String quartet is often in Rondo form or Sonata rondo form, in the tonic key. Some quartets play together for many years in ensembles which may be named after the first violinist (e.g. the Takács Quartet), a composer (e.g. the Borodin Quartet) or a location (e.g. the Budapest Quartet). Well-known string quartets can be found in the list of string quartet ensembles. The early history of the string quartet is in many ways the history of Haydn's journey with the genre. Not that he composed the first quartet of all: before Haydn alighted on the genre there had been several spasmodic examples
String Quartet No. 1 (Carter) String Quartet No. 1 (Carter) The First String Quartet by American composer Elliott Carter was written during a year spent in the Arizona desert from 1950-51. To some extent, it can be said that this was his first major breakthrough work as a composer. Movements are marked as follows: A primary compositional technique used in the quartet is the principle of metric modulation (temporal modulation)—one for which Carter was to become particularly renowned. Although he was not the first composer to use this device (such as Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments", (1920)) he was seemingly the first to develop such