Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet. Vol 2: Shostakovich to the Avant-Garde

Modern composers as diverse as Béla Bartók, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten and John Cage have confided some of their most personal and intense thoughts to the medium of the string quartet. The resulting repertoire has won the allegiance of string players and of listeners in the concert hall and at home. Yet, until now, no book has addressed the language of these remarkable works, their interactions with the masterpieces of Beethoven and others, and their new
approaches to musical expression. Intimate Voices, organized in rough chronological order, offers the observations and intuitions of twenty leading authorities on quartets by twenty-one composers from eleven countries. Its two volumes ? also available separately ? comprise an indispensable guide to amateur and professional chamber musicians, scholars, students, and anyone seeking a deeper acquaintance with the great achievements of twentieth-century music.


CONTENIDO:

Preface
Part One: Motive, Quotation, and Form
Dimitri Shostakovich: The String Quartet (Patrick McCreless)
Supported by Tradition: Sonority, Form, and Trascendence in Britten's String Quartet (Christopher Mark)

Part Two: The European Avant-Garde
György Ligeti's String Quartets (Jane Piper Clendinning)
Becoming Berio: Evidence from His First Three String Quartets (Richard Hermann)
An Experiential Account of Musical Form in Xenakis's String Quartets (Evan Jones)
The String Quartets of Giacinto Scelsi (Eric Drott)

Part Three: The String Quartet in America
"A Line in Rhythnic Space": John Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) (David W. Bernstein)
The String Quartets of Milton Babbitt (Andrew Mead)
The String Quartets of Elliot Carter (Jonathan W. Bernard)
Mel Powell and the String Quartets (Jeffrey Perry)
The String Quartets of Shulamit Ran (Robert W. Peck)

List of Contributors
Index