DESCRIPTION:
Composer Stratis Minakakis shares a few general thoughts stimulated by the investigations of Beethoven's manuscripts.
The Borromeo Quartet uses computers in order to always work from the full score, so that all the players always see every player's part, not just what they themselves play. With printed scores this has been a truly inspiring transformation of the rehearsal and performance process, but what was not expected is that this technique, where the music is read from a pdf file and pages are turned with a home-made foot-pedal, has opened the door to working directly from files of composer's manuscripts. With Beethoven, what has emerged is an elaborate system of marking that is only visible in the manuscript. The Borromeo quartet works from manuscripts of the last 10 Beethoven Quartets (the manuscripts of the first six are lost) and Nicholas Kitchen has made studies of manuscripts of a majority of Beethoven's works. The musical shaping that this elaborate system of marking reveals is one more source of inspiration from Beethoven, this musician who has enriched all of our lives in ways we can hardly begin to measure. The excitement from this learning are what have inspired Nick Kitchen, Stratis Minakakis, the Borromeo Quartet and New England Conservatory to create these videos to bring this information into our working with Beethoven.