Scintillating String Quartets

Even though Symphonies like Mozart's "Jupiter",  Beethoven's "Eroica", & Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" are very well known amongst lovers of Western Classical Music, the cognoscenti are aware the highest delights await them in the String Quartets.

Haydn, the pioneer, composed many, including "The Lark", (so called because as Richard Wigmore states "the first movement's unforgettable, winged melody, high in the first violin's E string is played as a descant....") & "The Emperor" (so called because the second movement is a set of variations on the anthem composed for the Emperor.)

Mozart also composed more than 20, including the six "Haydn Quartets" so called because they were dedicated to Haydn. They include "Hunt", "Spring" & the atypical "Dissonance" Quartet.

But it was Beethoven, who in his "late" Quartets, took the form to sublime heights. Especially the Op.132 in A minor with its Molto Adagio "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in lydischen Tonart" pushed the meaning of music itself into hitherto uncharted realms.


Debussy also, uncharacteristically, in the midst of his impressionistic, whole-tone outpourings, composed a string quartet, at once ground-breaking & joyous.

Schubert's "Death & the Maiden" quartet, is so called because the second movement's set of variations is based on his song "Der Tod und Das Madchen."

Shostakovich, in the midst of his run-ins with authority, managed to compose 15 quartets, the last of which comprises six bleak adagios in succession, implying a personal requiem, much in the manner of Mozart's.