The Grosse Fuge (German spelling: Große Fuge, also known in English as the Great Fugue or Grand Fugue), Op. 133, is a single-movement composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven. An immense double fugue, it was universally condemned by contemporary music critics. A reviewer writing for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1826 described the fugue as "incomprehensible, like Chinese" and "a confusion of Babel". However, critical opinion of the work has risen steadily since the early 20th century and it is now considered among Beethoven's greatest achievements. Igor Stravinsky described it as "an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever." The composition originally served as the final movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. 13 in B major, Op. 130, written in 1825; but his publisher was concerned about the dismal commercial prospects of the piece and wanted Beethoven to replace the fugue with a new finale. Beethoven complied, and the Grosse Fuge was published as a separate work in 1827 as Op. 133. It was composed when Beethoven was nearly totally deaf, and is considered to be part of his set of late quartets. It was first performed in 1826, as the finale of the B quartet, by the Schuppanzigh Quartet. Music analysts and critics have described the Grosse Fuge as "inaccessible", "eccentric", "filled with paradoxes", and "Armageddon". Critic and musicologist Joseph Kerman calls it "the most problematic single work in Beethoven's output and ... doubtless in the entire literature of music", and violinist David Matthews describes it as "fiendishly difficult to play". History of the composition Beethoven originally wrote the fugue as the final movement of his String Quartet No. 13, Op. 130. His choice of a fugal form for the last movement was well grounded in tradition: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven himself had previously used fugues as final movements of quartets. But in recent years, Beethoven had become increasingly concerned with the challenge of integrating this Baroque form into the Classical structure. "In my student days I wrote dozens of [fugues] ... but [imagination] also wishes to exert its privileges ... and a new and really poetic element must be introduced into the traditional form," Beethoven wrote. The resulting movement was a mammoth work, longer than the five other movements of the quartet combined. The fugue is dedicated to the Archduke Rudolf of Austria, his student and patron. At the first performance of the quartet,