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String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)

composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ194924
Source-derived summary

The String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135, by Ludwig van Beethoven was written in October 1826 and was the last major work he completed. Only the final movement of the Quartet Op. 130, written as a replacement for the Große Fuge, was composed later. Beethoven dedicated the composition to his patron and admirer, Johann Nepomuk Wolfmayer. The Schuppanzigh Quartet premiered the work on 23 March 1828, one year after Beethoven's death.

The Op. 135 quartet is the shortest of Beethoven's late quartets. Under the introductory slow chords in the last movement, which is headed Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß (The difficult decision), Beethoven wrote in the manuscript Muß es sein?

Editorial summary

“String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)” enters the record as composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what String, Quartet and Beethoven can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1826, 1828—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1826, 1827—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around String, Quartet and Beethoven.
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“String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, String, Quartet and Beethoven provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q194924. The Library of Congress control number is no91026361. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1826 and 1828.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from String Quartet No. 16 (Beethoven)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.