Customer Reviews

The Beethoven Quartets

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am unqualified to write a review of this highly acclaimed book, because I am neither a musicologist nor a student of music.

If you have training in music, please ignore this review. I give it 5 stars merely because it is highly acclaimed.

I'm writing this mostly because it is not mentioned here on Amazon, or elsewhere, what the book consists of, and whether "casual listeners" can read it. The answer is "no".

I purchased this book because I love the late quartets intensely, and I was looking for something that would be a pleasure to read, and something that might deepen my understanding of the quartets (especially the late quartets).

I found that I could not comprehend more than a few sentences in the entire book. Almost nothing is said about the non-musicological aspects of the quartets; nothing that evokes wonder or inerest - for the casual listener, of course. Although I would not use the word "casual" to describe myself as a listener - I've been listening to the quartets for more than a decade now, and find something new every time - it remains that without formal training, this book is entirely incomprehensible. It is a series of technical analyses, and might as well have been written in Japanese as far as I am concerned.

If you're like me - someone who loves the quartets but does not have a formal grounding in music - this book is not for you. Read Sullivan's "Beethoven" if you haven't read it already.

To get anything out of this book, you need to have scores and recordings of the quartets. What's more, you need to have scores with measure numbers: the Dover reprint of the Breitkopf und Härtel edition of the scores is a great bargain, but lacks measure numbers, which you have to write in -- a slightly tedious, but indispensable task. (Use pencil, because it's easy to make mistakes.) Once you've done this, though, you're in for a transformative experience. Mapping Kerman's analysis onto the scores is occasionally like a treasure hunt, but what treasure there is! If you're like me, and have known and loved these pieces as a listener for a long time, the insights and aesthetic wonderment to be gleaned from close study of this book can take your enjoyment and appreciation to an entirely new level.

Don't be scared away from this book, which is actually very interesting and well writen. I don't have a degree in music but have read little bit about music history, hamony, fugue and some music forms, which seems enough to comprehend this book. I do prefer the music analysis in detail rather than a few sentence of descriptions or generization of a piece of music, especially from the great composer like Beethoven. I just got this book and have read only a few pages, but it already attracts me. It has very detailed historical background of each Beethoven's string quartet and the analysis of it. I am really pleased to have this book!

This book is really only for serious music students or musicologists - I would bet that most normal musicians or instrumentalists would have a difficult time even understanding it. As far as deep analysis and technical/structural interpretation goes, this book is probably one of the best available for the subject matter it covers. It is not for the "casual listener" or for those of you who are interested in the quartets and want to just read amusing anecdotes about their composition. This is a serious, scholarly study of the music itself, not a biography or history - although those subjects do play a part, of course, in relating the music to Beethoven's personal psychology. As such, I think it is vital for most Beethoven scholars or advanced music students to have - for reference if not for pleasure. Those of you who just want to read about Beethoven, his times, the genesis of his music, and to lightly touch on some technical matters might want to try a standard like Burk's "The Life and Works of Beethoven" or some of the more recent volumes.

This is an excellent book for people who want to more fully understand and appreciate Beethoven's string quartets. It is fairly technical, but if you can read music at all passably you should be able to follow the many examples. Mr. Kerman obviously knows his subject VERY well and he places the works into historical and musical perspective as he explores the formidable technique that went into them.

Two caveats: First, he really doesn't like some of LvB's music very much! For example, re the fugue ending the third Razumovsky Quartet (an all-time favorite of mine), he speaks of the main theme's "rare flatulence" and says, "Few movements in Beethoven...stretch their material so unscrupulously." The final measures are "...the accents of a hero turned demagogue..." where the music "...makes loud cadences and repeats itself endlessly, a garish but nonetheless formidable display of might." C'mon Joe, tell us how you really feel...

Second, he sometimes gets ahead of himself and writes about an interior movement of a quartet before starting the main discussion, so that the text is hard to follow--especially if you're reading along while listening to the music. This is irritating of course.

Those comments aside, there's a wealth of knowledge and insight in this book that should help anybody interested in Beethoven--and that's everybody, right?--increase their enjoyment of his ever-astonishing quartets.

Kerman's discussion of the Beethoven quartets is neither for the serious music student nor the casual listener. This book can be a great help in listening to these works, but it lacks the kind of (mathematical) analytical graphs and charts that a serious musician/theorist needs to truly understand Kerman's interpretation of these works.

At the same time, Kerman can help a serious listener hear themes, recapitulations, etc. Sometimes the romanticized discriptions of Beethoven's "tortured genius" can be a bit too much to handle. I would recommend this book to anybody who fell in love with Beethoven in the mid 20th century, or to lovers of classical music who like recordings of the mid 20th century.