Tchaikovsky started work on the quartet in August 1865 at his brother-in-law's house in
Kamenka, basing the first movement theme on a song he heard the gardeners singing. This theme was later recycled for the 1867 solo piano piece
Scherzo à la russe Op.1, No. 1. The completed movement was premiered on 11 November 1865 at the
Saint Petersburg Conservatory by a quartet composed of both faculty members and students (Konstantin Pushilov, Dmitry Panov,
Vasily Bessel and Aleksandr Kuznetsov). There has been much speculation as to why the work was apparently abandoned after the completion of the first movement, despite the comments by Modest Tchaikovsky mentioned earlier. One theory is that the composer either intended the work to be a single movement quartet or decided to complete it as such; another, similar to theories advanced about other unfinished works, is that the composer put the work aside and never went back to it. == References ==