String Quartet

Photo of the Orava Quartet onstage.

The Orava Quartet


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


Quartet composition flourished in the classical era, with Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert following Haydn in each writing a number of quartets. A slight slackening in the pace of quartet composition occurred in the later nineteenth century, in part due to a movement away from classical forms by composers such as Liszt, Wagner and Richard Strauss, though it received a resurgence in the twentieth with the Second Viennese School, Bartók, Shostakovich, and Elliot Carter producing highly regarded examples of the genre. In the twenty-first century it remains an important and refined musical form.

The standard structure for a string quartet is four movements, with the first movement in sonata form, allegro, in the tonic key; the second movement is a slow movement, in the subdominant key; the third movement is a minuet and trio, in the tonic key; and the fourth movement is often in rondo form or sonata rondo form, in the tonic key.

Some quartets play together for many years in ensembles that may be named after the first violinist (e.g. the Takács Quartet), a composer (e.g. the Borodin Quartet) or a location (e.g. the Budapest Quartet). Well-known string quartets can be found in the list of string quartet ensembles.


  1. Allegro (in sonata-allegro form)
  2. Slow, lyrical movement, often in A-B-A or theme and variations form
  3. A moderate dance in minuet and trio form
  4. A fast movement in sonata-allegro or rondo form

Listen: String Quartet

Please listen to the following composition with the score:

J. Haydn, “Emperor” Quartet (1797)