During the mid 20th century there began a revival of interest in chamber music that ventured well beyond the Baroque era to Pre-Baroque,
and Renaissance music that began to appear with more frequency from about 1400 - that is instrumental  music for small, intimate ensembles.
Though some was festive, and occasional, such as the Canzones of Giovanni Gabrieli, most was for intended solely for  amateurs to play in the
music room or 'parlor', so to speak, for the amusement of friends in intimate settings - hence the name 'Chamber'.  Now, in the early 21st century, we are easily able to find the entirety (good and bad) of the last 500 years of Western Music preserved  on CDs. Obscure composers, obscure works and particularly the chamber works of these composers glut the bins of music stores in large cities, not to mention the less played works of famous composers such as Haydn, and Mozart.
      Why all the interest in Chamber Music, a type of music not intended, at first, for public performance (Gabrieli excepted), written for amateurs -
a word which carried a much more respected, less pejorative meaning in earlier centuries? Today we take it to mean someone ignorant and unaccomplished in an area they seek to express themselves. In earlier times, the words were applied  to people of the upper class, who devoted
their means to the pursuit of music and culture. Many of these music patrons became accomplished amateur musicians.
      However, with late Haydn, Mozart and particularly Beethoven (almost at any point in his string quartets) we find chamber music demanding of professional players. Music which reflected the Art of the composer at it's highest expression and most experimental. This music is forever enshrined in the genre and form known as the String Quartet and is represented by virtually every great Germanic composer from the time of Haydn, making profound in-roads into Indo-European composers in the the latter 19th century and culminating in the 20th century with the cycle of six quartets by Bela Bartok, the fifteen quartets of Shostakovich, and the four quartets of American composer, Elliott Carter.
       String Quartet music is not a music which displays lots of virtuosity, though the level of difficulty is often at the highest levels of complexity (i.e. late Beethoven, Bartok, Berg, Webern and Carter, to name a few). It is an ensemble which has been called perfect. The pairs of violins, partnered by a viola and cello have a compass of expression and range of pitch and palette which are unrivaled by any other chamber ensembles. 
        Characteristically, chamber music does not use a conductor.  In the 20th century, however,  some of the more rhythmically complex
works such as the Stravinsky Octet for Winds will often be performed with conductor.  A notable exception is The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
of New York  - a fine ensemble playing works of the orchestral literature such as the tone poem Pelleas and Melisande by Arnold Schoenberg
without conductor. 

08/10/04 CMS