Count Anton Apponyi, to whom Haydn dedicated six string quartets, cannot have been alone among Beethoven's early patrons and friends in finding the composer's apparent refusal to write string quartets thoroughly mystifying. After all, Beethoven was a pupil of Haydn, the creator of the classical Viennese string quartet, so what was the problem? Even when, at a soirée in the Lichnowsky palace in 1795, the Count specifically ‘asked Beethoven to compose a quartet for him for a given compensation’, nothing came of it. Two other chamber works for strings were published the following year: op. 3, the first of Beethoven's five string trios, and the String Quintet in E flat major, op. 4, an arrangement of the earlier Wind Octet in the same key, composed in Bonn and published posthumously as op. 103. But there would be no sign of any string quartets for some time to come.

Beethoven's tight control of his launch as a composer in Vienna was probably the reason for the delay. As a virtuoso pianist and an experienced viola player, he would naturally feel most at home writing chamber music for piano and strings. His op. 1 piano trios had already stood favourable comparison with Haydn's and Mozart's trios, and his two cello sonatas, op. 5, the first real duos for cello and piano, were unique. Haydn had composed no significant violin sonatas, so Beethoven's op. 12 set, which could confidently be compared with all but Mozart's greatest violin sonatas, had no contemporary rivals. However, to compete with Haydn's and Mozart's string quartets was a much tougher proposition, and Beethoven must have realized that he needed more time for study and experiment if his ‘more important works’ were to include quartets of a high enough standard to justify his growing reputation as ‘Mozart's heir’.

His solution was a challenging one; he would learn how to compose string quartets the hard way by focusing, for a time at least, on a rare and difficult genre, the trio for violin, viola and cello; difficult because, with three instruments rather than four, it is harder to create enough variety in texture, contrapuntal line and harmony, and to share melodic and accompanying material in an interesting way.