According to Carl Czerny, the second movement of the quartet occurred to Beethoven as he contemplated the starry sky and thought of the music of the spheres (Thayer, Life of Beethoven); it has a hymnlike quality reminiscent of a much later devotion, the Heiliger Dankgesang hymn to the Divine in the Quartet Op.

2 in A minor, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky in "Orchestral Interlude: The Battle of Poltava" from Mazeppa, and by Sergei Rachmaninoff in his 6 Morceaux for Piano Duet, Op.

The original song, "Glory to the Sun", was collected by Nikolay Lvov and Jan Prac; sheet music was published in 1790 (2nd ed., 1806), verses in the 1770s.

"[This quote needs a citation] In an extremely unusual example of melodic setting prior to the 20th century, portions of the tune with strong tonic harmonic leanings are harmonized with the dominant, and vice versa; the harmonic clash is harsh, and many listeners have found this portion of the quartet to be quite amusing, especially as contrasted with the prosaic, almost "exercise-book" counterpoint which precedes it (another example of Beethoven parodying a student counterpoint exercise can be found in the scherzo of the Quartet No.

Pianist Jonathan Biss, who is Neubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies at Curtis Institute of Music, has suggested that Opus 59 No.