Scan 324
the american history and encyclopedia of music, 1910
4 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 278. See the scan on archive.org.
1flute. The quartet, if the word is used alone, usually signifies four stringed instruments: first and second violin, viola and cello; while a piano quartet is one in which the piano supplies the place of second violin. Two violins, two violas and a cello is the usual grouping for a string quintet, but occasionally two cellos are used and but one viola with the first and second violin. Either the second viola or second cello gives its place to the piano in a piano quintet. Wood and brass instruments are sometimes introduced for the larger groups, and in fact no definite arrangement of instruments can be fixed upon as composers have written music for an almost endless number of different combinations.
3As a form of music, such as is known to the modern concert program, chamber music began with Haydn's first quartet, written about the middle of the Eighteenth Century, when the sonata form had assumed definite shape. Musicians had discovered that the sonata form was the best adapted to the thematic ideas necessary to good chamber music. For a time some musicians considered the string quartet too light a group of instruments to portray much feeling or to give them a chance to display their genius, but this was because they failed to understand the wonderful power and scope of the instruments, especially of the violin. With a greater mastery of this wonderful instrument, as we have already seen in our study of design of music, the sonata form was perfected, and such masters as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven created quartets with such fluent and simple melodies, so well balanced and symmetrical in form that they still hold their place in concert rooms today. They found by experiment, as have more recent composers, that the string quartet offers every opportunity for the development of instrumental music both as to expression and technical construction. It requires clear, logical composition in order to preserve the balance of the instruments, and as each instrument is capable of the greatest variety of melodic structure the composer must use great skill in distribution of parts.
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