The String Quartets of Beethoven
The String Quartets of Beethoven

Author: William Kinderman

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0252091620

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"We do not understand music--it understands us." This aphorism by Theodor W. Adorno expresses the quandary and the fascination many listeners have felt in approaching Beethoven's late quartets. No group of compositions occupies a more central position in chamber music, yet the meaning of these works continues to stimulate debate. William Kinderman's The String Quartets of Beethoven stands as the most detailed and comprehensive exploration of the subject. It collects new work by leading international scholars who draw on a variety of historical sources and analytical approaches to offer fresh insights into the aesthetics of the quartets, probing expressive and structural features that have hitherto received little attention. This volume also includes an appendix with updated information on the chronology and sources of the quartets and a detailed bibliography.

The String Quartets of Joseph Haydn
The String Quartets of Joseph Haydn

Author: Floyd Grave

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-03-09

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0199883912

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Renowned music historians Floyd and Margaret Grave present a fresh perspective on a comprehensive survey of the works. This thorough and unique analysis offers new insights into the creation of the quartets, the wealth of musical customs and conventions on which they draw, the scope of their innovations, and their significance as reflections of Haydn's artistic personality. Each set of quartets is characterized in terms of its particular mix of structural conventions and novelties, stylistic allusions, and its special points of connection with other opus groups in the series. Throughout the book, the authors draw attention to the boundless supply of compositional strategies by which Haydn appears to be continually rethinking, reevaluating, and refining the quartet's potentials. They also lucidly describe Haydn's famous penchant for wit, humor, and compositional artifice, illuminating the unexpected connections he draws between seemingly unrelated ideas, his irony, and his lightning bolts of surprise and thwarted expectation. Approaching the quartets from a variety of vantage points, the authors correct many prevailing assumptions about convention, innovation, and developing compositional technique in the music of Haydn and his contemporaries.

The Four and the One
The Four and the One

Author: David Rounds

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13:

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Spotlighting the four women of the Lafayette Quartet, a leading Canadian ensemble, Rounds offers both a comprehensive history of the beloved instrumental form and an inside view of the complex world of professional quartet players, revealing the exultation and heatache that are the performing artists' daily fare. A treat for every music lover, whether player, listener or composer.

Beethoven for a Later Age
Beethoven for a Later Age

Author: Edward Dusinberre

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0571317154

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'They are not for you but for a later age!' Ludwig van Beethoven, on the Opus 59 quartets. Tackling the Beethoven quartets is a rite of passage that has shaped the Takács Quartet's work together for over forty years. Using the history of the composition and first performances of the quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993 - recounts the life of the Quartet from its inception in Hungary, through emigration to the US and its present-day life as one of the world's renowned string quartets. He also describes what it was like for him, as a young man fresh out of the Juilliard School, to join the Quartet as its first non-Hungarian member - an exhilarating challenge. Beethoven for a Later Age takes the reader inside the life of a quartet, vividly showing how four people enjoy making music together over a long period of time. The key, the author argues, is in balancing continuity with change and experimentation - a theme that also lies at the heart of Beethoven's remarkable compositions.

The String Quartets of Béla Bartók
The String Quartets of Béla Bartók

Author: Daniel Biro

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0199936188

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At the centre of Bartók's œuvre are his string quartets, which are generally acknowledged as some of the most significant pieces of 20th century chamber music. This book examines these remarkable works from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet
The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet

Author: Robin Stowell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-11-13

Total Pages: 672

ISBN-13: 1139826549

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This Companion offers a concise and authoritative survey of the string quartet by eleven chamber music specialists. Its fifteen carefully structured chapters provide coverage of a stimulating range of perspectives previously unavailable in one volume. It focuses on four main areas: the social and musical background to the quartet's development; the most celebrated ensembles; string quartet playing, including aspects of contemporary and historical performing practice; and the mainstream repertory, including significant 'mixed ensemble' compositions involving string quartet. Various musical and pictorial illustrations and informative appendixes, including a chronology of the most significant works, complete this indispensable guide. Written for all string quartet enthusiasts, this Companion will enrich readers' understanding of the history of the genre, the context and significance of quartets as cultural phenomena, and the musical, technical and interpretative problems of chamber music performance. It will also enhance their experience of listening to quartets in performance and on recordings.

String Quartets
String Quartets

Author: Mara Parker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1135848343

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This research guide is an annotated bibliography of sources dealing with the string quartet. This second edition is organized as in the original publication (chapters for general references, histories, individual composers, aspects of performance, facsimiles and critical editions, and miscellaneous topics) and has been updated to cover research since publication of the first edition. Listings in the previous volume have been updated to reflect the burgeoning interest in this genre (social aspects, newly issued critical editions, doctoral dissertations). It also offers commentary on online links, databases, and references.

Schubert's String Quartets
Schubert's String Quartets

Author: Anne Hyland

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-04-20

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1009210920

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A fresh analytical and musicological exploration of Schubert's incorporation of lyric elements into sonata form by way of his string quartets.

Complete String Quartets
Complete String Quartets

Author: Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 048628333X

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Although the string quartet was a rarely used form in 19th-century Russia, Tchaikovsky and Borodin both produced superb, inventive compositions in the genre. Tchaikovsky's "String Quartet No. 1" in D, Op. 11, is notable for its imaginative freshness and world-famous "Andante cantabile" movement. His "Quartet No. 2" in F, Op. 22, displays remarkable fluency and skilled craftsmanship, while "Quartet No. 3" in F-flat Minor, Op. 30, combines austerity with deeply felt intensity and vigor. Borodin's two string quartets are characterized by his impeccable craftsmanship and expert understanding and use of his instruments. The popular "String Quartet" No. 2 is especially known for the luxuriant richness of its third movement "Nocturne." Now all five works are available in this handsome, inexpensive edition. Reprinted from authoritative scores.

Composing the Modern Subject: Four String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich
Composing the Modern Subject: Four String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich

Author: Sarah Reichardt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1351571362

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Since the publication of Solomon Volkov's disputed memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer and his music has been subject to heated debate concerning how the musical meaning of his works can be understood in relationship to the composer's life within the Soviet State. While much ink has been spilled, very little work has attempted to define how Shostakovich's music has remained so arresting not only to those within the Soviet culture, but also to Western audiences - even though such audiences are often largely ignorant of the compositional context or even the biography of the composer. This book offers a useful corrective: setting aside biographically grounded and traditional analytical modes of explication, Reichardt uncovers and explores the musical ambiguities of four of the composer‘s middle string quartets, especially those ambiguities located in moments of rupture within the musical structure. The music is constantly collapsing, reversing, inverting and denying its own structural imperatives. Reichardt argues that such confrontation of the musical language with itself, though perhaps interpretable as Shostakovich's own unique version of double-speak, also poignantly articulates the fractured state of a more general form of modern subjectivity. Reichardt employs the framework of Lacanian psychoanalysis to offer a cogent explanation of this connection between disruptive musical process and modern subjectivity. The ruptures of Shostakovich's music become symptoms of the pathologies at the core of modern subjectivity. These symptoms, in turn, relate to the Lacanian concept of the real, which is the empty kernel around which the modern subject constructs reality. This framework proves invaluable in developing a powerful, original hermeneutic understanding of the music. Read through the lens of the real, the riddles written into the quartets reveal the arbitrary and contingent state of the musical subject's constructed reality, reflecting pathologies ende