The String Quartet

Even before Guillaume Lekau was apprenticed to César Franck in 1889, he wrote an extensive six-part Quartet in G major. The six-part nature of this score is connected directly to Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat major (Op. 130). This is evident from the way Lekeu quotes the first bars of Beethoven’s quartet in the finale and, like Beethoven, reintroduces the first theme of his first part in this final movement.

Joseph Jongen, who was three years younger than Lekau, composed his first string quartet as a student in Luik. A second quartet immediately followed, which became his official first. Both serenades, Sérénade tendre and Sérénade dramatique were written much later, during World War I in England, where Jongen had fled to with his family in 1914.