The Beethoven Quartets

A wonderful tome about Beethoven and his amazing string quartets. It covers all 16 pieces and the Grosse Fugue, with in depth analyses and discussions about the history/style/musical structure of each quartet.My one comment would be;I have a masters degree in music, and as much as I love Kerman and his writings, he adores using big words and abstract musical terms when he doesn't have to., He pontificates and rambles occasionally, when he could state his case in much simpler terms most of the time. I would not recommend this book to someone who is just getting into Beethoven or isn't trained in music. If you have a degree in music or are just an aficionado, then you'll enjoy this book.

The author goes into minute detail about some of the technical aspects of each quartet. But somehow, I found that he lost the "big picture" about how the piece was structured. I never got a sense of the overall structure of each movement of a given quartet. His presentation of the minutia (key changes, chordal sequences, etc) was mildly interesting, but needed a better sense of the more global aspects of the peace.

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.

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.

This is my favorite book about the Beethoven quartets. Yes, it presumes some musical training, a score and a recording, but these things are not rare. I find Kerman's aesthetic and value judgments to be uniquely insightful, even if I don't agree with all of them. He can step back and talk about the relationship of one quartet to another, as well as the phrase-by-phrase development of each movement.

I have now read about three of Beethoven's quartets in Mr. Kerman's book.How refreshing (and astonishing) to see statements like "... how many serious writers on music... often seem to proceed on the unspoken premise that everything in the composition makes aesthetic sense... not everything a composer does works, a lesson that must be extrapolated even to Beethoven."He causes me to think about what I'm listening to with renewed insight, vigour, and enjoyment. Whether or not you agree with him (on positive or negative points!), there is depth and intelligence here.I would agree with some of the previous reviews that a very good background in music is essential.On a final note, this collection of essays is very literate - pleasurably so!