By Lucy Caplan
Lucy Caplan is Assistant Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is the author of Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera, published by Harvard University Press.
To begin at the end (the end of the program, that is): the last part of the last movement of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 135 presents a puzzle. These are some of the final notes that the composer ever wrote; one might reasonably expect them to sound momentous or majestic. Instead, they are lighthearted, verging on silly: simple pizzicato phrases, pianissimo whispers, and a louder conclusion so brief it feels almost perfunctory. What are we to make of this—is it a joke? An elision? A revelation?
The ambiguity of the quartet’s ending raises themes that are common to the works on this evening’s program—a sense of dissonance, capaciously defined, and a tug of war between expectation and reality. In Mozart’s quartet K. 465, a strikingly avant-garde introduction built on chromatic harmonies precedes a beautiful, but ultimately fairly traditional work. Brett Dean’s String Quartet No. 4—a new piece composed for the Belcea Quartet—moves fluently across styles, encompassing both the traditional Christian prayers that are foundational to Western classical music and what Dean terms “string-quartet-tongues other than my own.” Beethoven’s work toggles between the abstract grandeur characteristic of his late quartets, on the one hand, and a disarmingly simple playfulness on the other. The resulting dissonances encourage close, curious listening: we cannot know exactly what we are going to hear, and the only answer is to devote our total attention to the music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K. 465 “Dissonance” (1785)
The strict formal conventions of the Classical period offer listeners a sense of comfort, even predictability; when listening to music of this era, we often feel that we know just what to expect. The introduction to Mozart’s nineteenth string quartet radically upends this norm. Oddly tense harmonies sink sinuously into one another, leaving us unmoored from any particular key. The rhythmic pulse, too, is elusive. Where are we? Each time we seem to be approaching a soft, familiar landing, Mozart zigzags off course—creating the overwhelming sense of dissonance which gives the piece its nickname.
It doesn’t last. After this disorienting introduction, the remainder of the work’s first movement is a fast-paced romp in bright-hued C major. The quartet is the sixth in a set dedicated to Franz Joseph Haydn, and Mozart’s indebtedness to Haydn comes through clearly in the movement’s precision and good cheer. The second movement begins with a lovely, graceful song, which soon gives way to a gentle dialogue between first violin and cello. Flashes of the dissonant introduction crackle near the movement’s end, but they pass quickly, enabling a peaceful conclusion. The third movement is a minuet built around sets of repeated notes: they are carefree at first, but they take on a more turbulent role in the contrasting trio section. The quartet concludes with an ebullient Allegro. Its elegant ornamentation and figuration are quintessentially Classical, yet quick changes of mood presage the drama of the Romantic period—another way in which Mozart pushes ever so elegantly at the boundaries of convention.
Brett Dean, String Quartet No. 4, “A Little Book of Prayers” (2024-25)
Notes by the composer
I first met and played as a guest violist with the Belcea Quartet at the Sydney Festival in 2001. Though still a young group, they were already well-established stars in the chamber music firmament. Their commissioning of my new string quartet is a very welcome reunion with these wonderful musicians, including the two founding members, Corina Belcea and Krzysztof Chorzelski, with whom I performed Mozart quintets a quarter of a century ago.
I was very saddened however to learn of the recent passing of the quartet’s former second violinist and founder-member, Laura Samuel. My new work is dedicated to the memory of this very special person. In writing it, what has emerged is “A Little Book of Prayers,” the work’s subtitle.
Certainly, the prominent moments throughout the work for the second violin have been written in homage to Laura, whom I last encountered in her later career as the warmly unifying concertmaster of the BBC Scottish Orchestra. But these passages also serve as a gesture of welcome to the quartet’s new Australian member, Suyeon Kang, whose great playing I first encountered whilst she was still studying in Melbourne in 2007.
My book of prayers includes three different models of traditional Christian prayer as the work’s reflective first, third, and fifth movements: wordless prayers of petition, contemplation, and lament respectively. These pieces found their inspiration not only in traditional words and sentiments of sacred prayer and comfort but also in secular prayers, for example from the contemporary British poet Carol Ann Duffy and the Australian cartoonist and writer, Michael Leunig.
In between these slower sections stand two faster scherzo movements that explore other rituals of prayer or adoration. The second movement, Speaking in Tongues, looks at the Pentecostal practice of glossolalia in which people utter words or word-like phrases, often very rapidly and supposedly in tongues unknown to the speaker. This highly rhythmic music culminates in a fast-cut of compositional styles, signatures, and the briefest of quotations as I endeavour to speak in “string-quartet-tongues other than my own.”
The fourth movement looks at a 19th-century gospel number, Just a Closer Walk with Thee, in glassy harmonics as if through a kaleidoscopic lens. In late 1800s New Orleans, this highly adaptable song was known to be used both as funeral dirge and dance tune.
Brett Dean, August 2025
Beethoven, String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 (1826)
Op. 135 has been called the “black sheep” of Beethoven’s late quartets. It is short whereas the others are long and buoyant in mood rather than ultra-serious. Instead of seeming to anticipate the future of the genre, its simplicity and convivial affect recall the Mozart quartet earlier on this program. The first movement begins with a plainly stated question from the viola, answered by the first violin. What follows is essentially a pared-down version of a typical sonata movement, which uses just enough melody, texture, and time to get its musical point across. The second movement, a scherzo, initially recalls Haydn in its off-beat accents. A tornado of a trio section follows, with blaring lower voices and a frantic first violin.
The third movement could not be more different from the first two. Expansive in scale, and in the tonally distant key of D-flat major, it comprises a set of variations on a theme which flow seamlessly into one another. It also recalls Classical models, in particular the quasi-operatic slow movements of many of Mozart’s and Haydn’s quartets, in its heartbreakingly earnest sincerity. This makes the finale all the more surprising. It is preceded by a strange inscription—“Der schwer gefasste Entschluss” or “The difficult resolution”—and it veers wildly between anguish and impish playfulness. The stark opening section is accompanied by the words “Muss es sein?” or “Must it be?” The cheery Allegro that comprises most of the movement offers an answer: “Es muss sein” or “It must be.” Yet the particular meaning of these phrases in relation to the music we hear remains beguilingly unclear. One of Beethoven’s great biographers, the musicologist Lewis Lockwood, offers the following provocation: “What is the meaning of the inscription? We do not know, and are not meant to know in any specific sense, what is being asked and answered. We cannot miss the feeling that something basic is afoot, but we cannot define it in words or concepts. That may be the point.”
