Full score to Beethoven's String Quartet in B flat, op. 130. [PN] M.A. 870. 67 pp. Wear to spine and edges; significant foxing and scattered water damage to the internal pages, mostly around the margins, but overall very good. Upright folio. 10.5 x 14 inches (26.5 x 36 cm).

First edition of the score of the quartet which was first performed on March 21, 1826—the third and last of the great quartets commissioned by Nikolai Galitzin.

"After completing the Ninth Symphony in early 1824, Beethoven spent the two and a half years that remained to him writing... exclusively in the medium of the string quartet. The five late string quartets [ops. 127, 130, 131, 132, 135] contain Beethoven's greatest music, or so at least many listeners in the 20th-Century have come to feel..." (New Grove, 2: 387). Kinsky-Halm, 394-395