String Quartet (Fauré)

[5] On 9 September 1923 he wrote from Annecy to his wife, who remained in Paris, "I've started a Quartet for strings, without piano.

[7] The first movement of the quartet to be completed was the central andante,[8] which he wrote at Annecy between 9 and 13 September 1923.

[9] The music critic Roger Nichols comments that the sober, meditative tone of the andante is reflected in the two other movements that Fauré wrote later.

[10] After returning to Paris, Fauré began work on the first movement, for which he reused two themes from an unfinished violin concerto that he had begun and abandoned in 1878.

"[12] The quartet was premiered after Fauré's death;[13] he declined an offer to have it performed privately for him in his last days, as his hearing had deteriorated to the point where musical sounds were horribly distorted in his ear.

The normal sonata pattern follows, with the viola's original theme omitted from the recapitulation.

[10] The opening theme is reprised half-way through the movement, but otherwise the andante winds a contemplative course through meandering scales and occasional octave jumps.

[10] The Fauré scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux has said of the movement, "The Andante is one of the finest pieces of string quartet writing.