The string quartet as a genre was still relatively new in Paris by the time these works were composed. During the 1760s quartets by a number of foreign composers – Haydn, foremost among them – had been issued by Parisian publishers, but these works had not exercised a great deal of influence on local composers. Only Gossec, Nicholas Capron and Pierre Vachon published quartets before the appearance of Saint-Georges’s Op.1 and their works – and, in a broader sense, French instrumental music in gen...