Susie on Beethoven's String Quartet Op 18 No. 3

Extract: In this short video talk, Royal College of Music, Royal Northern College Music Professor, Susie Mészáros, contextualises Beethoven's longing, searching for a more transcendent spirituality, reflected in his music, within the context of the Enlightenment. Beethoven was in his late twenties. It was only at this stage in his career after writing trios, violin and cello sonatas, septets, that he felt ready to take on the medium of the string quartet. There is nothing ostentatious about this string quartet. Beethoven could almost pick up a tune from the street and craft it into something extremely sophisticated and beautiful. This quartet still has all the hallmarks of classical writing and structure, except his journeys into keys, into texture and kind material he uses, which is perhaps more fragmentary and elusive than his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart.