String Quartet No. 3 (Nielsen) performed at the first of three concerts in the ceremonial hall of the University on the occasion of the composer’s sixtieth birthday. The review in "Politiken" spoke of "the E flat major quartet and its indisputable mastery, his greatest triumph in this music genre, powerful and manly, profoundly poetic, gracefully pastoral, courageously ambitious." There were also positive reviews of performances in Germany in 1902. String Quartet No. 3 (Nielsen) Carl Nielsen's String Quartet No. 3 in E flat major or Quartet for Two Violins, Viola and Cello in E flat major, Opus 14, was composed in 1897 and 1898. 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