replacement in the autumn of 1826, and is the last complete piece of music he was to write. In May 1827, about two months after Beethoven's death, Matthias Artaria published the first edition of Op. 130 with the new finale, the Grosse Fuge separately (with the French title Grande Fugue) as Op. 133, and a four-hand piano arrangement of the fugue as Op. 134. General analysis Dozens of analyses have attempted to delve into the structure of the Grosse Fuge, with conflicting results. The work has been described as an expansion of the formal Baroque grand fugue, as a multi-movement work rolled into a single piece, and as a symphonic poem in sonata form. Stephen Husarik has suggested that the relationships between the keys of the different sections of the fugue mirror what he describes as the wedge-like structure of the eight-note motif that is the main fugal subject, the "contour [that] is a driving force behind the Grosse Fuge". But Leah Gayle Weinberg writes: "The Grosse Fuge has been and continues to be a problematic subject of scholarly discussion for many reasons; the most basic is that its very form defies categorization." Main motif The central motif of the fugue is an eight-note subject that climbs chromatically upward: A similar motif appears in Act II, measures 44–47, of the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" from Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1774), and also in Haydn's String Quartet in G, Op. 33, No. 5. ii, mm. 27–29. Another similar subject, with syncopated or gapped rhythm (called Unterbrechung in German), appears in a treatise on counterpoint by Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, who taught Beethoven composition. Joseph Kerman suggests that Beethoven modeled the motif after J. S. Bach's fugue in B minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Its subject is shown below: Whatever the origin of the motif, Beethoven was fascinated by it. He used it, or fragments of it, in a number of places in the late quartets, most notably in the first movement of his Op. 132 string quartet. The opening is shown below: In the course of the Grosse Fuge, Beethoven plays this motif in every possible variation: fortissimo and pianissimo, in different rhythms, upside down and backwards. The usual practice in a traditional fugue is to make a simple, unadorned statement of the subject at the outset, but Beethoven from the very beginning presents the subject in a host of