The Beethoven Quartets

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 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.

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!