Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132
String Quartet in F major, H. 34
(transcription of Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 14, No. 1)

In 1792 Beethoven left his native city of Bonn to seek his fortune in the imperial capital, Vienna. Five years before he had been sent to Vienna by his patron, the Archbishop of Cologne, for lessons with Mozart, but the illness of his mother had forced his immediate return home. Before long, after his mother's death, he had been obliged to take charge of the welfare of his younger brothers, a task that his father was not competent to discharge.

As a boy Beethoven had had an erratic musical training through his father, a singer in the archiepiscopal musical establishment, later continued on sounder lines. In 1792 he was to take lessons from Haydn, from whom he later claimed to have learned nothing, followed by subsequent study of counterpoint with Albrechtsberger and Itali