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piano quartet

piano quartet

4.0
A group of four musicians, piano, violin, viola and cello, or a piece written for them
  • noun
  • /piˈænoʊ kwɔrˈtɛt/
translation icon : cuarteto de piano
  • During the music festival, a talented piano quartet played a variety of classical pieces.

Examples

  • Practicing the Brahms G minor piano quartet, especially movements I and IV, including some thoughts on how string players see a score differently than I do.

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  • The piano quartet performed beautifully at the concert last night.

  • [piano quartet plays]

  • She composed a new piece for the piano quartet, which includes violin, viola, and cello.

Synonyms

quartet
vspiano quartet
30 3.5

A group of four musicians who play or sing together

is specific to a four-player group with one keyboard and three string instruments
foursome
vspiano quartet
21 3.2

A group of four people who meet or play together

is limited to a musical group with one keyboard and three string instruments
quartette
vspiano quartet
  • UK
7.2

A piece of music written for four instruments

is also used for the performing group and specifies keyboard plus three strings

Surface Forms

piano quartet singular

Morphology

piano + quartet

The compound is fully compositional: 'quartet' denotes a group of four musicians and 'piano' specifies the instrument involved, so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a four-person ensemble or a piece for such an ensemble. The exact conventional instrumentation (piano + violin + viola + cello) is specialist knowledge but does not block a B1 learner from deriving the general meaning from the constituents.

Etymology

Piano quartet comes from how small classical music groups were named: quartet means 'four players' and piano shows that one of those players is a piano. So a piano quartet is a group made of a piano plus three string players such as violin, viola and cello, and a piece for that group is also called a piano quartet.