Career
He was an amateur musician, and is known particularly for his commissioning three string quartets from Ludwig van Beethoven, which are among the composer"s late string quartets. The prince had lived for a while in Vienna and knew the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. He arranged piano works of Beethoven for string quartet and string quintet.
In November 1822 he commissioned Beethoven to write string quartets.
He wrote in French from Saint St. Petersburg to the composer:
Being as passionate an amateur as an admirer of your talent, I am taking the liberty of writing to you to ask you if you would be willing to compose one, two or three new quartets. I shall be delighted to pay you for the trouble whatever amount you would deem adequate.
Beethoven agreed to this, requesting 50 ducats for each quartet. He had not written a string quartet since his Operation
95 in 1810. In 1823 he was occupied with writing his Ninth Symphony, and he began serious work on the quartets in 1824.
The first of these, the String Quartet Number. 12 in East flat major, Operation 127, was given its first performance by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in March 1825.
The quartet later performed the other two works commissioned, the String Quartet Number.
13 in B flat major, Operation 130 and String Quartet Number.
15 in A minor, Operation 132.
Beethoven received the fee for the first quartet.
Although the prince acknowledged his debt for the other quartets, it was not paid in the composer"s lifetime, the matter being finally settled with Beethoven"s heirs in 1852. The prince was an intermediary in the sale of a copy of Beethoven"s choral work Missa solemnis to the Russian court.
lieutenant was through him that the first performance of the work took place in Street St. Petersburg in April 1824. Beethoven"s overture The Consecration of the House, published in 1825, was dedicated to the prince.