String quartet no 4 beethoven biography

Set of six string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven's Op. 18, published in 1801 by T. Mollo et Comp in Vienna in two books of three quartets each,^[1] comprised his first six string quartets. They were composed between 1798 and 1800 to fulfill a commission for Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz, who was the employer of Beethoven's friend, the violinist Karl Amenda. They are thought to demonstrate his total mastery of the classical string quartet as developed by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.^[2] The order of publication (numbering within the opus) does not correspond to the order of composition. Beethoven composed these quartets in the sequence 3, 1, 2, 5, 4, 6. See:

In an April 1802 letter to Hofmeister in Leipzig, Beethoven says the Mollo edition of nos. 4-6 is error-ridden ("has again, let us say, filled with faults and errata, great and small"),^[3] and Kerman^[1]