In the piano version, the second phrase is an exact repetition of the first phrase. In the string version, Beethoven will, of course, not be satisfied with an exact repetition. We will hold off on phrase two until next week. This post will focus on the first phrase.
Here is what a literal transcription would sound like. (Ignore the diagonal lines for now.)
Note there is a voice-leading problem. There are parallel octaves between the first violin and viola going from measure 83 to 84. Mr. Rappaport would never have let me get away with that. But the truth is, even a purist like Mozart did not worry about these things so much in his piano works, provided the parallelism was between the melody and an inner voice and provided the texture was homophonic. What, after all, is the alternative? In an ensemble, you might change the tenor's E to a C, doubling the bass. But you wouldn't hear it as doubling on the piano. It would just sound as if one of the voices dropped out. On the piano, it sounds better to retain the full texture, even with the parallel octaves.
I would not, however, expect Mozart or Beethoven to let this slide in a string quartet, where you hear the voice leading more clearly. So I suspect Beethoven will get rid of the parallel octaves in his arrangement. Here is his solution:
First, Beethoven eliminates the pedal point in measures 81 and 82. This makes sense. The retransition serves to cool things down after the stormy developmental core, so the texture needs to thin out. The pedal point sounds okay on the piano, with its fast decay. But in strings, it would make the texture too heavy. Beethoven also drops the first violin, leaving the second and viola to handle the accompaniment on their own.
In measures 83 and 84, Beethoven makes more radical changes. He reduces he eighth note accompaniment from two voices to one as it is taken over by the cello, and he has the viola double the second violin at the sixth. The first violin finally enters at measure 84 with a third statement of the opening motive. If we hear the viola line as a continuation of the cello line from measures 81 to 82, then the whole phrase takes the form of a fugal stretto.
The amazing thing is Beethoven accomplishes this by simply redistributing the notes in the original version to different voices. As the diagonal lines show, the viola's C-A flat-G-D line comes from moving from the tenor to the alto and back again. The first violin's statement of the theme comes from choosing the C from the bass, then the F from the alto. The only notes from the original that are not redistrubuted are the F and E in the tenor. But these are the precisely the parallel octaves that we wanted to get rid of anyway. Very clever.
Note that Beethoven resolves the first violin and viola lines on the downbeat of measure 85. Why did Beethoven not resolve the second violin line? And why did he drop the cello to a low C on the second half of measure 84? Both of these questions will be answered when we see Beethoven's arrangement of the second phrase next week.
Finally, if you haven't already done so, I invite you to 'like' my professional page at https://www.facebook.com/PhillipMartinComposer. Perhaps you can even listen to a composition or two on the Bandpage tab and decide for yourself whether Beethoven has been able to teach me anything.
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