A critical study of the structure, style, and significance of the sixteen string quartets.

Renowned music historians Floyd and Margaret Grave present a fresh perspective on a comprehensive survey of the works. This thorough and unique analysis offers new insights into the creation of the quartets, the wealth of musical customs and conventions on which they draw, the scope of their innovations, and their significance as reflections of Haydn's artistic personality. Each set of quartets is characterized in terms of its particular mix of structural conventions and novelties, stylistic allusions, and its special points of connection with other opus groups in the series. Throughout the book, the authors draw attention to the boundless supply of compositional strategies by which Haydn appears to be continually rethinking, reevaluating, and refining the quartet's potentials. They also lucidly describe Haydn's famous penchant for wit, humor, and compositional artifice, illuminating the unexpected connections he draws between seemingly unrelated ideas, his irony, and his lightning bolts of surprise and thwarted expectation. Approaching the quartets from a variety of vantage points, the authors correct many prevailing assumptions about convention, innovation, and developing compositional technique in the music of Haydn and his contemporaries.

This book explores in detail guanosine and its derivative with the goal of increasing knowledge of the basic principles of guanosine-assembly, synthesis of new optimised materials and exploration of their electronic and optical properties.

Beethoven's middle-period quartets, Opp. 59, 74 and 95, are pieces that engage deeply with the aesthetic ideas of their time. In the first full contextual study of these works, Nancy November celebrates their uniqueness, exploring their reception history and early performance. In detailed analyses, she explores ways in which the quartets have both reflected and shaped the very idea of chamber music and offers a new historical understanding of the works' physical, visual, social and ideological aspects. In the process, November provides a fresh critique of three key paradigms in current Beethoven studies: the focus on his late period; the emphasis on 'heroic' style in discussions of the middle period; and the idea of string quartets as 'pure', 'autonomous' artworks, cut off from social moorings. Importantly, this study shows that the quartets encompass a new lyric and theatrical impetus, which is an essential part of their unique, explorative character.

Remarkably readable and accessible, this classic exposition presents a bar-by-bar, theme-by-theme analysis of all 16 quartets and the Grosse Fuge. Joseph de Marliave eschews technical terms, focusing on mood and general effects and illustrating his remarks with 321 musical examples. In addition to musicological information, de Marliave provides a complete background, encompassing dates of composition, contemporary reactions, influences, and Beethoven’s transcendence of established forms. Clear analyses and a wealth of documentary material make this one of the most authoritative studies of Beethoven’s quartets, as well as one of the most enjoyable. Preface by Gabriel Fauré. Introduction, notes by Jean Escarra. Translated by Hilda Andrews.