The quartet was completed during Britten's second year of study at the Royal College of Music.
Britten showed the score to his mentor Frank Bridge, who called its counterpoint "too vocal".
[2]: 46 In 1974, the composer revised it for publication, at the urging of Donald Mitchell.
[1]: 21 The quartet is in three movements: A complete performance takes about 19 minutes.
[3][4] Musicologist Peter Evans considered it an immediate background to, and to strongly foreshadow, Britten's Sinfonietta, which was published in 1932 as his Op.