Q: What connection is there between these beautiful works by Beethoven and Janáček that have "Kreutzer Sonata" in their names?

However limited the connection, it's more than
either work has with anybody named Kreutzer


Leoš Janáček's First String Quartet ("After L. N. Tolstoy's 'The Kreutzer Sonata'") gets a no-nonsense performance by the Kubín Quartet (Luděk Cap and Jan Niederle, violins; Pavel Vítek, viola; Jiří Hanousek, cello) at a concert in Ostrava (Czech Republic), Jan. 28, 2013.
i. Adagio -- Con moto -- Vivo [at 0:10]; ii. Con moto -- Energico e appassionato -- Tempo I [at 4:00]; iii. Con moto -- Vivace -- Andante -- Tempo I [at 7:56]; iv. Con moto -- Tempo II -- Adagio -- Maestoso (Tempo I) -- più mosso, feroce [at 11:32]

by Ken

If we take the post-title question ("What connection do these beautiful works by Beethoven and Janáček with 'Kreutzer Sonata' in their names have?") to mean "What direct connection?," and if we specify apart from (1) having 'Kreutzer Sonata' in their names and (2) being both very beautiful, then the answer is: well, no connection, really.


WE'LL GET TO THE BEETHOVEN WORK THAT HAS
"KREUTZER SONATA" IN ITS NAME, BUT FIRST --

A handful of notes:

(1) In the unlikely event that you're wondering what the heck has been going on here at Sunday Classics, you're owed an apology. We ran into an unexpected hiatus, which brought to a screeching halt all forward progress on the various still-to-be-connected themes that have been threading in and out here in recent months. (Note to whoever burst out laughing at the mention of "all forward progress" in connection with this feature: That was understandable but still unkind.)

The most glaring symptom of this hiatus has been the sudden softening of the proprietor's grinding, at times despeerate compulsion of recent months to get some kind of post posted every [expletive deleted] week. It's as if he suddenly didn't give a hoot. He's deeply contrite and swears that it'll never happen again, which you can believe or not. Around here the feeling is that once a person gives in to not giving a hoot, it's not usually a one-time thing. The official information, however, is that, going forward, at some time and in some fashion all outstanding questions will be answered. Probably. (Or possibly.) Any further questions on the subject may be addressed to the Public Relations Dept.

(2) With regard to the above-posted performance of the Janáček First String Quartet: First off, as longtime readers know, it's my normal practice to credit individual performers in string quartets and other small chamber ensembles, and in the case of the Kubín Quartet this proved a real challenge. Though the group is well represented on YouTube, the players always seems to be identified as "L.CAP, J.NIEDERLE, P.VÍTEK, J.HANOUSEK." I think I did finally get them right but if not would welcome corrections. Once I'd tracked most if not all of them down, I stumbled onto a source that seems to know something about the Ostrava-based ensemble, whose members have been playing together since their Ostrava Conservatory days, in the early 1970s. According to the source, the violinists and violist in the 2013 Janáček performance are original members, who as far back as 1982 made a recording of Janáček's Second String Quartet with the original cellist, Jiří Zedniček -- and at some unspecified later date recorded both Janáček quartets.

(3) The tempo markings I've assigned to the movements of the Janáček First Quartet should be taken with a grain of salt -- all four movements are filled with tempo markings, of which these are some. The marking "con moto" ("with movement") appears all over the place, in all four movements. It seems the composer wanted to make darned sure that performers kept the piece, you know, moving.

(4) The Kubín Quartet sure gets the message: At the pace they take the Kreutzer Sonata Quartet, they could get through both of Janáček's string quartets in less time than it takes the average violinist to get through the Beethoven work we're about to hear. This is part of what I meant in describing the Kubín performance as "no-nonsense" -- this and a sort of X-ray clarity that robs the piece of a measure of its haunting suggestiveness (I'd welcome a bit of nonsense) but stops short of the clinical.


HAVE YOU GUESSED THE BEETHOVEN WORK? (IF NOT,
A HINT: IT'S NOT A PIECE FOR "AVERAGE" VIOLINISTS)

Did you guess that our mystery piece is Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata? Here it is played by the great violinist Nathan Milstein -- at age 82.

BEETHOVEN: Violin Sonata No. 9 in A, Op. 47 (Kreutzer)


At his last public recital ("before his accident on the left hand," explains the YouTube poster), Nathan Milstein takes on the mighty Kreutzer Sonata with pianist Georges Pludermacher, in Stockholm's Berwerdhallen, July 1986.
i. Adagio sostenuto -- Presto [at 2:48]; ii. Andante con variazioni [at 12:58]; iii. Presto [at 26:27]


YES, THERE IS A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TWO WORKS
(BUT IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT KREUTZER GUY)

It just isn't a direct one. Rather it's kind of triangular. The original Kreutzer Sonata, from 1803, is the largest and most ambitious, not to mention technically demanding, of Beethoven's 10 violin sonatas. At Op. 47 the sonata is squarely "middle period." (The one additional violin sonata Beethoven composed didn't come till Op. 96, and it's a wildly different sort of piece, aiming more at beguiling than overwhelming. If we consider that Op. 95 is the similarly compact, more intimate string quartet that's generally shoved together with its grander, more proclamatory predecessors -- the three quartets of Op.74 and the single one of Op. 74 -- as Beethoven's "middle" quartets, the "late-middle-period" Opp. 95 and 96 do seem to fit together.)

At the other end of the 19th century the Kreutzer Sonata was taken up by the 60-year-old Leo Tolstoy for use in the novella he published in 1889, both as a crucial element in the grisly plot climax and as a significant thematic concern -- and also (oh yes!) as the title of the thing. Upon publication, Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata caused immediate shock and consternation of all sorts. What seems to have set Janáček off is the brutal treatment of the wife in Tolstoy's story who is finally murdered by her husband -- not entirely a spoiler, since there's no suspense about how the tale told by the husband himself is going to end; he reveals it fairly early on in his tale.

What we don't learn in the story until the storyteller gets to it is how the Kreutzer Sonata fits into it. At this point in the story, the wife -- her child-bearing and early rearing accomplished -- undergoes a reawakening that includes resuming her long-abandoned playing of the violin, and doing so with a piano-playing acquaintance who becomes the focus of uncontained hatred and jealousy by her husband, which comes to a head when together the two musicians play (what else?) the Kreutzer Sonata.

So, to the extent that the sonata is tied into the wife's grim fate, the shade of Beethoven does lurk somewhere in the mists of Janáček's quartet. That said, we should note that it's only the sonata's first-movement Presto that enflames Tolstoy's murderous husband. The beautiful slow movement he describes as "not very new, with commonplace variations," and the scampering finale he dismisses simply as "feeble."


SO WHAT BROUGHT ALL THIS ON? AND WHAT DOES
THIS KREUTZER GUY HAVE TO DO WITH ALL OF THIS?

In answer to the first question: I happen to have attended a performance, in an agreeably intimate space, of these pair of Kreutzer pieces, in which the violinist in the Beethoven sonata had, before the intermission, played the second-violin part in the Janáček quartet. And I took advantage of the occasion to finally get around to reading the Tolstoy novella, and the experience of pondering and reading and listening and pondering some more is still rattling around my head.

As for the Kreutzer whose name is plastered all over our story, Rudolf (Rodolphe) Kreutzer (1766-1831) was a violinist and composer who was esteemed by many as the leading violinist of Beethoven's time. He had nothing to do with creation of "the Kreutzer Sonata." And if Beethoven hadn't suffered another of his famous sudden disillusionments with the violinist to whom he originally intended to dedicate his grand new sonata, Kreutzer would never have come into the picture. But when the composer was suddenly confronted with the need to find a new dedicatee, it must have occurred to him that a friendly gesture toward the influential Kreutzer could be beneficial career-wise, and it wouldn't hurt to have a musician of his standing playing the new sonata around Europe. Unfortunately, the great man had no interest whatever in the piece and seems never even to have considered playing it.

Nevertheless, there his name remains on the title page of the sonata. As a result, a man who would otherwise have been a tiny footnote in musical history looms as a commanding presence in Western musical and literary history.


WE'RE NOT DONE WITH OUR FORAY INTO KREUTZERIANA

I doubt that anything profound is going to come of it, but I think we're going to want to take another post to delve further, taking into account what Tolstoy had to say about the first movement of the Kreutzer and Sonata and doing some closer listening to how Beethoven and Janáček approached their musical subjects.

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