PIZZICATO, PIZZICATO LET ME GO

Harpo van Beethoven

Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major (nicknamed the "Harp" quartet because of the extensive use of pizzicato in the first movement) remains my all time favoritest of his middle quartets. The trio of Razumovskys (Nos. 7-9) are famous as the chamberwork equivalent to ol' Ludwig van's Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" (i.e. crazy, groundbreaking and the moment when Beethoven becomes Beethoven). The "Serioso" quartet gets top billing for just how audacious it is. But none of them can beat the "Harp." The first movement's got that strangely satisfying sort of warm, glowing, healthy mellow-but-ebullient thing that only Beethoven really does. The slow movement's sad, tranquil and beautiful. The presto is really just as insane as Beethoven ever really gets: it's Jaws meets Psycho meets skeleton dance meets ragtime, and some. The last movement's this lovely little whirlwind of variations that alternate between explosive emotionality and barely-bottled melodrama. The coda says it all: a sustained, blinding onrush of strings instantly resolves itself at the last (literal) second. That glorious Beethovenian sense of Germanic humor is omnipresent throughout the whole piece.

I would also like to take this opportunity to put forward the theory that Harpo Marx is the reincarnation of Ludwig van Beethoven.