SELECTION 

Composers, Compositions

Composers

This site is dedicated mainly to the Classical (i.e. 'Vienna School') Composers, but with a polite bow to the 20th Century French School. Although excellent quartets have been written by later composers (Sibelius, Bartok, Tippett to mention only three of many) they are not here included. Not because they are lesser works - they aren't - but because either scores are not easily available, or still in copyright.  

Compositions

My aim has been to include all the String Quartets of selected composers. Where that has been impossible, I have omitted earlier works, whose scores were hard to locate. 

All the known string quartets of  Beethoven (yes, even Opus 18 number 4), Brahms and Schumann are included; as well  as the single quartets by Debussy and Ravel.  

In the case of Haydn, who composed at least 64 Quartets,  inclusion of all of these would have rendered the collection lop-sided (as well as creating too much work for myself!). The choice of 44 has been guided by my musical mentor Hans Keller (Bibliography-2).

Likewise Mozart and Schubert are represented only by the last 10 and 6 quartets respectively.

Dvorak is another special case. His genius peaked at Opus 96 ('The American') and though he wrote two more obscure and problematic works (Opus 105, 106) these are of markedly inferior quality. In fairness to the composer the collection concludes with 'The American' for which he would doubtless prefer to be remembered.

 Although the site is dedicated to String Quartets, a number of keyboard-plus-string-instrument pieces have been included as 'lollipops'. Thus the collection includes all known sonatas of this type  by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. My partiality for  transcribed 'cello concertos is to be seen in the addition of those by Dvorak, Elgar and Schumann.