Envision the end of the 18th century: a time of war, tremendous social upheaval and incredible change. The Revolutions in America and France were forcing the entire world into a new way of thinking. Everywhere the old guard was struggling to hold on to unwieldy and outdated power in the face of a new society and a new conception of one’s self. After all, didn’t we all have a calling to be something better, to possess the freedom of a higher state in which no one could ever be a slave of the wealthy, the privileged or the powerful? All of Europe seethed with armed conflict while teetering simultaneously on the brink of a complete transformation. As things fell apart, the modern world as we know it was painfully being born.Into this picture stepped a short and sickly 22 year-old kid, with curly coal-black hair (in our time he would be fresh out of college), coming to the big city of Vienna from the boondocks. He had a talent for playing the piano, and had become a child star back home in Bonn. Just like many child stars of today, his childhood had been trashed by a pushy (and alcoholic) stage dad who was determined to make his talented little Ludwig into a famous wonder kid. His mom died when he was 17, and at 19 he found himself forced to take care of his younger brothers, while his dad’s own mediocre music career crashed and burned. Now at 22, Ludwig had finally broken free of all of this baggage. Finally he had his opportunity to make the big time in the big city. This was his chance to prove to everyone, himself included, that he could be a star.The next five years saw him climb up the career ladder step-by-step on his own. His musical talent was matched by a gift for self-promotion. He became the private pupil (almost like being an intern today) of famous “older guys” with big names in the business, such as Haydn and Salieri. Impatient with their discipline and authority, he felt had to kiss up to them, and learn from them what he didn’t know…and he used their connections to network even further. But what really got his career moving was his set of new friendships with the rich, the artsy, and the trendy. The wealthy and hip took him into their set: soon he was appearing at every cool soiree, going on vacations with diplomats, and creating scandalous scenes. He pursued women, many women: usually rich, beautiful, “unavailable” women. He made them feel faint at the intensely passionate way he improvised pieces at the piano. People just couldn’t get enough! He was a rock star, the it-guy, a tabloid success….but he what he had always really wanted was just to write music. As a child he was beaten by his father when caught improvising his own music at the piano instead of practicing; now he could use the opportunity his fame presented to get his own music heard on the world stage. First, he published some showy solo pieces he had played live himself in concert and some fun ensemble pieces: serenades, songs, trios. He had been toying with most of the ideas for these pieces since his childhood. When this music sold crazily and the publishers clamored for more, Beethoven felt it was time to give them something else, something really new, something radical, something that people thought that maybe a young pianist couldn’t do… And so the String Quartet became the first really serious form in which Beethoven took on the establishment, as he transformed himself from performer to composer. He wanted badly for his quartets to be absolutely new and outstanding, for now his career depended on them in more ways than one: he had been hiding from everyone for the last two years the terrible secret that he was going deaf. Fighting depression, he saw his social life starting to unravel; and by the age of 30, he knew for sure he wouldn’t be able perform live much longer. The question of the rest of his career, really the rest of his life, seemed to depend on the answers he gave in these six pieces…. -John Largess