Arensky dedicated it to the memory of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who had died the previous year.
Arensky structured the quartet in three movements:[1] Dense, elegiac harmonies dominate the work.
The instrumentation with two cellos gives the quartet a dark but also warm timbre that is reminiscent of Franz Schubert's String Quintet.
The finale is reminiscent, both in structure and the use of Russian folk music, of Beethoven's Rasumovsky Quartets.
1, this string quartet is considered Arensky's most important composition; his other works are hardly noticed today.