The name refers to an earlier quartet, the Grand Tradition, with the same Lead and Baritone.

This is a much more fragmentary piece than his earlier quartet (1951): the four instruments play very individual roles and unpredictably bounce off one another.

As opposed to the earlier quartets, written for private, amateur enjoyment, Op.

It is actually as long as the earlier quartets, because these books are about twice the length of the earlier works.

The early quartets offer rough challenges; they bristle with confrontation.

The earlier quartet, despite its bluntness, shares an inherited protocol and rhetoric.

"Come On Jesus" sounds like the early 1960s quartet in an outing dressed up for the new millennium.

Besides this early quartet (designated as Op.

Singing is mainly what Mendelssohn does in his early quartets, and in much else as well.

In the last movement of the early quartet (almost all Nancarrow movements are short), different parts lived their separate and very interesting lives.