String Quartet No. 4 (Nielsen) wanting to renew one’s acquaintance with the interesting work, whose satisfying performance is due to Messrs. Ludvig Holm, Schiørring, Sandby and Ernst Høeberg." String Quartet No. 4 (Nielsen) Carl Nielsen's String Quartet No. 4 in F major or Quartet for Two Violins, Viola and Cello in F major, Opus 44, was composed between February and July 1906. The last of Nielsen's four string quartets in the official series, its first public performance took place on 30 November 1907 in Copenhagen. The Fourth String Quartet was composed between two of Nielsen's major dramatic works, the comic opera "Maskarade" and his music
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