[1] This work is the first of three quartets commissioned by prince Andrey Razumovsky, then the Russian ambassador to Vienna.

Furthermore, this quartet notoriously requires a greatly expanded technical repertoire.

It consists of four movements: The first movement is in an expansive sonata form, including a fugato in the development and lasting nearly twelve minutes even though it forgoes the then-customary repeat of the exposition.

The opening cello melody has its tonality only weakly defined, with the first cadence establishing the key of F major only occurring several bars into the movement.

As became one of Beethoven's many tools for emotional manipulation, delaying the grandiosity of the recapitulation for several bars after the establishment of the tonic key allowed Beethoven to heighten expectation of a definitive statement.