CAMA’s first Masterseries concert of the new season takes place at 8 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17, in the Lobero Theater, 33 E. Canon Perdido St. The program will consist of three works by Ludwig Beethoven (1770-1827)—its organizing principle: “The Late Style.”

The featured artists are pianist Jonathan Biss and the Brentano Quartet; Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violins; Misha Amory, viola; and Nina Lee, cello.

We will hear the Violin-Piano Sonata No.10 in G-Major, Opus 96 (1812), presumably with Steinberg on the fiddle; the Piano Sonata No. 32 in c-minor, Opus 111 (1822); and the String Quartet No.16 in F-Major, Opus 135, “Muß es sein?” (1826).

Although it antedates by at least a decade the other two works, those who drew up the program clearly see in the violin-piano sonata a distinct shift in direction, perhaps even a rethinking of his musical language. The “late style” itself is an hypothesis, a framework for generalizing about a group of works that may, in fact, be connected only by having been written by the same composer at about the same time, give or take.

Naturally, the music Beethoven wrote when he was 16 sounds different than what he composed at 56, but it is futile to argue that one is better than the other. Maturity is not really a valid measure of music. Composers start young, typically, and that’s when their audience falls in love with them.

To put it in literary terms, scholar’s love The Great Gatsby, consider it Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, and assign it to their students. But it was his romantic first novel, This Side of Paradise, that made Fitzgerald rich and famous, whereas 10 years after publication, the first printing — 2,500 copies — of Gatsby had not sold out.

Nor can music be profound, except in the literal sense of touching the listener in the depths of the soul. Certainly it cannot present an intellectual argument or express a metaphysical truth.

Beethoven knew well that music cannot articulate the verbal content of ideas, but only re-enact the conditions of their birth — especially the emotional conditions. Each movement is a snapshot. It’s his genius to put us in that picture, that moment, and let us live through it as him.

Beethoven was socially awkward, rude and messy. After they had lunch together, Goethe said of him: “He is not wrong in despising the world, but he’s not improving things by being such a boor.”

Which reminds me of something the filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker said about Bob Dylan (Nobel Prize for Literature, 2016): “Bobby was always looking ahead of where he was, so where he was got to be a drag, sometimes.” All you’d have to do for Beethoven is switch the names.

Fortunately, Jonathan Biss and the Brentano Quartet are not only great musicians, but also ingenious pedagogues. If they do have some point to make about Beethoven’s Late Style, they are presenting their hypothesis as a concert of beautiful music, rather an illustrated lecture.

Single tickets to this concert are $39 and $49, and they can be purchased at the Lobero box office by phone at 963.0761, or on line at www.lobero.com

— Gerald Carpenter is a Noozhawk Contributing Writer.