A dramatic and musical performance
Written by David Lawrence Morse
Directed by Mark Wing-Davey
With the Brentano String Quartet

Running time: approx. 75 minutes
Optional second half: full performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132

Production Concept

In the final years of his life, deaf, ill, and trapped in squalid lodgings, Beethoven composes the late string quartets. The musicians of the Brentano Quartet inhabit the stage with him, playing fragments and sketches of Beethoven’s music as he composes and battles with his assistants, creditors, doctors, and troubled nephew. At times the quartet obeys him; at other times the music overwhelms him. The play moves between historically grounded scenes drawn from Beethoven’s letters and notebooks and a more contemporary theatricality in which music and staging break the illusion of period realism.

Project History

This project was originally conceived by Edward Dusinberre and developed in collaboration with David Lawrence Morse, the Takács Quartet, and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. The project was performed in 2010 at Grusin Music Hall in Boulder, Colorado.

For producing, workshop, or presentation inquiries, please get in touch via the contact page.

Paul Klee, Abstract Trio (1923), public domain image via the Metropolitan Museum of Art