Customer Reviews

Beethoven's Quartets (Dover Books on Music)

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There's a good bit of information about early performances and critical response to the quartets. Given the scope of the quartets, the musical analysis is inevitably somewhat cursory. There are numerous short examples but you'll still need to consult a score. The book's main weakness is to much space wasted trying to describe the character of the music. For instance: "The bass moves slowly up the chromatic scale, labouring beneath an infinite burden of grief. These tears and sighs, this sinking back upon himself, intermingled with the emotion of a tender inspiration...the lonely melancholy of an immature spirit already overtaken by the sorrows of the world, longing hopelessly for joy and love, and shut in upon itself in trembling fear of adversity; the sorrow of a tender heart feeling a nameless distress of mind and spirit, knowing the years of youth to be slipping by joyless and desolate; the dispirited listlessness of a child tired of life before it has lived at all. This, too, is a melancholy that paralyses action...."

Some guy's drunken musings on some great quartets. I think he gave op. 133 2 pages. No structural or harmonic analysis. Antiquated and banal.