Opus 95 Poem by gershon hepner

They try to prove from Opus 95
that Beethoven was quite bipolar.
I bet he wrote it, deaf but yet alive,
to prove he was a serious high-roller.

Daniel Wakin “What’s in a Beethoven Quartet? A Full Curriculum, ” NYT, February 12,2008) , writes about the study of Beethoven’s F Minor Quartet, Op.95, dubbed the Serioso, by students at the Curtis Institute of Music:
Written in 1810, the work is considered a culmination of Beethoven’s second period and looks forward to the late quartets “in its dominant qualities of conciseness, directness and instant confrontation of contrast, ” the musicologist Joseph Kerman wrote in “The Beethoven Quartets.” It is called the “Quartetto Serioso, ” a rare instance in which Beethoven himself bestowed a subtitle. “The F minor Quartet is not a pretty piece, but it is terribly strong — and perhaps rather terrible, ” Mr. Kerman wrote. “Everything unessential falls victim, leaving a residue of extreme concentration, in dangerously high tension. But strength, not strain, is the commanding impression.” The key, F minor, is that of the “Appassionata” Piano Sonata, the storm scene in the Sixth Symphony and the “Egmont” Overture, Lewis Lockwood points out in his biography “Beethoven.” At Curtis one day last week, the work was on view at different angles. In the morning in Jeanne Minahan McGinn’s language and literature class, Benjamin Beilman, a violinist, delivered an oral report on the quartet. “Obviously this is very typical of Beethoven, ” he said. “He switches character very, very rapidly.” Mr. Beilman heard Beethoven’s frustration at growing deaf in the quartet’s angry moments. He suggested that the mood swings of the piece supported a theory that Beethoven was bipolar. In the afternoon Mr. Gilbert led a coaching session on the quartet for the principals of the orchestra string sections: Sylvia Kim, the concertmistress; Quan Yuan, the principal second violinist; Philip Kramp, the principal violist; and Abraham Feder, the principal cellist. Mr. Gilbert drilled them on the gesture needed to start the piece, on the lengths of notes ending phrases, on rhythmic inflections of the opening bars. The opening is “explosive, defiant, like ‘me against the world, ’ ” he said.“It sounds a little uptight the way you’re playing it, ” he added.


2/12/08