Book Review

The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet
edited by Robin Stowell

This book was a mixed bag. Some of the chapters were very interesting. The discussions of the string quartet's place in society and of the history of the quartet and its performance contexts were very interesting. I also really liked the chapter on how an ensemble works together to play quartets. Unfortunately, the sections on string quartet repertory often got bogged down in play-by-play descriptions of pieces, where I would have preferred a higher level discussion of the trends in quartet writing and the relationships between different works.