Strauss composed his String Quartet in A Major in the same year as his early D Minor Symphony; the Quartet, in fact, received its premiere in Munich on March 14, 1881, only sixteen days after the premiere of the Symphony. The Quartet is a student work, composed during a very prolific period in Strauss' life; in his youth, he devoted more time to composing music than to any other endeavor. The composer's arithmetic notebooks, for example, were often filled with makeshift staves and sketches of compositions rather than mathematical exercises (Strauss later lamented the amount of energy he had invested in composition as a youth, suggesting that it had caused him to use up his valuable creative force.) Although the String Quartet is a relatively obscure work, predating and overshadowed by his better-known operas and programmatic orchestral works, Strauss did think enough of the work to give it an opus number—which he had not done with the D Minor Symphony. The String Quartet, not unlike the D Minor Symphony and Piano Sonata Op. 5 of the same period, reveals the young composer's devotion to the Viennese masters, and Haydn in particular. The piece is written in a standard four-movement form—Allegro, Scherzo, Andante cantabile, and Finale: Allegro vivace—with the outer movements bearing most of the compositional weight. Strauss uses sonata form in the first movement, and the problems of repetition and contrived recapitulation evident in other early works arises again as the composer struggles with the demands of sonata principles. While the Quartet is profoundly derivative, adhering closely to the Classical aesthetic, it is nonetheless a Straussian work in several respects: instrumental color is granted particular importance, the texture is frequently light and contrapuntal, and the melodies are lively and lyrical. Moreover, the viola and second violin participate with uncharacteristic significance in the weaving of the work's contrapuntal textures.

© Alexander Carpenter, All Music Guide