String Quartet No. 9

The 9th String Quartet forms the penultimate work in my Beethoven Study quartet cycle.  Chronologically, however, it was composed after the 10th Quartet Cavatina. And indeed, when composing it, it felt like the conclusion of the cycle. While the 6th Quartet Studie über Beethoven, which opened the cycle, was still in one movement, the 7th in two and the 8th in three, this 9th Quartet is a four-movement work. The sacred musical number 9 inspired me to create an especially substantial and intense composition. The second movement, a Scherzo, and the fourth movement Allegro alla marcia have become simply gigantic in their dimensions and in the density of information and impulses in comparison to their historical models. This 9th quartet has a particular focus on Beethoven’s still unattainable Quartet in C# minor op. 131. The radical nature and modernity of this work are still burning issues for us today. As in the other quartets in the cycle, I have been amazed at the new forms which have evolved during my preoccupation with their historical models and the extent of previously unknown spiritual depths in my own music during the process of composition. While my study of Beethoven's symphonies in the orchestral piece Con brio led to the discovery of new tonal possibilities for the orchestra (the timpani treatment!) and the juxtaposition of Beethoven's choral fantasy with the Latin Dies irae in my ARCHE oratorio made it possible to develop new theological and thematic points of focus, in the string quartet cycle it is above all the development and discovery of new forms that could only emerge through the study of Beethoven's quartets. Jörg Widmann