ABSTRACT
The dissemination and reception of a musical genre in any given locality will, inevitably, depend on the particular character and intensity of musical life in that area. The progress of the string quartet is a case in point. The development of the quartet was synchronous with escalating interest in, and incidence of, public music-making in late eighteenth-century England. And there can be no doubt that its widespread acceptance as a chamber item in concert programmes was facilitated by thriving musical activity in so many English towns at the time that the string quartet was gaining popularity.
