The String Quartet 17501797 Four Types Of Musical Conversation Mara Parker by Mara Parker 9781840146820, 1840146826 instant download after payment.

Looking at a wide variety of string quartets by composers such as Pleyel, Distler and Filtz, in addition to Haydn and Mozart, the book proposes a new way of describing the relationships between the four instruments in different works. Broadly speaking, these relationships follow one of four patterns: the lecture, the polite conversation, the debate, and the conversation. In focusing on these musical discourses, it becomes apparent that each work is the product of its composer's stylistic choices, location, intended performers and intended audience. Instead of evolving in a strict and universal sequence, the string quartet in the latter half of the 18th century was a complex genre with composers mixing and matching musical discourses as circumstances and their own creative impulses required.