18, was composed in 1860 by Johannes Brahms and premiered 20 October that year in Hanover by an ensemble led by Joseph Joachim.
In the same year of its composition, Brahms transcribed the second movement for solo piano, dedicating the arrangement to Clara Schumann.
However, between Boccherini and Brahms, very few for string instruments without piano seem to have been written or published, whereas within the decades following Brahms's two examples, a number of composers, including Antonín Dvořák, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Joachim Raff, Max Reger, Arnold Schoenberg, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, all wrote string sextets.
[8]) This sextet was used as soundtrack by French director Louis Malle in the movie "The Lovers" ("Les Amants", 1958).
The second movement is also featured in "The Day of the Devil", an episode of Inspector Morse, and in the 2001 French-Austrian film The Piano Teacher.