String quartets

The scene shifted to the New World. I was with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello as he was explaining his newest invention to a group of friends. The newest product of Jefferson s fertile mind was a four-sided music stand, so designed that all four members of a string quartet could use the same... 

Planck moved to the podium. Outwardly, he appeared calm. Privately, he worried that Nazi thugs might yet appear to disrupt the meeting. As the last notes of a haunting string quartet by Franz Schubert faded away, Max Planck raised his arm. 

The entire research group was here, and all were following this same regimen. Two hours into the second half of the experiment a telephone call came that reminded me of a promise I had made to perform in a social afternoon with the viola in a string quartet. Why did I answer the phone My entire experience was, over the course of about 20 minutes, pushed down to a fragile threshold, and I drove about 10 minutes to attend a swank afternoon event and played an early Beethoven and a middle Mozart with an untouched glass of expensive Merlot in front of me. I could always blame the booze. I declined the magnificent food spread, split, and returned to my own party. 

This scientific Symposium had also a lighter side. There was an Ausflug to Duderstadt in the Eichsfeld with inspection of the many half-timbered houses in the old city. There was also an evening of music in the Symposium Hall, provided by a string quartet made up pf students from the University in GPttingen - the Georgia Quartet. 

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