quartet
/kwɔːˈtɛt
/(also quartette)
noun
1A group of four people playing music or singing together.He believes that you increase your understanding by playing in small ensembles - three, four or five people in trios, quartets and quintets....
- Each of the cafes along the edges of the square had a band, mostly quartets playing classical music or jazz or some show tunes.
- A chamber music quartet was rehearsing for a Vivaldi recital, and it was gorgeous.
1.1A composition for a quartet: a Beethoven quartet...
- This quartet is musically closer to the quartets of fellow Theresienstadt composers Ullmann and Schulhoff.
- His earliest extant chamber music for strings comprises the two sextets: in these the additional instruments give a full sound, which he achieved eventually in the quartets composed in middle life.
- The sound of the Zehetmair Quartet - refined, lean and coolly transparent - isn't obviously suited to full-blooded romantic works like the quartets Schumann composed in 1840.
1.2A set of four people or things: a quartet of comfortable armchairs...
- The plate is composed of a quartet of salads around a small mound of baby greens.
- It's a good bet that at least 11 of the 12 drivers who will make NASCAR's version of the playoffs will come from this quartet of teams.
- Astronomers using telescopes on Mauna Kea have found an extremely rare quartet of stars that orbit each other within a region smaller than Jupiter's orbit round the Sun.
Origin
Early 17th century (in the general sense 'set of four'): from French quartette, from Italian quartetto, from quarto 'fourth', from Latin quartus.