So many composers in the 19th century were inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet : Berlioz, Bellini, Gounod… Closer to us there is also Bernstein’s West Side Story of course. Yet, before all of them, as early as 1798, Beethoven composed the music he heard when thinking of the tomb scene, and made it the 2nd movement of his Opus 18 1st String Quartet: