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[Adagio molto e mesto.
Violin 1.
Violin 2.
Viola.
'Cello.]

The listener to Beethoven's quartets will be impressed with the applicability of these words to them, and he will in a measure be prepared to see where some of Beethoven's successors have failed. Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Spohr, and other German composers wrote admirable chamber music. So have some of the French and Italian composers. But it cannot be said that this branch of instrumental art, its purest and most thoroughly symmetrical form, has made any advance since Beethoven's day. On the contrary, it has retrograded. This is from two causes: first, the frequency with which piano parts are written in a style so massive and brilliant as to overwhelm the strings in trios or piano quartets and quintets; and second, the unwise attempts of some composers to imitate heavy orchestral effects with only four or five stringed instruments.

Among those who have produced the best chamber music in recent years must be mentioned Brahms and Dvorak, who have been named in the chapter preceding this. The chamber music of Brahms includes a sextet for strings, three piano quartets, a piano quintet, several trios, three string quartets, a string quintet, and a quintet for clarinet and strings. These works are conspicuous for the completeness of their musical organism, the originality, profundity, and artistic reticence of their style, the deep learning with which they treat modern thoughts in a revised polyphony, and the breadth of their intellectual earnestness. It is difficult to understand how any one can deny the genius of Brahms after hearing a good performance of such music as the slow movement and scherzo of his piano quintet.

Dvorak has written a considerable quantity of chamber music, but no final criticism can yet be passed upon it. The composer himself realizes that his earlier quartets and trios, though melodious and clear, contained a great deal of discursive matter. His later writings show an immense improvement in conciseness, strength, and closeness of development. His American quartet and quintet are admirable as examples of form and of treatment of instrumental voices.