"We do not understand music--it understands us." This aphorism by Theodor W. Adorno expresses the quandary and the fascination many listeners have felt in approaching Beethoven's late quartets. No group of compositions occupies a more central position in chamber music, yet the meaning of these works continues to stimulate debate. William Kinderman's The String Quartets of Beethoven stands as the most detailed and comprehensive exploration of the subject. It collects new work by leading international scholars who draw on a variety of historical sources and analytical approaches to offer fresh insights into the aesthetics of the quartets, probing expressive and structural features that have hitherto received little attention. This volume also includes an appendix with updated information on the chronology and sources of the quartets and a detailed bibliography.

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

"Béla Bartók's string quartets are 'key works': in them is reflected the stylistic development not only of his own art but of the music of a whole age, the twentieth century, and also of the string quartet genre itself. Each of the six string quartets represents a milestone in Bartók's creative path. They offer a faithful and comprehensive picture of the various periods in the composer's creative development, each bears the characteristic marks of these periods, showing as they do the direction taken by Bartók's orientations, the various influences and his own individual original methods. János Kárpáti's monograph on the one hand sets these works against the background of the whole history of the string quartet as a genre, thus indicating their position as the direct continuation of the late Beethoven quartets, and on the other hand it presents an exposition of the factors involved in Bartók's art, the trace of the influence of art music and folk music, of predecessors and contemporaries--placing Bartók at the head of the twentieth century masters as the distillation and summary of all that preceded him."--Dust jacket.

This affordable study score features Beethoven's entire oeuvre of string quartets. Includes: 6 quartets of Opus 18; 3 quartets of Opus 59; Opuses 74, 95, 127, 130, 131, 132, 135, and Grosse Fuge. Meticulously reprinted from the authoritative Breitkopf & Härtel edition.