Edward Dusinberre with Steven Whiting

This event will take place on Literati’s main floor.

Literat is pleased to welcome Edward Dusinberre, author of Beethoven For a Later Age, in conversation with Steven Whiting, professor of musicology at the University of Michigan. This event is being held in conjunction with the UMS presentation of the Takács Quartet on October 8 and 9, at Rackham Auditorium. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit ums.org.

‘They are not for you but for a later age!’ -Ludwig van Beethoven, on the Opus 59 quartets

Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets are some of the most extraordinary and challenging pieces of music ever written. They have inspired artists of all kinds – not only musicians – and have been subject to endless reinterpretation. What does it feel like to be a musician taking on these iconic works? And how do the four string players who make up a quartet interact, both musically and personally?

The Takács is one of the world’s pre-eminent string quartets. Performances of Beethoven have shaped their work together for over forty years. Using the history of both the Takács Quartet and the Beethoven quartets as the backbone to his story, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács since 1993, recounts the exhilarating challenge of tackling these pieces. Beethoven for a Later Age takes the reader inside the daily life of a quartet, vividly showing the necessary creative tension between individual and group expression and how four people can 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 lies at the heart of Beethoven’s remarkable compositions. No other composer has posed so many questions about the form and emotional content of a string quartet, and come up with so many different answers. In an accessible style, suitable for novices and chamber music enthusiasts alike, Dusinberre illuminates the variety and inherent contradictions of Beethoven’s quartets, composed against the turbulent backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath, and shows that engaging with this radical music continues to be as invigorating now as it was for its first performers and audiences.

Edward Dusinberre was born in 1968 in Leamington Spa, England, and has enjoyed playing the violin from a young age. His early experiences as concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain encouraged him to choose music as a profession. He studied with the Ukrainian violinist Felix Andrievsky at the Royal College of Music in London and at the Juilliard School with Dorothy DeLay and Piotr Milewski. In 1990 he won the British Violin Recital Prize and gave his debut recital in London at the Purcell Room, South Bank Centre. Upon completion of his studies at Juilliard Dusinberre auditioned for the Takács Quartet, which he joined in 1993 as first violin.

Steven Whiting, a native of Chicago, graduated from Macalester College in 1975 with a major in music (voice, piano) and a minor in German.He studied musicology at Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet in Kiel, Germany, on a Fulbright grant (1975–77) and sang for a season with the Chicago Symphony Chorus before pursuing graduate work at the University of Illinois. There he took an M.M. in Musicology with a thesis on “Erik Satie and Parisian Musical Entertainment,” and his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Beethoven’s early variations (“To the ‘New Manner’ Born”). Between degrees, he spent four years as a desk editor at A-R Editions of Madison, Wisconsin, sang with several early music groups, and performed in contemporary music ensembles. After teaching for two years at the University of Illinois, he came to the University of Michigan in 1991 as a visiting assistant professor.