But if his brother's marriage was an occasion for
humor at the beginning, it lapsed afterward into the sternest tragedy in
its effect on the master's life, as will be seen further on in these
pages.
These quartets are monuments to Beethoven's genius and are classed among
the best examples of chamber-music. The Adagio of the second one was
thought out by Beethoven one night while contemplating the stars.
Somewhat of the infinite calm and serenity of his mood is imparted to
it. The incident is related by Czerny to whom it was related by
Beethoven himself. The quartets were generally disliked and condemned by
musicians when first produced. Cherubini said that they made him sneeze.
Others said that Beethoven was music-mad, that they could not be called
music, that they were too difficult, unintelligible, and so on. That was
close onto a century ago, and they are still unintelligible to some, but
we now know that this is not the fault of the quartets as was so naively
assumed at that time. The condemnation of them by the performers has a
show of reason in it as they taxed their capacity too severely.
Pages:
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109