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String Quartet No. 4: Amazing Grace, also known as The Ascent, as part two of Johnston's multi-quartet "Crossings," in just intonation, was completed by composer in 1973, under commission by the Fine Arts Quartet. It is the third in a series of string quartets by Johnston that were composed using what he referred to as "extended just intonation," using a system of pure intervals based on the harmonic series. The only String Quartet Johnston composed in 12-tone equal temperament was his first.

Tuning: Like most of Johnston's other string quartets, this piece is composed using extended just intonation, based on a 7 limit tuning.

Music
This work is contained in a single movement, about ten minutes in duration. It consists of a series of variations on a theme from the folk hymn


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!No. !style="width: 515px;" |Tempo indication(s) !Key !Meter !Length The Op. 131 quartet is a monumental feat of integration. While Beethoven composed the quartet in six distinct key areas, the work begins in C♯ minor and ends in C♯ major. The finale directly quotes the opening fugue theme in the first movement in its second thematic area. This type of cyclical composition was avant-garde for a work of that period. Joseph Kerman wrote: "blatant functional reference to the theme of another movement: this never happens". (It had happened in some other Beethoven works such as the Piano Sonata Op. 101, Cello Sonata Op. 102 No. 1, and the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies; it had even happened before in Joseph Haydn's Forty-Sixth Symphony. Nevertheless, Op. 131 is the first Beethoven work in which the quotation is integrated completely into its new context instead of appearing like an explicit quotation, though even this effect had been anticipated the previous year in the young Felix Mendelssohn's Octet, and much earlier in Christian Latrobe's A major Piano Sonata dedicated to Haydn.)
 * I.
 * Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | C♯ minor
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 7 minutes
 * II.
 * Allegro molto vivace
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | D major
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 3 minutes
 * III.
 * Allegro moderato – Adagio
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | B minor
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 45 seconds
 * IV.
 * Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile – Più mosso – Andante moderato e lusinghiero – Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio, ma non troppo e semplice – Allegretto
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | A major
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 14 minutes
 * V.
 * Presto
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | E major
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * about 5$1/2$ minutes
 * VI.
 * Adagio quasi un poco andante
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | G♯ minor
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 2 minutes
 * VII.
 * Allegro
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | C♯ minor
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 6$1/2$ minutes
 * }
 * VII.
 * Allegro
 * style="white-space: nowrap;" | C♯ minor
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * About 6⇭⇭⇭ minutes
 * }
 * }

Op. 131 is often grouped with Opp. 132 and 130. There is motivic sharing among the three works. In particular, the "motto" fugue of the leading note rising to the tonic before moving to the minor sixth and then dropping down to the dominant is an important figure shared by these works.

This quartet is one of Beethoven's most elusive works musically. The topic has been written about extensively from very early after its creation, from Karl Holz, the second violinist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, to Richard Wagner, to contemporary musicologists today. One popular topic is a possible religious/spiritual genesis for this work, supported by similarities to the Missa Solemnis. In the first movement of Op. 131, the continually flowing texture resembles the Benedictus and the Dona Nobis Pacem from the earlier work. In addition, whether purposely or not, Beethoven quotes a motivic figure from Missa Solemnis in the second movement of the quartet.

Five days before Schubert's death, his friend Karl Holz, and his string quartet visited to play for him. The last musical work he had wished to hear was the String Quartet No. 14 Op. 131; Holz commented: "The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly bidding to the crossing."

The piece was featured in the plot of the 2012 film A Late Quartet. It also featured in the Band of Brothers episode "Why We Fight".

I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
A fugue based on the following subject, which contains (bars 2–3) the second tetrachord of the harmonic minor scale, the unifying motif of Beethoven's last string quartets:

Richard Wagner said this movement "reveals the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music". Joseph Kerman calls it "this most moving of all fugues". J.W.N. Sullivan (1927, p. 235) hears it as "the most superhuman piece of music that Beethoven has ever written." Philip Radcliffe says "[a] bare description of its formal outline can give but little idea of the extraordinary profundity of this fugue."

II. Allegro molto vivace
A delicate dance in compound duple meter in the key of D major, in compact sonata form based on the following folk-like theme:



III. Allegro moderato – Adagio
In the spirit of recitativo obbligato following the key of B minor; the modulation from B minor to E major functions as a short introduction to the next movement.

IV. Variations
This, the central movement of the quartet, is a set of 7 variations (6 complete and 1 incomplete, with coda) on the following simple theme in A major shared between the first and second violins:

The tempo indications of the variations are: Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile – Andante moderato e lusinghiero – Adagio – Allegretto – Adagio, ma non troppo e semplice – Allegretto

This movement is the apotheosis of the 'Grand Variation' form from Beethoven's late period.

V. Presto
In E major, this is a brilliant scherzo (though in duple rather than triple time), based on the following simple idea:

Towards the end of the scherzo, there is "an astounding" passage of pianissimo sul ponticello writing for all the instruments, mostly on their highest strings." Joseph Kerman asks "Was this a sound Beethoven had actually heard, back in the days when he was hearing, or did he make up the sound for the first time in 1826? Beethoven deaf was quite capable of 'hearing' or imagining or inventing not only relationships between notes but also sonorities pure and simple."

VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante
In G♯ minor, this movement is in bar form with a coda, which serves as a slow, sombre introduction to the next movement.

VII. Allegro
The finale is in sonata form and returns to the home key of C♯ minor. The first subject has two main ideas:

The violent rhythm in this subject is contrasted with the soaring, lyrical second theme: