Element Quartet gave the premières of his first three string quartets; Quartet No.2 is dedicated to the Element Quartet, and Quartet No.3 is dedicated to their violist, Dorothy Hemming. Element Quartet The Element Quartet was a string quartet prominent in British musical life in the 1950s and 1960s. The members were Ernest Element and Sylvia Cleaver (violins), Dorothy Hemming (viola), and Norman Jones (cello). The quartet were the first to perform Schubert's String Quartet No. 2 in C major following restoration of its previously lost score. The performance was broadcast on BBC Radio on 23 December, one of the many broadcasts they
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