the cello emporium...

In our living room right now are three cellos (I call it the cello emporium.) The first is one on which I have tried to teach myself to play for some years (most often in theory not in practice.) Cello number two is played by my daughter Anna (10) who has been playing for a couple of years-she also plays piano and has an amazing ear and natural talent. My son Henry (8) has just taken up the cello this year with great enthusiasm.

My own desire to learn the cello began in college but until I moved to the Boston area, it remained unfulfilled. Then, I learned that a man in our church made cellos. He loaned me one which has been a mixed blessing (I no longer have an excuse not to try!) I have recently sat down with it again after a very long sabbatical...

One of my favorite musical forms is the string quartet. I love the exposure of each of the instruments. And, of course, some of the greatest quartets were composed by Beethoven. This morning, some words about him by John Sullivan Dwight, a "Boston Unitarian" transcendentalist, Brook Farmer, and music critic who was influential in building the reputation of Beethoven in America. His "Dwight's Journal of Music" (begun in 1852) was widely influential. See his biography here. This from the journal...

"Beethoven is the greatest of musical transcendentalists. No man ever transmuted such a vast amount of intellectual and emotional material into pure music. It were unfair to say that one or two of his successors have not reached as high an intellectual plane as he ; but they have not had his power of thoroughly transmuting thought and emotion into music. What we know best of Beethoven is his nine symphonies ; but if we would find the most transcendent fruits of his genius, we must look for them in his later pianoforte sonatas, variations and string-quartets"

Blessings