out of the key in C major. Seldom is Beethoven so happy as we find him here in the Finale, which although written in the sharp signature throughout, is really in the key of C major; the episodes only and the coda only just managing to restore the balance of E minor.
9th Quartet, Opus 59, No. 3 , in C major.
Introduzione—Allegro vivace—Andante con moto―Menuetto―Allegro molto (Fuge).
This, the third of the Rasumovsky set, was composed in 1806. Starting clean out of the key, a few bars of Andante intro duction gradually lean towards C major. The first movement is remarkably clear and lucid in style and finely coloured in harmony. Beethoven is in one of his happiest moods. The exquisite Andante in A minor opens with a pizzicato bass and ends in the same manner. It is a highly finished movement. The Minuet is of the stately dance order and appears in the tonic key C major. The coda to it ends on the dominant seventh, thus bringing in the remarkable spiccato Fugue which Brahms played from memory as an encore at a concert in Vienna in 1867. The Una Corda set of entries preserving the homogenuity of tone and adding greatly to the effect of the intensity of the crescendi is particularly fine.
