Megan Ross, Ph.D. 2019

Advisor: Mark Evan Bonds

Dissertation Title: The Critical and Artistic Reception of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C♯ Minor, Op. 131

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Dissertation Abstract:

Long viewed as the unfortunate products of a deaf composer, Ludwig van Beethoven’s “late” works are now widely regarded as the pinnacle of his oeuvre. While the reception of this music is often studied from the perspective of multiple works, my dissertation offers a different perspective by examining in detail the critical and artistic reception of a single late work, the String Quartet in C♯ minor, Op. 131. Critics have generally agreed that the string quartets best exemplify the composer’s late style, and that of these, Op. 131 stands out as the paradigmatic late quartet. I argue that this is because Op. 131 exhibits the greatest concentration of features typically associated with the late style. It is formally unconventional, with seven movements of grotesquely different proportions, to be played continuously, without a pause, as if to insist on the unity of the whole. It conspicuously avoids a sonata-form movement until its finale, opening instead with an extended fugue; the sonata-form finale, in turn, quotes from the fugue, again reinforcing the notion of formal wholeness. These features have consistently challenged commentators to search for coherence in this work. Questions of coherence are central to the reception of the late works, and nowhere more so than in the case of Op. 131. 

My study traces this quartet’s reception history through explanations of coherence that rest on both internal and external evidence, that is, on analysis of the music itself and on the composer’s biographical circumstances. Later artists working in music, painting, film, literature and works for the stage have also responded to the various features of the quartet’s perceived logic. The sources I examine include reviews, biographies, analyses, sketch studies, diaries, letters, and new works of art inspired by this quartet. My account of the reception of Op. 131 concludes by encouraging scholars to reflect on their current approaches to understanding Beethoven’s late style, many of which can now be traced back to the nineteenth century, and to consider alternatives for the future. 

Dr. Ross is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at her undergraduate alma mater, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her research in the area of Beethoven studies approaches the composer’s music through the analysis of his hand-written sketches as well as the reception of the music by audiences from Beethoven’s time to the present. She also has an interest in hip-hop studies, and is at work on two projects: one examining the history of the Boston areas local hip hop scene, and another investigating the institutionalization of hip-hop DJing in education institutions in the US since the early 2000s.