String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble consisting of four string players – two violin players, a viola player and a cellist – or a musical compositionwritten to be performed by such a group. The string quartet is one of the most prominent chamber ensembles in classical music; most major composers from the mid 18th century onwards having written string quartets.

The string quartet was developed into its present form by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, whose works in the 1750s established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. Since Haydn the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form: writing for four instruments with broadly similar characteristics both constrains and tests a composer's art. String quartet composition flourished in the Classicalera: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven each wrote several. Many Romantic and early-twentieth-century composers composed string quartets, including Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček and Claude Debussy. If there was a slight lull in the pace of string quartet composition through the later nineteenth century, then it received a resurgence in the 20th Century with the Second Viennese School, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, Milton Babbittand Elliott Carter producing highly regarded examples of the genre. In the 21st century it remains an important and refined musical form.

The standard structure for a string quartet as established in the Classical era is four movements, with the first movement in Sonata form, Allegro, in the tonic key; a slow movement, in a related key and a Minuet and Trio follow; and the fourth movement is often in Rondo form or Sonata rondo form, in the tonic key.

Some string quartets ensembles play together for many years and become established and promoted as an entity in a similar way to an instrumental soloist or an orchestra.