Beethoven’s “Serioso”: A Lecture-Concert

The collaboration between the Stauffer Academy and the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of Cremona continues.
The synergy between two of the leading academic and musical institutions in the Cremona area — the Stauffer Academy and the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of Cremona (University of Pavia) — is renewed once again this May.

As part of a partnership increasingly focused on promoting instrumental teaching and research in the field of music, the next event will take place on Wednesday, May 15, 2025, from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, at the Stradivari Room of the Stauffer Academy.

It will be a lecture-concert dedicated to Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 95, commonly known as “Serioso”, one of the most intense and dramatic works from Beethoven’s late period. The event is part of a wider cycle of six lectures focusing on the complete string quartets by the Viennese composer — a cornerstone of the European chamber music tradition.

The entire series is curated by Professor Jeremy Yudkin, a distinguished musicologist and professor at Boston University, as well as co-director of the Center for Beethoven Research at the same university. In May, he will serve as a Visiting Professor at the Department of Musicology as part of the course “History of Music 2.”

This lecture — designed as a moment of both theoretical and performance-based exploration — is intended for students of the Department of Musicology and the Stauffer Academy. In addition to the historical-musical analysis of the work, musical examples will be performed by the Quartetto Arola, a young ensemble of students from the Stauffer Academy’s Advanced String Quartet Program.

Thanks to the performers’ contributions and the guidance of Professor Yudkin, the event will provide a valuable opportunity to delve into one of the absolute pinnacles of 19th-century chamber music, offering an in-depth look at both compositional technique and performance practice.

A moment of high-level training that confirms the importance of dialogue between academic and artistic institutions, in the spirit of musical excellence and quality.

About Jeremy Yudkin
Jeremy Yudkin is a Professor of Music at Boston University, Co-Director of the Center for Beethoven Research, and Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies and at the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. He is the former Director of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University. He has also served as a visiting professor at Oxford University, Harvard University, the École Normale Supérieure, and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris.

He holds a degree from Cambridge University in the UK and earned his PhD from Stanford University. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the Boston University Humanities Foundation, and the Camargo Foundation.

Professor Yudkin is the author of eleven books and numerous book chapters and journal articles. His primary research areas include medieval music, Beethoven, popular music, and jazz. He has taught courses on medieval polyphony, the Beatles, Beethoven, Bartók, and Miles Davis. He is particularly well known for Music in Medieval Europe and Understanding Music, the latter of which is used by approximately 20,000 students annually across North America.

His educational video Inside the Orchestra, which details the history and function of the symphony orchestra, won the 2005 Telly Award for best non-broadcast educational video. He has authored several other books on medieval and Renaissance music, Beethoven, and jazz. His book Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post-Bop (2009) received the Award for Excellence from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. His more recent publication, From Silence to Sound: Beethoven’s Beginnings, was named Reference Book of the Year 2021 by the American Library Association.

He has contributed to The Harvard Dictionary of Music, Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century, and A Companion to the Modern American Novel, 1900–1950. He is currently working on two editorial projects, one on the Beatles and another on 1950s jazz.

Professor Yudkin has served as an adviser to the Smithsonian Institution for the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz and is a consultant for the Oxford English Dictionary. He is a partner of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and founder of the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Lenox Library Association. He lectures for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Festival, held annually in Lenox, MA, and has presented conferences across the United States, England, France, Israel, and Russia.