The Romantic quartet

The piano quartet was very popular in France in the second half of the nineteenth century. Initially composers were inspired by the works of Mendelssohn and Schumann, but later a typically French form emerged, under the influence of Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré in particular. The piano quartet permits a more flexible approach to composing for four voices than is possible with the string quartet, the serious genre par excellence. So, when Marie Jaëll (1846-1925) decided to set aside her career as a virtuoso in order to devote herself to composition, she naturally turned to the piano quartet, and in 1876 became one of the first women composers to have a work performed at the Société Nationale de Musique. Rita Strohl (1865-1941) followed suit, composing her piano quartet when she was only twenty years old.