Must It Bee?: the fourth movement of Beethoven's last quartet in F Major, collage and colored pencil on canvas, 20x20 inches, $800.
The final movement of Beethoven's last quartet, opus 135, bears a cryptic title: Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß, or The Difficult Resolution (or Decision depending on how you translate that.)
This is written at the top of the page of the last movement, along with "Must it be?" over the introductory motif and "It must be!" over the more cheerful motif.
The exact meaning of all this has long been something of a riddle. If you want to dive more into that you can do so here.
In German the translation of "muss es sein" hinges on what "es," or "it," means. Should the translation come out as "Must it be?" or something more like "Do I have to?" Related concepts for sure, but the former has a lot more gravitas than the latter.
The trouble is that we really don't have a clear idea of what Beethoven meant at all.
I decided to "meet Beethoven" in meditation to ask him directly.
Here's the actual manuscript of the first page of this final movement. Click here to see a high quality scan of the whole piece.
Ludwig (still feels weird to call him that) and I met inside a treehouse in the shape of a giant acorn hanging from a massive oak. Grape vines used the oak as a natural arbor, climbing up and around it.
This treehouse was made of artistically rusted metal with a beautiful wooden floor, steampunk vibes, encircled with open air windows almost completely covered with grape leaves.
We sat at a little table on one side picking the grapes directly from the windows.
We were starting out with schnapps, this time in dainty stemmed glasses rather than boots, but there was still more drinking to do.
“This is my favorite wine!” Ludwig said as he picked up one bottle from a whole case sitting next to him. “It arrived just days before I died, and I wasn’t able to enjoy it, but now I can drink it as much as I wish.”
He poured me a glass of this Rheingau Riesling, so sweet and refreshing. I made a note to find some for dinner in my own physical world.
Ludwig stood up and walked over to one of the windows. I followed. A breeze parted the grape leaves, and I was surprised to see Mount Rainier dominating the background of the view before us.
“Why am I seeing a mountain from my own home here?” I asked, expecting to see a view of the Austrian Alps.
“Tell me, what is your difficult resolution?” he replied, tossing a walnut to a squirrel who had wandered in.
“But I’m here to ask you about yours.”
“Never mind that. I left the question vague on purpose. What is your most difficult decision? What requires all your resolve?”
“My difficult resolution would be to allow myself to be seen exactly as I am," my rant began. "Oh, Ludwig, I am so very odd. The fact that I experience things like this, like this very meeting, this scene.
"How can I find the bravery to be open about these experiences? I’m trying. I’ve been practicing telling my whole email list about this stuff, curious to see who leaves and who stays.
"Talking about it in person is much harder, and yet, being able to reveal who I really am is essential to connecting authentically as an artist.
"Being an artist is so incredibly vulnerable, and I fear I am ill-equipped to deal emotionally with being seen this way so often.”
Rant over, I took a big swig of the Riesling.
“This is why I showed you your own mountain," Ludwig answered. "That is what you need to cross. What might lie on the other side?”
“Ideally wealth and fame, right?" I answered. "But the thought of fame is terrifying to me. I don’t need much money to be happy, but I sure do live in an expensive city.
"Unfortunately, I know all too well that I have to become comfortable being judged to my very core in order to make even a meager living as an artist.”
“We all have these mountains to climb, and I had mine too.”" Ludwig said as he opened another bottle of wine.
“And what was yours?” I asked.
“Letting the people know I was deaf, and being unafraid to show them what music could grow out of such silence. The fear of allowing yourself to be seen exactly as you are affects us all. While we all have our own mountain, all mountains bear a certain similarity.”
He was drinking the wine directly from the bottle now, and passed it to me. I found myself thankful that I couldn't get a headache here.
“What about what you said about the difficult resolution being to finish your last quartet? Is that true?” I asked, feeding a squirrel an almond from my hand.
“Yes, I really meant it at the time, though I admit I said that mostly out of frustration. In truth though, the thought of leaving quartet writing behind felt like descending a mountain on the other side. The natural question at that point is 'now what?' Maybe quintets!”
“What about the joke aspect of it? Is the musical theme in the last movement really based on the ‘it must be’ canon you wrote in response to telling someone to pay for a ticket to a concert they never went to?”
Ludwig laughed. “That is true too. Was that petty of me? Of course it was! One is forced to let go of such pettiness here in this realm.
"Once you find yourself here in the summer land you have already given yourself and all your work to eternity. There is no charging admission, no need for money. Now the difficult resolution is different.”
“What is it here?" I asked. "What difficult decisions can there still be after death?”
“Can I let go? Can I allow the work to simply be? Must it be? Can I really not go back and revise any of it? It must be!”
“And how do you feel about the work you left behind?”
“I have no regrets about the work. I did what I did, and now it belongs to the world. If they take pleasure in it then who am I to quibble?”
We were passing the wine bottle back and forth as we stared out over my own personal mountain, which turns out to also be everyone’s mountain.
"So, you made the 'difficult resolution' vague on purpose? Your own feelings about it don't even matter?" I finally asked.
"There is no other way! Art must always leave room for those experiencing it to ask and answer their own questions. For some those questions will be serious, and for others petty...but nonetheless serious for them."
I pondered for a second each member of a string quartet feeling deeply within themselves their own difficult resolution, and maybe finding that resolve through the process of playing the music itself - just as I am trying to find resolve in the process of collaging, meditating, and writing about it.
“Of course, this was only your last full quartet,” I eventually said. “I still want to ask you about the replacement movement you wrote for the Grosse Fuge.
"I’m glad it’s not quite over. I have greatly enjoyed these meetings with you. For me too, finishing The Last Quartets collages feels like climbing over a mountain, and I'll be sad to leave them behind. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about all this.”
“Ha! Yes, I have enjoyed these meetings too, Julia. Come visit me again soon,” Ludwig said as he kissed my hand.