New practice runs then occurred in Munich, probably in June 1873, and Brahms ventured south of the city to the small lakeside town of Tutzing for a summer respite.
There, with the Würmsee (as Lake Starnberg was then called) and the Bavarian Prealps as backdrop, he put the finishing touches on the two quartets.
[1] Explaining his progress to a publisher in 1869, Brahms wrote that as Mozart had taken "particular trouble" over the six "beautiful" Haydn Quartets, he intended to do his "very best to turn out one or two passably decent ones.
"[1] According to his friend Max Kalbeck, Brahms insisted on hearing a secret performance of the Op.
During Brahms' lifetime, the string quartet, like the symphony, was a genre dominated by the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Brahms had remarked of Beethoven in 1872, a year before finishing his first quartets, "You can't have any idea what it's like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!"
2 in A minor, also highly unified thematically, is comparatively lyrical, although culminating in a dramatic and propulsive finale whose tension "derives...from a metrical conflict between theme and accompaniment.
1 and Violin Concerto, the A minor quartet has a final movement modeled on a Hungarian folk dance, in this case a czárdás.