String Quartet No. 2 (Nielsen) String Quartet No. 2 (Nielsen) Carl Nielsen's String Quartet No. 2 in F minor or Quartet for Two Violins, Viola and Cello in F minor, Opus 5, was composed in 1890, partly in Denmark but mostly in Germany where the composer was travelling on a stipend. The second of Nielsen's four string quartets in the official series, it was first performed privately for Joseph Joachim on 18 November 1890 at the Hochschule für Ausübende Tonkunst in Berlin. Nielsen reported in an interview that he was inspired to write the first movement of his second quartet when the theme suddenly occurred
String Quartet No. 20 (Mozart) King Frederick William II of Prussia (the first edition bore no dedication, however), is often polyphonic in a way uncharacteristic of the earlier part of the classical music era. The menuetto and its trio give good examples of this in brief, with the brief irregular near-canon between first violin and viola in the second half of the main portion of the minuet, and the double imitations (between the violins, and between the viola and cello) going on in the trio. String Quartet No. 20 (Mozart) The String Quartet in D major, K. 499, was written in 1786 in Vienna by