A composition for piano and three other instruments, usually violin, viola and cello. The form grew out of the accompanied keyboard divertimentos of the 1750s to 80s (see Accompanied keyboard music) and is loosely related to the early keyboard concerto; many concertos were published for keyboard with two violins and bass instrument (cello). Before about 1780 that scoring was preferred in many quartets; works with viola started to appear in significant numbers from 1780 to 1800, during which time the two-violin scoring was especially common in arranged quartets published in Paris. From 1800 onwards the scoring for viola was more common, although a separate tradition developed of quartets for keyboard with miscellaneous (including wind) instruments.
In England and France, the accompanied sonata tradition (with the keyboard part as the central focus and the strings lightly accompanying) held sway during the early period (works by Tommaso Giordani, Charles Avison, Garth and Pugnani in England; Gaetano Boni, Bonjour and J.A. Bauer in France; and Giardini, J.-F. Edelmann, J.S. Schröter, Venanzio Rauzzini in both), while in Vienna and elsewhere concerto-like works by Vanhal and G.C. Wagenseil were widely disseminated. Most works from before 1790 were entitled ‘sonata’, but ‘quartet’ in various forms gained favour by 1800. The viola scoring and quartet designation seems to have become standardized first in Vienna during the 1780s in parallel with the increasing use of the piano and the growth there in music publishing.
During the 1780s and 90s, Vienna exhibited something of a flowering of piano quartets. After Mozart's two of 1785 and 1787 (k478 and 493), Hoffmeister followed with a set of six in 1788 and E.A. Förster with six in 1794–6. During the same period large numbers of arrangements of works by Haydn and Pleyel were published in Paris and quickly picked up by other publishers across Europe. The Viennese outpouring continued with works by Paul Wranitzky in 1798, and grew further between 1800 and 1805, with quartets by Beethoven, Eberl, Kauer, Franz Clement, Struck, Tomašek and several others.
Beethoven's three earliest piano quartets date from his youth in Bonn (woo36, 1785). His op.16 arrangement of his piano and wind quintet is one of many widely disseminated arrangements. Music dealers' catalogues published in 1799 and 1817 listed arrangements of works by Haydn, Mozart and Pleyel amounting to 18 and 51 respectively, many of them originating in Paris and perhaps motivated by a desire to provide new materials for dilettante keyboard players (especially women). Andréin Offenbach produced two different perodical series of keyboard music and chamber music intended for female audiences that included both original and arranged piano quartets (Journal de musique pour les dames and Etrennes pour les dames).
With changes in musical style, the piano quartet developed and came to have much in common with the Piano quintet. Keyboard style and the disposition of the musical materials among the instruments has generally reflected the overall musical style of the composers writing the pieces. The quartets of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, who studied the piano with Beethoven, were especially popular. His F minor quartet op.6 was cited by Schumann as one of many influences that shaped his 1829 C minor quartet, along with quartets by Ferdinand Ries, Weber, Dussek, J.B. Cramer and others, and exposure to these works no doubt helped shape his later op.47 quartet. Mendelssohn's three quartets (opp.1–3) exhibit a disposition of the instruments not often found in earlier works (where the basic principle was juxtaposition and alternation of the string body with the piano, as well as of solo with accompanimental textures), wherein the piano sometimes provides only a single line: the musical substance is conveyed by the strings, so that the piano is deployed as just another instrument within the chamber texture, not as one instrument equal in importance to the strings as a group. Brahms also avoids excessive emphasis on a soloistic role for the piano in his opp.25 and 26 quartets, where the string instruments are almost never presented as soloists accompanied by the piano, another texture quite common in earlier works.
By the late 19th century, the piano quartet was established as a genre of serious chamber music, in marked contrast to its beginnings in a tradition originally destined for dilettantes. There are works from this period by Chausson, Dvořák, Fauré, Foote, d'Indy, Raff, Reger, Rheinberger, Saint-Saëns and Richard Strauss. From the 20th century there are works by Bax, Copland, Feldman, Foss, Martinů, Milhaud, Piston, Schnittke and Walton among others, as well as works by Hindemith and Messiaen with clarinet rather than viola. Whereas quartets from 1800 to 1900 generally exhibit a unified conception of style and instrumentation, those of the 20th century exhibit a mixture of styles and approaches to texture and instrumentation almost as various as the number of composers who have turned their attention to the genre. In this move to a more flexible conception of the piano quartet, the 20th century represents something of a return to the state of affairs before 1800, when norms of form, style and instrumentation had yet to be established.
J. Saam: Zur Geschichte des Klavierquartetts bis in die Romantik (Munich, 1933)
W. Altmann: Handbuch für Klavierquartettspieler (Wolfenbüttel, 1937)
M.M. Fillion: The Accompanied Keyboard Divertimenti of Haydn and his Viennese Contemporaries (c1750–1780) (diss., Cornell U., 1982)
K.H. Stahmer: ‘Drei Klavierquartette aus den Jahren 1875/76: Brahms, Mahler und Dvořák im Vergleich’, Brahms und seine Zeit: Hamburg 1983 [HJbMw, vii (1984)], 113–23
B. Smallman: The Piano Quartet and Quintet: Style, Structure and Scoring (New York, 1994)
J. Michaels: ‘Die ungewöhnliche Entwicklungsgeschichte des Klavierquartetts’, Das Orchester, xlvi (1998), 10–15
DAVID FENTON