Spotlighting the four women of the Lafayette Quartet, a leading Canadian ensemble, Rounds offers both a comprehensive history of the beloved instrumental form and an inside view of the complex world of professional quartet players, revealing the exultation and heatache that are the performing artists' daily fare. A treat for every music lover, whether player, listener or composer.

A thorough overview and history of chamber music

Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide is a reference tool for anyone interested in chamber music. It is not a history or an encyclopedia but a guide to where to find answers to questions about chamber music. The third edition adds nearly 600 new entries to cover new research since publication of the previous edition in 2002. Most of the literature is books, articles in journals and magazines, dissertations and theses, and essays or chapters in Festschriften, treatises, and biographies. In addition to the core literature obscure citations are also included when they are the only studies in a particular field. In addition to being printed, this volume is also for the first time available online. The online environment allows for information to be updated as new research is introduced. This database of information is a "live" resource, fully searchable, and with active links. Users will have unlimited access, annual revisions will be made and a limited number of pages can be downloaded for printing.

Combining historical music theory with the cognitive study of music, Playing with Meter traces metric manipulations and strategies in Haydn and Mozart's string chamber music from 1787 to 1791. Her analysis shed new light on this repertoire and redefine the role of meter and rhythm in Classical music.

The author tells of his own development as a student, "of how he and his intrepid colleagues were converted to chamber music ... [and of how] four individualists master and then overcome the confining demands of ensemble playing."--Jacket.

This guide is intended to help amateur players, from beginners to the most proficient, choose rewarding works within their capabilities and widen their repertoires. There are works for children and adult beginners specifically written for teaching and for practising chamber music, and also many fairly easy works for piano and strings. -- Provided by publisher.

'They are not for you but for a later age!' Ludwig van Beethoven, on the Opus 59 quartets. Tackling the Beethoven quartets is a rite of passage that has shaped the Takács Quartet's work together for over forty years. Using the history of the composition and first performances of the quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993 - recounts the life of the Quartet from its inception in Hungary, through emigration to the US and its present-day life as one of the world's renowned string quartets. He also describes what it was like for him, as a young man fresh out of the Juilliard School, to join the Quartet as its first non-Hungarian member - an exhilarating challenge. Beethoven for a Later Age takes the reader inside the life of a quartet, vividly showing how four people enjoy making music together over a long period of time. The key, the author argues, is in balancing continuity with change and experimentation - a theme that also lies at the heart of Beethoven's remarkable compositions.

"As a composer of chamber music Mendelssohn claims greatness almost without qualification. . . . He had a complete mastery of his medium . . . and an intensity of interest in pure music that renders his quartets, in particular, works of integrity in thought and statement." -- "Grove's "These masterpieces in the chamber music repertoire are works perennially popular with players and listeners. All of them have been recorded and many appear frequently on chamber music programs. They have been reproduced directly from the famous and scholarly Breitkopf & Hartel series, an eminently readable edition, and contain all of Mendelssohn's chamber music for strings, excluding only those pieces with piano. The following works are included: Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20Quintet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 18Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87Quartet No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 12Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 13 Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1Quartet No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 44, No. 2Quartet No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 44, No. 3Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81The music has been reproduced in a size large enough to be read easily, and there is ample space between staves and in the margins for any notes, harmonic analyses, fingerings or annotations that you may want to record on the score. The edition is practical for almost any use, whether as a study guide, a reference, or just a companion for your greater musical enjoyment. Unabridged (1978) republication of Series 5 and 6 of "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Werke, " 1874-1877.

Includes biographical information, notes on the music, a list of works by the composer and facsimiles of 2 pages from his original manuscripts. Critical report follows music.