The Growth of the String Quartet

    Haydn was the first great composer to write quartets for two violins, viola and 'cello, though other composers began to use this medium about the same time.  Compare this combination with that of the string sonata of Corelli's day, with its two melodic violin part s, its bass played by the 'cello, and its harmonic filling in, provided by the harpsichord continuo part.

    Haydn was invited for a long visit to a country house at Weinzierl when he was 23, and he happened to find four string players there, so wrote his first string quartets for them, applying what he had learnt from the study of C. P. E. Bach's sonatas to this medium.

    C. P. E. Bach's sonatas had consisted of three movements, quick, slow, quick, none of them being dance movements.  But Haydn liked the minuet so much that, from the beginning, he began to add it to his chamber and orchestral works.  Many of his first quartets were in five movements, with two minuets, but eventually he established a four-movement scheme with a minuet for the third movement.

    His earliest quartets, like the string sonatas of Corelli, tended to treat tile violins as being the important melodic instruments.  But the lack of a harmonic continuo background made the viola and 'cello lines more prominent, and gradually Haydn realized that they, too, could have interesting melodic parts.  You may have heard or played the popular "serenade" from his quartet in F, op. 3, no. 5, which has the tune entirely in the first violin while the others play a pizzicato accompaniment.  Compare it with the even better known air and variations from the 'Emperor' quartet, op. 76, no. 3, in which each instrument has the tune in turn.

    All the great Viennese composers, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert wrote string quartets, and together they established the medium and founded a literature for it which has made it the greatest and most important of all chamber music combinations.  But they all wrote for other chamber music combinations as well. (See " Chamber Music" on pp. 85-86.)