Slow Beethoven

On June 17, 2021, at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY, renowned cellist Jeffrey Zeigler led three other virtuosic players in an adagio movement, the fugue from Beethoven’s String Quartet Number 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 131. As they played, they heard the sound of their performance resonating in the profound reverb of The TANK, in which sonic impulses may sustain for up to 40 seconds.

To allow each of the lush, Ludwiggy chords to ring out and fade in The TANK, the quartet had to slow the work radically, so that this short movement, some seven minutes long in the original tempo, took more than 45 minutes for them to play. The result is otherworldly, part Beethoven and part something entirely new. The work remains true to Beethoven’s emotions in this meditation on grief, resolution, existence itself, and these feelings may even feel intensified in this slower version.

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