The Charm of Chamber Music

A great German author, of the early period when the String Quartet was emerging as a classic form, wrote of this medium that it was 'four rational people conversing'. Who was he?

Who was 'the father of the symphony' and also of the String Quartet?

The musical style in which the genesis of string quartets (and chamber music, more generally) took place is usually known as ...

Franz Schubert wrote a fine Piano Quintet in which he recycled the theme from one of his own favourite Lieder as the basis for a set of variations in one of the middle movements of the work. The whole quintet (his D.667 in A major, written in 1819 when the composer was just 22 years old), is usually nicknamed from the title of the song, which was ... ?

The 18th century saw chamber music establishing and developing itself in technical, administrative and artistic ways. Which of these factors would you dismiss as being the LEAST significant?

In March 1824 Schubert composed his wonderful Octet for a mixed ensemble of ~ obviously ~ eight players. Four of these are on the already-standard String Quartet instruments (2 violins, viola and cello); which is the correct list of the other four?

The 19th century saw (and heard!) the 'democratisation' of music, with the rise of amateur performance by those who could, at least, afford instruments, tuition and copies of the material to play. But there were also virtuoso professional solo 'recitalists' such as the very man who coined this usage of the word. Who was he?

Who was the Central-European composer who, following a lead from Dvorak, brought folk music across into the classical intimacy of the string quartet, including writing a movement in the folk time-signature of 10/8 (subdivided as 3 + 2 + 2 + 3)?

Charles Gounod, probably better remembered for his opera Faust, wrote a delightful Petite Symphonie which clearly belongs within the field of Chamber Music. How many musicians are involved in a performance of this ensemble?

As this suite of Quizzes is written in the early summer of 2014, with the Great War Centenary much on the minds of cultured people worldwide, it would be nigh-on impossible to avoid mention of the Emperor Quartet, so called from the noble theme in its second movement which became the national anthem of Austria-Hungary (1797-1918) and shortly thereafter, with fresh words, of Germany (1922- ). Its German-speaking composer had enjoyed a stay in Britain, and, in an age when revolution had wracked France and her institutions, he felt his home nation/s should have something of equivalent dignity to our own National Anthem.
Who was he?