SECOND EDITION A Guide to Forgotten String Quartets Exploring unjustly neglected masterpieces An eBook by Lyle Chan published by Vexations840 a mysterious organization dedicated to classical music at its finest Second Edition, February 2013 © 2013 Vexations840 Pty Ltd PO Box 309, Edgecliff NSW 2027, Australia
[email protected] you will enjoy visiting www.forgottenstringquartets.com 2 Introduction to the Second Edition As we stated in our First Edition, A Guide to Forgotten String Quartets was intended to take advantage of the swiftness of e-publishing and be revised quickly towards a second and subsequent editions. This Second Edition is the result of the very encouraging emails we’ve received. Most of your emails have been simply about how much you’ve enjoyed the coverage and found the eBook useful. Some of you have also brought additional works to our attention, many of which we’ve included here. This new edition adds another 10 quartets which amounts to nearly 3 hours of listening time. We’ve chosen a balance of little-known works by famous composers like Samuel Barber, Kurt Weill, Franz Liszt, Beethoven (yes, even this titan of a composer has neglected works) as well as composers whose entire output, not just their string quartets, is largely forgotten, such as Chevalier de Saint-George and Malipiero. And one of the new quartets is in fact a multicomposer suite of 16 movements from Russia called Les Vendredis, certainly one of the most interesting discoveries we’ve made. Since the First Edition, the internet app called Spotify has been widely adopted by the classical music community and so we have begun to include Spotify listening links – we’ll start with new works being added to this Second Edition, and retrospectively add links for the rest.