Overview

In 1829 Goethe famously described the string quartet as 'a conversation among four intelligent people'. Inspired by this metaphor, Edward Klorman's study draws on a wide variety of documentary and iconographic sources to explore Mozart's chamber works as 'the music of friends'. Illuminating the meanings and historical foundations of comparisons between chamber music and social interplay, Klorman infuses the analysis of sonata form and phrase rhythm with a performer's sensibility. He develops a new analytical method called multiple agency that interprets the various players within an ensemble as participants in stylized social intercourse - characters capable of surprising, seducing, outwitting, and even deceiving one another musically. This book is accompanied by online resources that include original recordings performed by the author and other musicians, as well as video analyses that invite the reader to experience the interplay in time, as if from within the ensemble.

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9781107093652

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Reviews

Advance praise: 'Klorman's love of his subject is truly infectious. Drawing on many contemporary quotes he paints a very vivid and human historical backdrop. We eavesdrop on composers, players, listeners and commentators puzzling over the composition and performance of classical chamber music from its birth. This is a work of impressive scholarship with a broad and deep awareness of musical theory and commentary through the centuries, but, above all, it makes a persuasive case for a mode of musical analysis that puts at its center the composer's essential conception of the different parts in chamber music as multiple agents, affecting, surprising and even tussling with each other rhythmically, harmonically, contrapuntally and emotionally. In this way, reading his analyses can remind one of a good quartet rehearsal - a medium Klorman also knows very well from the quartet viola player's seat.' Roger Tapping, Juilliard String Quartet Advance praise: 'To hear to Mozart's chamber works on recordings, through mp3 players, or even in a concert hall is to experience them much differently than did listeners of the eighteenth century. As Klorman cogently explains, the primary intended audiences of these pieces were the performers themselves, for whom the notion of chamber music as a conversation was not merely a metaphor but an essential part of the artistic experience. Through penetrating historical and music analyses, Mozart's Music of Friends helps vivify this wonderful music in a manner that is refreshingly new - or, I should say, in a manner that is over 200 years old, but has too long been set aside and forgotten.' L. Poundie Burstein, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York Advance praise: 'Klorman fundamentally rethinks the social and behavioral bases for our understanding of a core repertoire. He works carefully through the logical implications of his key term, 'multiple agency', using it to illuminate our understanding not just of texture, but also of elements such as metre, phrase syntax, and even musical form itself. Highly readable, entertaining, and thought-provoking.' W. Dean Sutcliffe, University of Auckland

Author Information

Edward Klorman is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Viola at Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). He also teaches graduate analysis seminars and chamber music performance at The Juilliard School, where he was founding chair of the Music Theory and Analysis department. Committed to intersections between musical scholarship and performance, he currently serves as co-chair of the Performance and Analysis Interest Group of the Society for Music Theory. He has performed as guest artist with the Borromeo, Orion, and Ying Quartets and the Lysander Trio, and he is featured on two albums of chamber music from Albany Records. He has published and presented widely on topics in the performance of eighteenth-century chamber music.

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