Part IV I had difficulty narrowing down my choice for the fourth and final entry in this series on string quartets. There is so much music written for four strings, and the majority of it seems indispensable to me. Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák, Ravel, Debussy all wrote masterpieces for the genre. Charles Ives, Samuel Barber,... Continue Reading →
Four By Four For Four, Part III
Part III Another fundamental cycle of music of the string quartet repertoire is the set of six quartets by Béla Bartók (1881-1945). Like the collection of Beethoven quartets, Bartók’s cycle spans the length of his compositional career. Bartók developed in his music a very personal and individual solution to the chromatic crisis that was early... Continue Reading →
Four By Four For Four, Part II
Part II Ludwig van Beethoven, the great deaf one, is an absolute giant in the history of music. Some label him a Classical composer, including him in the great Viennese school with Haydn and Mozart. Others call him the first great Romantic composer. Many history texts deal with Beethoven in a class by himself, starting... Continue Reading →