begin audio session; lecture 3, part 3:
Theme and Variation in the Classic Era:
A String Quartet
In this portion of the lecture, Dr. Broyles explained the role of the string quartet in the Classic era, including a discussion of the instrumentation of this chamber ensemble. He stated that "in the Classic Era, Haydn started out by pioneering, writing a lot of string quartets, and Mozart followed, and then later on Beethoven, and so they established the string quartet as the premier chamber genre, at least for the Classic period."
