Rasoumowsky, Count Andreas Kyrillovitsch

1752-1836

Russian art-patron and amateur violinist, said to have been the son of a peasant, and to have been made a nobleman by the Empress. He was Russian ambassador at several different cities, last in Vienna, where he married in 1788 the Countess Elizabeth, sister of Carl Lichnowsky, known to musical history as the patron of Beethoven. In 1808 he organized a string quartet in which he played second violin, and which perDrmed Haydn's quartets. Beethoven dedicated to him the three quartets known as the Rasoumowsky quartets. The quartet as he organized it remained intact for eight years; at the end of that time his place in it was filled by Sina. The first violin was Schuppanzigh, the viola player was Weiss, and the violoncellist Lincke. Beethoven mentions the quartet in a letter written about 1825.