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quartet, quartette|kwɔːˈtɛt|
Also 9 -tett.
[a. F. quartette, ad. It. quartetto: see next.]
1. a. Mus. A composition for four voices or instruments, esp. one for four stringed instruments.
1773C. Burney Present State of Music in Germany I. 313 [Hasse] added, that..his trios, quartets and concertos for instruments, were so numerous that he should not know many of them again if he was either to see or hear them. 1790Coleridge Inside the Coach, We snore quartettes in ecstasy of nose. 1845E. Holmes Mozart 245 A single quartet for stringed instruments. 1867Macfarren Harmony i. 14 Beethoven's Quartet in A, &c.
attrib.1872Browning Fifine cxvi, Inspect this quartett-score!
fig.1838Dickens O. Twist xxxix, A quartette of ‘Shameful!’ with which the Dianas concluded.
b. transf. (See quot. 1965.)
1943T. S. Eliot (title) Four quartets. 1965New Statesman 21 May 802/3, I asked what the four of his Quartets were four of, and he [sc. T. S. Eliot] answered that..‘quartet’ suggested Chamber Music composed for close attention by a small audience who had a fair understanding of what they were listening to.
2. a. Mus. A set of four singers or players who render a quartet. b. transf. A set of four persons.
1814Sir R. Wilson Priv. Diary II. 304 We are a quartett of miserables. 1849Thackeray Pendennis I. 294 The parties are arranged in messes of four, each of which quartets has its piece of beef. 1876Geo. Eliot Dan. Der. ii. xv, When the quartette of gentlemen..met on the terrace.
3. A set of four things; e.g., of lines in a sonnet, of runs at cricket, etc.
1837–9Hallam Hist. Lit. II. ii. v. §44. 208 The first lines or quartets of the sonnet excite a soft expectation, which is harmoniously filled by the tercets, or last six lines. 1882Daily Tel. 17 May, Shaw, letting out at that bowler's next delivery, drove it to the boundary for a quartette. 1889Grove Dict. Mus. IV. 341 A glass case containing two quartets of stringed instruments.
4. Comb., as quartette table Obs. exc. Hist., = quartetto table s.v. quartetto 3.
1856F. S. Cozzens Sparrowgrass Papers vii. 89 In one door-way stood a tray of delicate confections, upon two slender quartette tables. 1857Harper's Mag. Mar. 453/1 On this quartette-table we will lay the portfolio. 1925Penderel-Brodhurst & Layton Gloss. Eng. Furnit. 133 Quartette Tables, nests of four small tables of light make and diminishing size enclosed within each other and made to draw out. Sheraton, who may have been the first to devise them, called them ‘Quartetto tables’. |