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Grove's dictionary of music and musicians, 1904
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1violin, viola, and violoncello. Next to the string quartet ranks the pianoforte quartet, which, however, is built on quite a different principle: here the composition becomes either equivalent to an accompanied trio, or to a symphony in which the piano takes the place of the 'string quartet,' and the other instruments—usually violin, viola, and violoncello—the place of wind instruments. In any case the piano does quite half the work. Mozart has written two such quartets, Beethoven only one, besides three early compositions, Mendelssohn three, Schumann and Goetz one each, while Brahms (opp. 23, 26, 60) and the modern composers have favoured this form of quartet still more.
3III. Vocal quartets are so called whether accompanied by instruments or not. The four-part songs of Mendelssohn have been mentioned. For many years no oratorio was considered complete without its unaccompanied quartet, Spohr having set the fashion with 'Blest are the departed' in the 'Last Judgment.' Modern opera is learning to dispense with concerted music, Richard Wagner having set the fashion. To enumerate the fine operatic quartets from 'Don Giovanni' to 'Faust,' would be useless. [Brahms's first set of 'Liebeslieder' for piano duet and four voices ad libitum, was one of the compositions which began his popularity in England; in the second set, and in opp. 92, 103, and 112, he has left notable examples. Henschel's 'Serbisches Liederspiel,' op. 32; Stanford's quartets from Tennyson's 'Princess'; Walford Davies's 'Pastorals'; and Ernest Walker's songs from England's Helicon, may also be mentioned.]
5IV. The whole body of stringed instruments in the orchestra is often incorrectly spoken of as 'the Quartet,' from the fact that until the time of Beethoven the strings seldom played in other than four-part harmony. It is now the usual custom to write the parts for violoncello and double bass on separate staves; in Germany (and in the present day in England) these instruments are grouped apart, a practice which is decidedly unwise, seeing that the double bass requires the support of the violoncello to give the tone firmness, more especially the German four-stringed instrument, the tone of which is so much lacking in body.
7V. The term is also applied to the performers of a quartet, as well as to the composition itself.
9F. C.
11VI. The word is used of a set of stringed instruments, corresponding to the old phrase 'a chest of viols.' Although, accurately speaking, quartets of musical instruments were not employed in chamber music, as we understand the term, until the era of Monteverde (1568-1643), yet the literature and art records of past centuries seem to point to the existence of 'sets' of instruments, analogous in pitch to the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices, from very early times. Some ground for this assumption may be found in the following examples:—The concert of eight flutes (in four sizes) discovered on one of the tombs in the Necropolis of Gizeh, dating—according to Lepsius—from the fifth Dynasty (B.C. 2000) which are reproduced in Carl Engel's Catalogue of the Exhibition of Musical Instruments, South Kensington Museum, 1874. Certain Hebrew coins in the British Museum ascribed to Simon Maccabaeus (of the second century of the Christian era) depicting lyres differing in size, shape, and number of strings, and a pertinent passage, quoted from Aristides Quintilianus (about B.C. 110, in Burney's History of Music, vol. i. p. 513). Mention may also be made of the string trio portrayed on the splendid Greek Vase in the Munich Museum. The three figures, grouped in the manner of our modern trio performers, appear to be playing ensemble music. Two of the performers have lyres of different sizes and stringing, whilst the third, Polyhymnia, plucks a small harp.
13Passing hence to the 11th century, it would appear from Dr. Ruhlmann's Geschichte der Bogeninstrumente, that a 'set' of crouths is to be seen in an old MS. prayer-book of that period (vide Gebetbuch des Erzh. Leopold d'Heil von Osterreich. Bibl. zu Kloster Neuburg bei Wien, Codex, No. 98, Fol. 110, XI Jahrh.). Four centuries later (April 14, 1401) Charles VI. granted 'Lettres-Patentes,' to the Society of Minstrels who styled themselves 'joueurs d'Instruments tant haut que bas,' and in the following century the 'sets' of viols began to make their appearance. In Martin Agricola's Musica Instrumentalis deutsch (1528), woodcuts of a complete quartet of viols may be seen, as also 'Rebees,' in four different sizes, which he designates, 'Discantus,' 'Altus,' 'Tenor,' 'Bassus.' [In the same year, in the Cortigiano of Bald. Castiglione, there is a reference to music played on 'quattro viole da arco.'] In 1566, Andreas Amati (see that name) made the famous set of bow instruments for the French King Charles IX. It consisted of twelve large and twelve small pattern violins, six tenors and eight basses, and in all probability these instruments were the finest examples of this maker's work. On the backs were painted the arms of France and other devices, and the motto 'Pietate et Justitia.' During the French revolution the mob took these instruments out of the chapel at Versailles (on Oct. 6 and 7, 1789), and destroyed all but two violins which were afterwards recovered by Viotti's pupil, J. B. Cartier. One of the small violins is now, or was recently, the property of Mr. George Somes. In the following century numbers of 'Chests of Viols' (two trebles, two tenors, two basses), for the performance of the elaborate compositions in parts, called 'Fantasies,' were made, and the growing adoption
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