Monday, June 23, 1:30 – 4:30 pm
This Music Lovers Seminar will set the stage for the Miró Quartet’s performance of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets, which will take place over 5 concert nights June 23 – 29, 2014. The Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival is honored to bring internationally recognized scholar Stephen Rumph, Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Washington, for this special afternoon on Monday, June 23 from 1:30 – 4:30 pm at the Orcas Senior Center.
This seminar will explore Beethoven’s sixteen quartets as a microcosm of the composer’s entire oeuvre, tracing the changing stylistic, aesthetic, and ideological landscape of Beethoven’s music from his early Viennese years until his death. Professor Rumph’s observations will combine biographical and historical information with close musical readings, and will offer music lovers of every level an accessible and stimulating introduction to these masterpieces of the chamber music repertory. Rumph has lectured widely on Beethoven’s music, and published a prominent study of the composer’s political thought, “Beethoven After Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works” (University of California Press, 2004).
“A brilliant and unfailingly provocative reading of Beethoven’s music. Rumph challenges and refines our views of the subject, reinterpreting overly familiar music in striking new ways. Wonderful critical and interpretive observations abound…”
– Scott Burnham, author of “Beethoven Hero.”
Professor Rumph teaches and publishes on a wide range of topics, including opera, film music, French art song, Mozart, and Beethoven. His writings appear in numerous music journals, and he recently published a second book, Mozart and Enlightenment Semiotics (University of California Press, 2011). He served as Reviews Editor for Beethoven Forum, 2005-2008. He joined the UW School of Music faculty in 2002, after studying voice at Oberlin Conservatory and earning a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Rumph also sings professionally as a lyric tenor, performing widely in concert, oratorio, and opera.