New Voice-leading Techniques in Beethoven's Opus 135

 

Amy Carr-Richardson, East Carolina University

 

            Beethoven claimed that he used a new type of voice-leading in his late quartets.  This paper proposes that the new techniques included forming composite melodies (shared among the quartet's four voices) through the reworking of counterpoint composed by J.S. Bach, and weaving these composite melodies together to create a full four-voice texture.  This paper contains examples of these contrapuntal techniques and illustrates how Beethoven may have used these methods to adapt counterpoint from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier and incorporate it within his own string quartet, Op. 135.