Haydn was in failing health when he accepted a commission in 1803 for six quartets from Count Moritz von Fries, who was also an active supporter of Beethoven. Haydn began a quartet with its less demanding inner movements, intending to write the more mentally taxing outer movements—and the rest of the set—when he felt stronger. By and by, he realized that his health would not improve, and he had the two finished movements published on their own with the announcement that they should be considered his farewell. The Andante grazioso, in B flat, is in ternary song form. The first of its three sections is a measured, patrician yet bittersweet melody carried mainly by the violins with some especially rich supporting work for the viola and cello. The initially mysterious second section is a sort of development of the first, lacking a really coherent, independent melody. It is mostly atmosphere, passing through several unexpected major and minor keys and brief moments of sharp drama. Eventually the opening melody returns in its original B flat for a full repetition of the initial section, rounded out by a lengthy coda and a few decisive chords. The Minuet is in an unexpectedly dramatic D minor, and even though the pulse is a clearly felt 3/4, the unsettled movement here toils far from its origins as a formal dance. Its phrases are alternately stern and questioning, and entirely unsettling. The trio brings on the more reassuring key of D major, but the melodic writing is highly chromatic and some of the harmonic voicing is quite full, looking ahead to middle-period and late Beethoven. The movement's severe opening section returns to close out this torso of a quartet, which would surely have been one of Haydn's most remarkable works had he been able to complete its outer movements in the same manner.

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