The Beethoven Project PDF Download

"During his lifetime Beethoven wrote sixteen works for string quartet plus the Grosse Fuge. These range in style from the opus 18 quartets which showed the influence of earlier composers of the Classical era such as Haydn, through the final five "Late Quartets" written towards the end of his life, when through a combination of personal difficulties, ill health and increasing deafness the composer was to inhabit his own isolated world leading to a style of composition that was both unique and visionary in nature. How these last quartets came into being and how they influenced the course of string quartet composition for the ensuing 200 years represents the focus of this series of six seminar/concerts at HVMS. In the fall and spring, over a period of three years, each concert will pair a Beethoven quartet with a quartet by other major composers in a way that will reveal the influence of Beethoven's musical thought on succeeding generations. The last concert in the series will examine the role played by Beethoven's own teachers such as Haydn and Foerster in the molding and development of Beethoven's own style. Preceding each concert there will be a two-hour seminar that will delve more deeply into the structure and emotional content of the works to be played and this will be presented using live musical illustrations played by the HVMS quartet. In the following pages you will find some materials that gives an outline of the ground to be covered in the series. Firstly, details of the programs themselves followed by a biographical outline showing the relationship of events in Beethoven's life with those on the larger world stage. It should be kept in mind that programs may be subject to change influenced by discussion and what we learn in the process of discovery. There then follows a copy of the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter inteded by Beethoven to be read by his brothers after his death, and in which we learn of the emotional turmoil and isolation from the world caused by the composer's increasing deafness. There then follows a series of short articles that include a chronology of composition for the last quartets, and finally some notes on the Mendelssohn Quartet to be played in the first program. The notes on each of the individual quartets have been edited from Wikipedia articles and slightly fuller versions along with bibliographic references can be found online" [p. 1].