Mondo Knows Facts
A string quartet is two violins, a viola and a cello
Four lines let the parts be heard separately without a conductor The form settled in the eighteenth century as chamber music for small rooms. Haydn wrote dozens and set the pattern of four movements. Players rehearse without a leader besides the first violin. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
The classical symphony settled on four movementsFast, slow, dance, then a lively finale became the templateSonata form sets two ideas against each otherExposition, development and recapitulation is the usual patternThe blues runs on twelve barsThree chords, one per four bar phrase, with the fifth bar turning the cornerHalving a string raises it an octaveOther simple length ratios give fifth, fourth and thirdA grand piano carries around 20 tonnes of string tensionA cast iron plate holds the load so the case does not foldA violin's four strings are tuned in fifthsG, D, A and E cover two octaves and a sixth between them
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Tags: chamber-music, strings, forms
A string quartet is two violins, a viola and a cello: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Four lines let the parts be heard separately without a conductor. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.