Where the serious Count Apponyi had failed in 1795 to persuade Beethoven to compose even a single string quartet, the young and enthusiastic Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz (1772–1816), not a man for half measures where music was concerned, succeeded triumphantly three years later when he commissioned no fewer than six quartets from Beethoven and a further six from Haydn. To be fair, the Prince was luckier than the Count in matters of timing; Beethoven was so pleased with his op. 9 string trios – ‘the best of my works’ – completed earlier in 1798 and published the same year, that he seems to have felt ready at last to face the ultimate challenge in chamber music – composing string quartets.

His sketchbooks show that he started with the D major Quartet (later published as op. 18 no. 3) in the autumn of 1798, followed chronologically over the next two years by numbers 1, 2, 5, 4, and 6. However, when the quartets were published by Tranquillo Mollo in two instalments in June and October 1801, duly dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, Beethoven rearranged the order to ensure that each instalment was framed by the more obviously appealing quartets. To avoid confusion, however, they are discussed here in their published order. It is known that the first version (Hess 32) of the F major Quartet, op. 18 no. 1, was completed in the early summer of 1799, as Beethoven sent a copy to Karl Amenda on 25 June that year ‘as a small memorial of our friendship’, only to withdraw it two years later because he had revised it extensively in the meantime: ‘Be sure not to hand on to anybody your quartet, in which I have made some drastic alterations. For only now have I learnt how to write quartets; and this you will notice, I fancy, when you receive them.’

In addition to his studies with Haydn, Beethoven is known to have made copies of two Mozart quartets, k387 and k464, at much the same time as he began work on the op. 18 quartets. His warm friendship with the composer Emanuel Aloys Förster (1748–1823) may also have been significant.