Sitting quietly at Felix House, I have been listening
once again to the slow movements from Beethoven’s late quartets.
A few observations: In Beethoven’s major
compositions, he is ever concerned with God, in some form. In such works as the
Eroica and 5th Symphonies, Beethoven is in a state of open rebellion against
God, against his fate, against going death, against mortality itself. He may
have conflicts with particular human beings, but they largely reflect his inner
conflict with God.
In the late quartets, for reasons of which I am not
sure, one can hear that Beethoven is communing with the divine partner of his
soul. Some struggle remains, but it is within the partnership, not against it. Beethoven’s late quartets are composed within the Metaxy, within the Platonic
in-between, the realm of the spiritual, between God and human being. In
listening to these quartets, one is listening to an inner dance, a conversation
between two lovers in four voices. It is not that some instruments represent
the one, and some the other partner; rather, the two are ever together, moving
in harmonies with one another, playing together in various senses of the word.
If one wants to know what Plato-Voegelin means by the
in-between, and the mature Jung by the psyche, listen to Beethoven’s late
quartets. They arise from within the in-between, and this reality gives the
music not only its unearthly-earthly beauty, but a kind of inevitability or
ineluctability about it: from the first few notes of a given (slow) movement,
one can hear the seemingly effortless, “natural,” inevitable unfolding of
sound. It is what it must be, and its being is a sheer gift, not only to the
composer, but through Beethoven to anyone who enters into his songs of
divine-human communion through the art of listening between.
Ah, the Cavatina: adagio molto espressivo from the
Quartet #13 in B-Flat. Listen. How thankful to be alive, to be able to sing
together, to listen to one another. Beethoven is delighting in his immortal
Beloved, who may be embodied in a human being, but who is first and foremost the
divine presence within his soul, and is now embodied in exquisite, metaleptic
music. And not only in one movement, but in the whole set. Listen to the
Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile from the Quartet #12 in E-Flat. To
listen well is to enter into that which is heard, so that it is coming, as it
were, from the depths within one’s psyche. The music truly heard is also one’s
own communal song with God.
Goethe wrote words to the effect that listening to a
good string quartet is like listening to four adults in conversation. Perhaps,
as when hearing Mozart or Haydn, or early or middle quartets by Beethoven. But
in listening to the late quartets of Beethoven, one is hearing two in
conversation: the divine and human partners of the in-between, the psyche open
to the fullness of reality, and especially to the ground from which all
blessings flow.
