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The six quartets in Haydn's Op. 20 were known to his contemporaries as the Sun Quartets because his publisher decorated the cover of the first edition with a drawing of a rising sun. They are also known as The Great Quartets because they are large, fully mature works that demonstrate Haydn's mastery of quartet form.

In his early career Haydn had written in the Rococo style, noted for its superficial charm, lightness of touch, and elegance. By the time he composed the Op. 20 quartets, he was writing music that was emotionally intense and charged with a dramatic sense of urgency and energy. This more serious music was characterized by Haydn's use of more complex polyphonic textures and his belief that each instrument in the ensemble should have a significant part in the musical conversation.

The Quartet No. 2 in C Major opens in what Barret-Ayres calls "a contrapuntal mood" in which the cello and second violin behave like the subject and countersubject of a fugue, one of the compositional processes that Haydn used in three of the quartets. The entire quartet highlights, Barrett-Ayres says, a conflict between polyphony and homophony, major and minor, tension and release.

The quartet is homotonal: each of its movements is composed in the same key or its related minor key. This homotonality serves as a unifying device in the work. The first movement Moderato in C Major is followed by a Capriccio in c minor. A menuet and trio in the major key lead into the energetic fugue of the final movement.

The most intriguing movement from a musical perspective is the Capriccio; its improvisatory freedom and unpredictability signal a clear departure from the standard quartet form. In their 2006 study of the Haydn quartets, Margaret and Floyd Grave describe the movement as a "parody of operatic practices ... with passages reminiscent of arioso, recitative, and lyrical aria" in which the "action proceeds from one theatrical moment to the next," during which listeners "enjoy the experience of a dream-like escape from the constraint?" of traditional form. Its logical tonal design, however, bestows order on the whole movement.

Gyorgy Kurtag, born in Lugoj, Romania in 1926, is among the finest of contemporary composers and the winner of many honors for his unique works. Living in almost monastic seclusion and given to very spare use of words in public, he says of his music, "Single events, banalities, led to reactions that I could translate into music more easily than into words." His reluctance to commit himself to words has led him to communicate with friends and colleagues in a unique way: inspired by Goethe, his works are full of homages and dedications; he sends messages through pieces of music rather than in words.

Memories have always been a recurring theme in Kurtag's work, and "Hommage" is perhaps the most frequent word in his titles. He has written homages, for example, to Schubert, Domenico, Scarlatti, Verdi, J.S. Bach, Charles Ives, and Robert Schumann in addition to his contemporaries, among them composer András Mihály, whose cello concerto he admires and for whom he wrote the Twelve Mikroludien, Op. 13 in 1977. The Leipzig String Quartet introduced us to the Mikroludien in its March 2003 concert.

An admirer of Bartok, Kurtag traces his musical influences to his fellow Hungarian. Bartok once described his musical agenda as resting on traditions, entailing a synthesis of Bach's polyphony, Beethoven's thematic treatment, and Debussy's coloring, all expressed in his Hungarian mother tongue, the language he discovered in Hungarian peasant music. Kurtag follows suit: "My mother tongue is Bartok, and Bartok's mother tongue was Beethoven." Other influences in Kurtag's music include Darius Milhaud and Oliver Messien with whom he studied in Paris. His short, expressive, and highly concentrated musical motives reflect his discovery of early Webern. Speaking of his kind of minimalism, he has observed: "I keep coming back to the realization that one note is almost enough" to express a sensation, a happening, a sob, a gesture.

The 12 Mikroludien for String Quartet exhibit Kurtag's distinctive style. The title echoes Bartok's famous Mikrokosmos for piano. Kurtag's short preludes range in length from 17 seconds to a little over two minutes, the whole piece lasting about ten minutes. For some of these pieces Kurtag merely indicates the tempo with a metronome speed; for others he provides descriptive indications in Italian. For example, the first mikrolude is preceded by an indication of 20 beats per minute for the whole note; it emerges from darkness, offers a lyrical moment, and fades away after 45 seconds. In the second piece restless tremolos lead to the major event, a downward chromatic slide, the whole transpiring in 25 seconds. Mikroludes three and four are full of nervous, quivering energy, with number four lasting a mere 17 seconds. In sharp contrast to the first four, the fifth mikrolude is marked "Lontano, calmo, appena sentito" (From a distance, calm, with a little feeling). Elegantly contemplative and fluid, at a little over two minutes it is the longest of the set.

In succeeding mikroludes, textures change, instruments speak in short dialogues, rhythms dance among pizzicato strings and frequent accents. The distinctive tenth mikrolude evokes T.S. Eliot's image in "The Hollow Men" of "rats' feet over broken glass/In our dry cellar." A macabre dance, it ends in a sudden exclamation just before the rats scurry away. The eleventh piece sighs elegiacally, its thick texture opening up to sing a high melody that quickly fades. The last piece eerily suggests a walk into darkness, suddenly cut short.

In addition to being a composer, Robert Schumann was a well-known music critic. He founded the New Periodical for Music in 1834 when he was just twenty-three years old, and for ten years he was its owner, editor, and principal critic. In his musical criticism he described his requirements for the string quartet, and in his four compositions in the genre, he adhered to them. First, he noted, the quartet should avoid "symphonic furor"; all the parts should be equally emphasized: "everyone has something to say," he wrote, and the music is "an abstrusely woven conversation among four people."

Schumann suffered from what we know today as bi-polar disorder, uncontrollable oscillation between periods of exultant mania and devastating depression. He composed the three quartets of Op. 41 in just one month during a period of manic creativity in 1842. The first quartet opens with a slow introduction followed by an andante in classical sonata form (exposition- development-recapitulation) with two contrasting themes. The scherzo presents two themes, the first reminiscent of Mendelssohn's fairy scherzo in Midsummer Night's Dream, the contrasting second theme in the manner of a "charging cavalry brigade." The lyrical Adagio opens with a recitative, after which a long-breathed melody is passed from voice to voice over a richly chromatic and rhythmically active accompaniment. Berger calls the movement a love ballad, eloquently sung by the cello and the first violin. An agitated middle section intrudes before the serenity of the ballad returns; a final recitative brings the movement full circle.

The Presto finale, according to David Watkin, cellist for the Eroica Quartet, opens with an "almost Beethovian obsessiveness with a short-short-LONG rhythm that propels almost all the activity" of the movement. It is in sonata form with two themes; for his second theme Schumann turns the first theme upside down and combines it with rising chains of eighth notes which recur near the end of the movement. After the recapitulation, Schumann offers an imaginative surprise: he suddenly cuts the tempo and presents the eighth note chains in a slow-motion, bagpipe treatment followed by a solemn chorale. The energetic principal theme returns to conclude the quartet in a brilliant coda.