Knowra String quartet String quartet A chamber ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello, and music written for those four instruments. The format became a central medium for Western art music.
Violin : A bowed string instrument with four strings, held beneath the chin and played with a bow. The two violins share the upper register, often dividing melody and accompaniment.
Sonata form : A musical form organized around exposition, development, and recapitulation. Many quartet first movements use its pattern to shape thematic argument.
Joseph Haydn : An Austrian composer whose works helped establish the Classical style and the string quartet genre. His quartets developed the ensemble’s conversational texture and multi-movement design.
String Quartet No. 14 (Beethoven) : Beethoven’s C-sharp minor String Quartet, Op. 131, composed in 1826. Its seven connected movements challenge the usual separation into movements.
Piano trio : A chamber ensemble, typically of piano, violin, and cello, and music written for it. Its piano adds a keyboard’s broad range and chordal resources absent from a quartet.
Viola : A bowed string instrument slightly larger and lower in pitch than a violin. Its middle register connects the violins’ brightness to the cello’s depth.
Theme and variations : A form in which a theme is followed by altered versions of it. Quartet movements use variation to transform shared material across four parts.
Opus 33 (Haydn) : A set of six string quartets composed by Joseph Haydn in 1781. Haydn described these works as written in a new and special manner.
String Quartet No. 8 (Shostakovich) : Dmitri Shostakovich’s C-minor quartet, Op. 110, composed in 1960. Its recurring musical signature and quotations make it an intensely autobiographical case.
String quintet : A chamber ensemble of five string players, or music composed for such an ensemble. An added string instrument changes the quartet’s balance and available textures.
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