Mar 29, 2024  
College Catalog 2021-2022 
    
College Catalog 2021-2022 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

GRMUS T643 — The Bartók String Quartets

2 credits
Fall
Kendall Briggs

The quartets of Bartók stand as the greatest achievements in quartet writing in the first half of the 20th century. These monumental works also shaped and changed forever the way quartets were written and played and gave the medium a fresh and vibrant start in the new musical world at the beginning of the 20th century. Briefly surveying the history of quartet writing and playing, this course will demonstrate how Bartók explored and exploited the developments of the past as well as how he derived new ideas of form and timbre which would drastically change the soundscape of the string quartet. Each quartet will be viewed in its contemporary context as well as through historical perspective, giving the student the opportunity to see and experience these quartets in new and different ways.