UMS in the Classroom: Elias Quartet

By UMS

Interested in using a UMS performance in your university classroom? For each performance on the season, we provide suggested curricular connections, links to contextual material online, citations for scholarly material, and prompts for classroom discussion. For additional resources and individualized curricular support, please contact Shannon Fitzsimons Moen, UMS Campus Engagement Specialist, at skfitz@umich.edu or (734) 764-3903.

UMS is also committed to making our performances an affordable part of the academic experience. Our Classroom Ticket Program provides $15 tickets to students and faculty for performances that are a course requirement. Please email umsclasstickets@umich.edu to set up a group order.

Connect:

This performance may connect meaningfully with courses in the following schools and disciplines:

• Comparative Literature
• Germanic Languages and Literatures
• Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies
• History
• History of Art
• Organizational Studies
• Political Science
• Composition
• Music Education
• Music Theory
• Musicology
• Strings
• Business

Explore:

• The Elias String Quartet shares their story on their official website.
• Learn more about Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” in this piece from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and this video from the Curtis Institute of Music.

Reflect:

• Writer Dana Fonteneau jokes that the relationship between the four members of a string quartet is “like a four-way marriage” because the members spend an enormous amount of time together working, performing, and touring with each other. What challenges do you think may arise from these working conditions? How would the members of a string quartet work together to maintain interpersonal, as well as musical, harmony?
• The Elias String Quartet’s program is the third installment in their project The String Quartet After Beethoven. This concert entitled “Melodists” explores the music of Schubert and Dvorak, two composers who share a particular gift for “writing melodies that seem to spring from an endless well of inspiration”. What characteristics make up a great melody?