String Quartet No. 3 (Villa-Lobos) String Quartet No. 3 (Villa-Lobos) String Quartet No. 3 ("Quarteto de pipocas"—"Popcorn" Quartet) is the third of seventeen works in the medium by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1916. A performance lasts approximately twenty-three minutes. Villa-Lobos composed his Third Quartet in Rio de Janeiro in March 1916. It was first performed on 2 November 1919 at the Theatro Municipal, Rio de Janeiro, by a quartet consisting of Pery Machado and Mario Ronchini, violins, Orlando Frederico, viola, and Newton Pádua, cello. The first North American performance took place on 16 January 1933 in Hollywood, performed by Samuel
String quartet characterization and drama in the individual-pitted-against-the-mass vein, the writer of string quartets must perforce concentrate on the bare bones of musical logic. Thus, in many ways the string quartet is pre-eminently the dialectical form of instrumental music, the one most naturally suited to the activity of logical disputation and philosophical enquiry. Quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert following Haydn in each writing a number of quartets. A slight slackening in the pace of quartet composition occurred in the later 19th century, in part due to a movement away from