Ilkley Baptist

It's many weeks since I started thinking to Beethoven's Late Quartets. I have been listening and thinking on and off through the summer, but this is a heavyweight subject and I haven't had anything to say.

A small thought occurs, though. I was interested to read about Beethoven's own studies. He knew Bach's music since as a boy he was taught the 48, but seems to have returned to study it deeply later in life. Many of his late works contain fugues, and he became a master of this form which Bach had so developed. In addition, he became interested in 'the songs of the monks' - plainsong - and modal music. This is present in the Late Quartets, in Op. 132. This music looks back several centuries, as well as, in other places (the Grosse Fuge) anticipating music that would not be written until the following century.

The thought is that Beethoven was here grappling with the limits of music itself, with tonality and the capabilities of expression. There is an I-thou encounter to be had between artist and material (as WH Vanstone suggests occurs between God and us). Until recent times the word 'great' has been thrown around in absurd ways by those speaking of painters and musicians. What on earth does it mean, except that I and my friends approve of this 'great' music above all that third-rate stuff? Well, perhaps it might mean, properly used, that at times artists push the boundaries of themselves, their material, and the tradition of their artform. At these rubbing points there are discoveries to be made. Art is not just self-expression, but encounter.

The impatience of traditionalists with conceptual art, that it does not include craftsmanship or craftswomanship, may have a point in that the limits of materials can be part of the creative process.