Two centuries of Beethoven, two decades of the Euclid Quartet

By Kate Luce

Two centuries ago, Beethoven was well on his way to gaining notoriety with his compositions. This past school year, the Euclid Quartet dedicated their concert series to Beethoven and presented his music on and off campus.

Around the world, many Beethoven concerts are popping up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth. This past year, in addition to Beethoven’s anniversary, 2019 also marked the 20th anniversary of the Euclid Quartet. The quartet has been at IU South Bend since 2007, coming from Ohio.

The Euclid Quartet is comprised of IU South Bend faculty Jacqueline Choi, lecturer in music; Jameson Cooper, senior lecturer in music; Brendan Shea, lecturer in music; and Luis Vargas, senior lecturer in music.

“This past season represented the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, so we wanted to commemorate this by offering all his quartets. Music lovers and students from South Bend had the opportunity to hear this amazing collection of works which trace his style from a young bold new composer on the scene to a mature master dealing with deafness and mortality,” Cooper says.

“The Beethoven Quartets are what many consider the bible of string quartets in all aspects, in terms of their scope, treatment of forms and conventions, range and depth of expressions, experimental instrumental techniques, programmatic inspirations, and historical impact on the future of string-quartet writing. Having established our identity and distinct group sound as a professional quartet through numerous concerts, tours, and recording projects throughout the past years, we found ourselves at the right place to challenge ourselves with a substantial project of preparing and presenting these monumental works by Beethoven in their entirety in a single season,” Choi explains. events of the Covid-19 pandemic, the final performances were cancelled due to the closure of the campus. However, the community and students enjoyed the shows they were able to see in the fall and were grateful the Quartet decided to take on such a daunting concert series.

“We wanted to bring these amazing works to our community of South Bend which might not otherwise have a chance to hear the entire Beethoven String Quartet Cycle. That is the beauty of having a professional string quartet in residence at IU South Bend, we get to share the amazing works written for string quartet with our immediate community,” Vargas says.

This is not the first time the Euclid Quartet has focused on Beethoven for their concert series. In 2009, they performed Beethoven all year long as well. However, this type of concert series is relatively rare for the Quartet.

In the past years, the Euclid Quartet mixed styles of music and added contemporary pieces to their performances. Last year during their concert season, they performed three pieces that were exclusively written for them and other works that were performed for the first time.

In addition, the quartet was able to collaborate with other artists during their concert series throughout the fall semester. In November 2019, they performed with Ketevan Badridze, interim Martin Endowed Chair of Piano, during the IU South Bend Piano Series.

The Quartet and Badridze performed an outreach concert for John Adams High School in November as well. This was the first time many students heard live classical music, and the performance even brought one student to tears. Students from the outreach performance later attended the full Piano Series performances on IU South Bend campus.

cycle. In addition, the Quartet performed in different locations, bringing a different vibe to each concert.

“We tried as much as possible to put together some of each period into every concert, however, it worked for some of the concerts but not for all because there are six quartets in the early period, five in his middle and five in his late. One of the most amazing things about all of these quartets is that, even though they were written by the same composer, they are completely different from one another with some obvious recognizable trends on each,” Vargas explains.

The Quartet put on several concerts throughout the school year, both at IU South Bend and throughout the community.

“Doing the Beethoven Quartet cycle is an incredible landmark in my life, and I’ve been very excited to be a part of bringing such important music to South Bend. The Euclid Quartet is committed to engaging and expanding interest in classical music locally, and I thought it was wonderful that we were able to get so many local organizations and people involved. In my opinion there is no equal to the Beethoven quartets in any medium, and it’s rare to hear them all in one season. We hope to continue to do fun projects that encourage people to come out and hear great works next season,” Shea recalls. “We want our students to be exposed to these works while they are in school. They are all incredibly difficult, none of them ever feel comfortable to play but they are also amazingly gratifying to perform. I have fond memories of being brought to tears listening to parts of these works as a student. They bring a perfect balance of high energy, intensity and passion full of tender moments but also enraged with moments of frustration and anger (such as the Op. 133 “Grosse Fuge”) given his complete deafness, illness and isolation. Playing them all is like an emotional biographical walk-through of his life,” Vargas says.

“This is arguably the greatest body of work for string quartet by any composer in history. The sheer range of emotion encompassed is breathtaking. This is music that never gets old, and some of it still sounds modern even though it’s two hundred years old,” Cooper says.

For more information on upcoming performances by the Euclid Quartet, please look at the events page online at arts.iusb.edu/events-and-community

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