearthed from its hiding place my old set of L.P.’s in the Italian Quartet’s recordings, with dated sound but committed playing. ‘Wintry’? ‘Thoughts of death?’ (he was certainly near to death when the last was written), ‘Smug’?’ ‘Feel sorry for me?’ Any response will have to follow after some concentrated listening!

Already just hearing the quartet opus 127 and opus 135 I have had again an overwhelming sense of Beethoven’s astonishing inventiveness, challenging the advances already made by the now dead Mozart and moving on from the example of Haydn his teacher. He makes the media into an art form entirely his own, teasing the listener by unexpected developments and using structures that follow his own language.

The labour involved in the production of such music is revealed in the case of opus 131, the various sketches of which amount to three times the volume of the final work. We read a lot about Beethoven’s temper and frustration and the volatility of his relationships, but less of his humour. On the proof-copy of this quartet he wrote: ‘Filched and put together from various sources, here and there’. The
joke was not understood by some of his contemporaries, so later he had to write an explanatory letter.

Now for some more listening (…and there’s all that British Music to hear as well!!)

B.R.