Helm claimed his Beethoven's String Quartets (1885) as the first full and coherent ‘presentation and explication’ of the composer's string quartets, its only partial precursor having been a ‘comparative account’ of the last five quartets published in 1868 in Oscar Paul's journal Die Tonhalle. (Helm shows no awareness of Basevi's analytical study of the Op. 18 quartets, dating from 1874.) By that time, as he was aware, a good many studies of both the complete symphonies and the complete piano sonatas had been published.

The title page of Helm's volume foretells the tension that we find in this analysis, with its subtitle ‘Essay in Technical Analysis of these Works in Relation to their Spiritual Content’; and it is perhaps worth noting that Helm was lecturer in both the history of music and music aesthetics at the Horak Conservatory of Music in Vienna from 1874 until late in his career. Explanation of the miraculous effect of Beethoven's quartets could be achieved ‘only by means of the most fundamental technical analysis of the scores with reference to their poetic mood — insofar as that can be determined’. The balance of technical to interpretative treatment was clearly a matter of concern to Helm. Where he erred on the poetic side, he did so ‘never in the spirit of a definitive “programme”, but rather to stimulate the listener's imagination’. Setting this balance meant for Helm putting a just distance between his own analyses and those of his illustrious predecessor Marx (see above, Analysis 12).