We Knocked Their Socks Off

About the Book

KUDOS to We Knocked Their Socks Off, Tim Bosworth’s fine, new biography of the Curtis String Quartet (1927-1981). The first string quartet trained in America, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA. it was arguably the greatest string quartet in history. At its retirement in 1981, the Quartet had been together longer than any other. It was the first American quartet to perform in England and to tour Europe. Twice. It played in big cities where it was well-known, on college campuses, in lobbies of banks, and in small towns where no one had even known what a quartet was. In its prime, the Quartet’s work was recognized as the gold standard for quartet playing. Yet up to now, it has still not received its due. Left standing has been the false narrative that quartets began in America only after World War II. That narrative, sadly, has written the Quartet out of history. This book writes it back in.

About the Author

Tim Bosworth was born in 1946 in Pittsfield, MA. He is a trained historian, writer and playwright, avid violist and quartet player, playwright, and novelist. He resides in Orleans, MA, on Cape Cod. He earned his Ph. D. in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. In addition to his dissertation, “Those Who Moved. Internal Migrants in America from 1620 to 1840” and numerous scholarly papers. He has also written novels, short stories, and plays, one of which has been published and has been seen from Massachusetts south to North Carolina and west to Ohio and Wisconsin. He began studying piano and violin at the age of five, and took up the viola around the age of12. He has been playing quartets since high school. As a member of the family of the Quartet’s only cellist while writing this book, he was privy to information and insights not available to other writers.