It is sometimes the strangest thing in the world to work on a great piece of music. Outside of the work, life goes on, laundry is washed and folded (eventually), bills are paid, children are dropped at daycare. But while the trappings of normal life continue, an amazing work of art is gradually but insistently taking hold of your inner ear. My quartet is learning the A major minor Op. 132 string quartet by Beethoven right now. When we were deciding to play the whole cycle, this was the piece that I considered the most in my vote about whether we were ready. It was the last of the late quartets for us to learn. In high school, I had a madcap romantic fling with the slow movement (the so-called Heiliger Dankgesang–“Holy Song of Thanksgiving by a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode”), learning it really quickly at a summer camp. I was completely awestruck. It was so beautiful, so pure, but not child-like. It described true life but wasn’t scared to remain innocent. The existence of this music made me feel like I needed to become a musician.

When he wrote Op. 132, Beethoven had just recovered from an illness (they think maybe hepatitis), and he was thankful to the point of creative inspiration. The slow movement starts with a very slow chorale (a churchy, baroque-y hymn tune), and alternates with a brighter, more active bit that he marks mit neue kraft (”with new strength”). Every time the chorale returns, it has more going on around it.  By the third statement of the chorale, a poignant melody emerges over it and builds to an almost overwhelming climactic moment. And then, more than twenty minutes into the movement, he ends the piece on a long F chord.  But, since he’s been writing in C major all along, it feels like when they sing “A-men” at the end of a hymn in church, but without the “-men” part. The piece literally ends without ending, with no tonal resolution (no doubt why he said the movement is in the “lydian mode”).

The last couple of days, while I write emails, while I drive to work, there are a few measures of the piece that won’t leave my head.  It’s nothing new for things to get lodged there, although they are not always welcome.  But this works.  The piece is about thankfulness–the hardest thing (just ask Conan). It is profound, but remarkably pedestrian.  In a good way.  Like being thankful is kind of about the normal stuff.  Thanks for the toilet paper. Thanks for the cloudy, overcast day.  He never heard the piece outside of his own head, which means that his experience of this work was like this, too.  He wrote it, but even so.  Just to hear a performance of the work, he’d have to keep playing it to himself.  As he walked, as he ate, as he read.  I wonder if this piece gave him comfort, too.

Beethoven lived what he wrote. He was the real deal. His life was a stormy, dramatic mess, with some kind of very palpable struggle with his God. What we hear in his music is completely devoid of emotional meddling.  He meddles with everything else to make sure that the emotions are accurate. How do you express thanks in music without words, and without sounding like a total cheeseball? He figured it out, and I’m glad to have it as the soundtrack to my life, at least until we start working on something else.