QUARTET

musical composition for four instruments or voices; also the group of four performers. Although any music in four parts can be performed by four individuals, the term has come to be used primarily in referring to the string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello), which has been the predominant genre of chamber music since about 1750. The term may also denote such derivatives as the piano quartet, flute quartet, oboe quartet, and so onusually a string trio combined with a nonstringed instrument. Or it may denote quartets of mixed instruments such as woodwind or brass quartet, as well as vocal quartets (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices), especially in opera, oratorio, church music, and such notable lieder as Johannes Brahms's sets of Liebeslieder waltzes, Zigeunerlieder. The development of the string quartet occurred in the works of Joseph Haydn, who established it as the principal chamber-music genre. His early quartets show soloistic writing for the first violin and the dependence of the viola on the cello, whose melodic line it frequently duplicates. His later works show progressive integration of the first violin and increased participation by the lower-pitched instruments. In his Opus 33 Haydn brought the form to its mature Classical style, achieving a texture characterized by equal participation of all four instruments and establishing the genre's standard formal outlines. Specifically, the string quartet follows the sonata's division into several movements and its principles of form and development. Haydn's early quartets follow the divertimento in having five movements; but in his Opus 17 he established four as the standard number. The genre became infused with the sonata principle of contrast between keys. Typically, its first movement utilizes sonata form. W.A. Mozart's quartetsnotably the six dedicated to Haydn and the three dedicated to Frederick William II of Prussiaare cast in the mature form established by Haydn and in turn influenced Haydn. Ludwig van Beethoven's early quartets fall into the established framework, but in his Razumovsky quartets he expanded the length and scope of the genre. His late quartets puzzled contemporaries by their conciseness, profundity, and complexity. The Classical tradition was inherited by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Aleksandr Borodin, and other Romantic composers. In the 19th century there was a tendency (e.g., in the quartets of Antonn Dvork) to move away from the intimate workmanship of the Classical quartet to a more orchestrally conceived texture. The genre was largely untouched by the Romantic tendency to program music; a rare example is Bedrich Smetana's quartet Z mho zivota (From My Life). In the 20th century changing styles have proved highly suitable to the quartet. The impressionism of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel is revealed in the colouristic harmonies and textures of their quartets. The genre is equally adaptable to the rhythmic drive of Bla Bartk, the quartertone experiments of Ernest Bloch, the polytonality of Darius Milhaud, and the atonality and 12-tone method of Arnold Schoenberg and his followers.