Beethoven: String Quartet in F major, op.14/1

Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartet in F major, after the Piano Sonata in E major, op.14/1

Media Review / Comparison

2013-02-03 — Original posting (on Blogger)
2013-08-07 — New standard layout applied
2014-11-07 — Re-posting as is (WordPress)
2016-07-11 — Brushed up for better readability

Introduction / The Recordings
The Composition
- Transcription vs. Arrangement
Comments on the Individual Recordings

Introduction / The Recordings

In my blog series about recordings of the string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) in my music collection, this is a short interlude about the quartet in F major, after the piano sonata in E major, op.14/1 — references to the CDs are given at the bottom of the respective section, or in one of the related postings, or see the summary on the postings covering Beethoven’s String Quartets. Here’s a short list of the recordings in this comparison:

Artemis Quartet (2011)
Endellion String Quartet (2008)
Melos Quartett (1984)

The Composition

The String Quartet in F major (#34 in the Hess catalog) is Beethoven’s own quartet version of his piano sonata in E major, op.14/1 which he created in 1801 (around 3 years after the composition of the piano sonata), apparently being fed up with poor arrangements by publishers and fellow composers. So, time-wise this arrangement closely follows his quartets op.18 (1799 – 1800 — it took five more years for him to finish his op.59, the “Razumovsky Quartets”). The original piano sonata (op.14/1) features the following movements:

1. Allegro (4/4)

Beethoven, string quartet op.14/1, mvt.1, score sample

2. Allegretto — Maggiore (3/4)

Beethoven, string quartet op.14/1, mvt.2, score sample, Allegretto

Beethoven, string quartet op.14/1, mvt.2, score sample, Maggiore

3. Rondo: Allegro commodo (alla breve / 2/2)

Beethoven, string quartet op.14/1, mvt.3, score sample

Transcription vs. Arrangement

I found a description about this quartet adaptation that claims that apart from the instrumentation, the only change that Beethoven did was to change tonality from E major to F major. This is definitely wrong — after all, Beethoven was particularly proud of this arrangement, knowing that it was better than what one could have expected from “competition” (there have even been speculations that this composition was originally conceived as string quartet). I don’t want to go into detail here — just two highlights:

Interestingly, the first movement is annotated Allegro moderato, rather than just Allegro: a string quartet is not a grand piano, let alone an instrument from that period, such as a fortepiano by Walter or Christofori (much more agile than a modern concert grand) — hence the tempo for a string quartet should definitely be slower than in the piano version.
Beethoven did not simply distribute the notes onto four voices — he also made significant changes to the course of accompanying voices, reflecting the specific characteristics of a string quartet, and the additional flexibility with having four independent voices. If you have the piano score: it is interesting to follow and see where exactly Beethoven deviates from the piano version — I’ll let you make these discoveries yourself!

Comments on the Individual Recordings

The order of the interpretations is not chronological (neither by recording / publishing date nor by purchase date), but follows my personal, subjective rating, my preferred recording shown last:

Endellion Quartet (2007)

Beethoven: Complete String Quartets, Quintets & Fragments

Endellion String Quartet

Recorded in 2007, with Andrew Watkinson, Ralph de Souza, Garfield Jackson, and David Waterman — for general remarks see op.18/1.