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 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