Beethoven’s extraordinary last Quartet No. 14, Op. 131 may be an ideal musical metaphor for 2020. It takes the listener on a long emotional arc of contrasts—self-reflection, defiance and yearning, ultimately ending in transformation. So here we are, with this profound music written at the end of Beethoven’s unprecedented life, and at the end of our own unprecedented year. Who but Beethoven, who reportedly responded to a comment about another work with “They are not for you, but for a later age,”  could have predicted this relevance, 200+ years later, more perfectly.