George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) is one of the most important American composers of the second half of the nineteenth century. His five string quartets must be regarded as a major contribution to the repertoire of chamber music in general, but particularly to the corpus of American music after 1870. The first two quartets were written in 1878 and 1879, respectively, while Chadwick was still a student at the Leipzig conservatory. The third quartet, dedicated to the composer Arthur Foote, a ...