String Quartet No. 11 (Beethoven)

String Quartet No. 11 (Beethoven)

Ludwig van Beethoven's opus 95, his String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, is his last before his exalted late string quartets. It is commonly referred to as the "Serioso," stemming from his title "Quartett Serioso" at the beginning and the tempo designation for the third movement.

It is one of the shortest and most compact of all the Beethoven quartets, and shares a tonality (F) with the first and last quartets Beethoven published (Op. 18, no. 1, and Op. 135). In character and key, as well as in the presence of a final frenetic section in the parallel major, it is related to another composition of Beethoven's middle period — the overture to his incidental music for Goethe's drama Egmont, which he was composing in the same year he was working on this quartet.

The autograph manuscript for this quartet is inscribed "October 1810", but the paper on which it appears does not match the variety Beethoven is known to have used at that time. It is more likely that he finished it several months later. It premiered in 1814 and did not appear in print until two years later. Beethoven was quoted as saying "The Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public." Upon listening to the piece, it becomes apparent why he made that assertion. This piece would have been quite out of character in 1810: it is an experiment on compositional techniques the composer would draw on later in his life. (Techniques such as shorter developments, interesting use of silences, metric ambiguity, seemingly unrelated outbursts, and more freedom with tonality in his sonata form.)

The historical picture of this time period helps to put the piece in context. Napoleon had invaded Vienna earlier that year, and this upset Beethoven greatly. All of his aristocratic friends had fled Vienna, but Beethoven stayed and dramatically complained about the loud bombings.