String Quartet (Webern) String Quartet (Webern) The String Quartet, Op. 28 by Anton Webern is written for the standard string quartet group of two violins, viola and cello. It was the last piece of chamber music that Webern wrote (his other late works include two cantatas Op. 29/31 and the "Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30"). The work was initially planned in November 1936 and was premiered at the Coolidge Festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on September 22, 1938 in response to a commission that year from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. It is in three movements: The String Quartet is atonal, and is composed using the
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