Topical Guide 1005

Mark Dorset

Jul 03, 2025

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Allusion, Quotation

Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 42:

“Things are changing,” said Ralph. “Over in town.” He looked back across the bay toward Babbington so that I would know which town he meant. “It’s not the place we grew up in.”
“Things do change,” I said.
“But do they have to? Muss ess sein? . . .”

“Muss ess sein?” is a motif in Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Opus 135.

Martin Saving, “Must it be? Must what be? Some reflections on an enigmatic question,” at The Beethoven Project:

[The] key to the true character of this enigmatic work might lie in the interpretation of its last movement, over which Beethoven famously wrote two short musical motifs and a title:

     (The resolution reached with difficulty: Must it be? It must be! It must be!)
     […] So the question invariably arises: Must what be? […]
     [Phillip] Radcliffe (Beethoven’s String Quartets,1965) irreverently lists some previously suggested interpretations:
     Suggestions have included ‘Must I die?’, ‘Must I go to the trouble of writing another movement?’, ‘Must I pay my laundry bill?’, ‘Must I let you have more money?’ (to his cook). And there is a further possibility that Beethoven, realising perhaps that one theme was a melodic inversion of the other, added the words later. […]
     Moritz Schlesinger, who published Op. 135 in September 1827, wrote in a letter in 1859:
     Regarding the enigmatic phrase Muss es sein? that arises in the last quartet, I think I can explain its significance better than most people, as I possess the original manuscript with the words written in his (Beethoven’s) own hand, and when he sent them he wrote as follows; ‘You can translate the Muss es sein as showing that I have been unlucky, not only because it has been extremely difficult to write this when I had something much bigger in my mind, and because I have only written this in accordance with my promise to you, and because I am in dire need of money, which is hard to come by; it has also happened that I was anxious to send the work to you in parts, to facilitate engraving, and in all Mödlingen (he was living there then) I could not find a single copyist, and so have had to copy it out myself, and you can imagine what a business it has been.’ I remember the letter very clearly, and without possibility of doubt; unfortunately it disappeared in 1826, when my house was burnt down.

Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 42:

I should have left it there. It was all that had to be said, but of the two prevailing tendencies of every author — either not to say things that should be said or to say many things that do not need to be said — mine is the latter, . . .

Friedrich Schlegel, Aphorisms from the Lyceum (translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc):

One of the two is almost always a prevailing tendency of every author: it is either not to say some things which certainly should be said, or to say many things which did not need to be said. The first is the original sin of synthetic, the latter, of analytical natures.

The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

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