The Language of the Rasumovsky Quartets: Beethoven and Robert Simpson

Non-Fiction

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While working for the BBC Robert Simpson gave an illustrated TV lecture on the last of Beethoven’s three ‘Rasumovsky’ string quartets, Op.59. This talk was so well received that he was strongly pressed to write a complete study of Beethoven’s Op.59, but he countered that he did not wish to write any more words about music; he had already done a great deal in that line. Instead, he wrote three quartets of his own (Nos 4, 5 and 6) that explore those incomparable Beethoven pieces. The present book shows how this later music analyses the process used by Beethoven, and by contrast how Beethoven’s work can unravel secrets of Simpson’s art. The results are enlightening both for the ordinary listener and for the scholar.

Lionel Pike Professor of Music Emeritus at Royal Holloway (University of London) and was the organist of the college chapel there from 1969 to 2005. For four years, he served as the dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of London. He was a chorister and assistant organist of Bristol Cathedral, and at Oxford, was organ scholar of Pembroke College, his tutors being Sir David Lumsden and Dr H.K. Andrews. The research for his D. Phil was in Renaissance music, though he has since published books on symphonic form and edited church music for the Purcell Society. He is married and has two daughters.