If you like superlatives, try this:
….it is the noblest of all forms, not only of chamber music, to which it belongs, but of the whole of instrumental music.
Now doesn't that sound impressive, particularly that bit "the whole of instrumental music". That covers everything doesn't it? Apart, of course, from singing in the bath (with or without four part harmony!)
Can it be that there is really a "King" of all music; a form so refined that any "Prince of Pop" is just a shadow in the nether regions of Mordor? Does "noble" mean blue-blooded or 'of fine quality' and what is meant with "noblest of all forms of music" anyway?
By "the noblest of all forms" is meant the string quartet: a group of four instruments consisting of two violins, a viola and a cello. If it is noble then only because it is refined, there are only four instruments, but not because it is exclusive. String quartets are being played all the time. The real question is why?
The string quartet cannot offer the range of possibilities open to the symphony orchestra. The larger grouping of instruments allows more scope for colour, contrast, tonal effects and varying dynamics than four mechanically similar instruments producing a homogeneous timbre. It is surprising, therefore, that the string quartet ever established itself as a popular genre for composers when working on a larger canvas offers such greater possibilities.
Yet it is exactly these restrictions which give the string quartet its appeal for they allow a different form of creativity. The similarity of the instruments of the string quartet can express an intimacy which seems unreachable for other orchestral arrangements.
Often the string quartet is compared to a conversation: we hear four individual voices, each relating its thoughts to the others and each, in turn, reacting to, interrupting or modifying the stream of thought. Four interlocutors agreeing and disputing, but always interacting. This music of speech can be harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and contrapuntal or it can be dissonant.
But the truth is that the four voices are not treated equally in the majority of quartets. One voice tends to be preferred, that of the first violin. This instrument leads more often than any of the other three. This asymmetry allows the melodic to dominate the contrapuntal in string quartets, diminishing the occurrence of fugues.
But fugues are mechanical, intellectual and platonic. It is rather the warmth of human intimacy and the emotions that these four similar instruments can evoke which makes their music so universally popular.