Then we come to the divine Cavatina (Adagio molto espressivo), which Beethoven declared to be the music that moved him most in his entire output. Towards the end of this movement, which the Ysaÿe offer as a veritable gift, Beethoven indicates ‘Beklemmt’ (oppressed) at bar 42, a marking that is expressed by the first violin in a succession of sighs, then in a sotto voce passage played on the G string that veils the sound. One might find in these three periods of Beethoven an echo of Rembrandt’s three successive manners of painting Christ. Like the Dutch artist revelling in his youthful powers, the German composer at first accepted the framework of his predecessors, fixed by Haydn and developed by Mozart. Rembrandt initially depicted Christ as a character in biblical scenes. Although he personalised each aspect, he adopted all the conventions of his time, because he was not aiming to achieve originality, but intelligibility. Beethoven’s middle period, the oeuvre of his maturity, echoes Rembrandt’s second period, in which Christ appears as the representative of suffering humanity. Beethoven approached this new period, which began (in the domain of the string quartet) six years after his Quartet no.6, as a man afflicted, one who had already faced a range of trials, foremost among them the onslaught of deafness. External shocks, notably Napoleon’s occupation of Vienna in 1809, radically shook his view of the world 46 BEETHOVEN • THE COMPLETE STRING QUARTETS
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