The quartet, also four-line, is the four-line stanza in the poem or a four-line poem itself. Above all, the term is used in connection with the baroque sonnet. This consists of four quartets, which form the entrance and two terzets, that is, three-strings. The sonnet thus consists of 14 verses. The quartet in the sonnet usually follows the rhyme scheme abba and thus consists of embracing rhymes. However, a four-line poem does not have a fixed rhyme scheme, where pair rhymes, cross rhymes, and rime rhymes are typical. In music, the name means a group of four musicians, a piece of music for such a group, and the composition for four singing voices.
The term can be derived from the Latin numerals quartus, which can be translated with the fourth or even fourth. Consequently, the translation of the concept itself refers to the question of what is at issue: namely, something revolving around the number four, and in the literature just a four-line stanza, or even the four-line verse itself. Let us take a look at the exemplary quartet of a sonnet:
a
b
b
a
You’ll see where you look only vanity on earth.
What builds this today tears that tomorrow:
Where cities are now standing will be a meadow
On which a shepherd ‘s child will play with the herds.
The above example is the sonnet It is all taken vain from the Baroque poet Andreas Gryphius and forms the entrance, thus the first quartet, of the work. It is evident that it consists of four lines, which are alternating in the iambic (the verse is thus a yambus, the unstressed and stressed syllables alternate), the first to the fourth and the second to the third. Verse rhymes (embracing rhyme). After the third elevation there is a caesura; a metric incision, which is perceived as a pause.
The essential feature, however, which the above verse declares to the quartet is the fact that it consists only of four lines. Although the term is customary with respect to the sonnet seal, in principle every four-line string can be referred to as a quartet. Regardless of which other formal criteria it fulfills. The terms quatrain and quartine are also used for this. An example:
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b
b
a
When the blasphemy stabs you,
Let this be your consolation:
The worst fruits are not,
What the wasps gnaw at.
Even if the rhyme scheme abba determines the quartets of a sonnet, four-lineers can certainly orient themselves to other final rhythms. This example comes from Gottfried August Bürger, a German poet who is assigned to Sturm und Drang. The sequence abab is a cross-rhyme. Since the poem consists only of four verses, it can be called a quartet, quatrain, or even quartine.
Note: It is customary to call the first two verses of a sonnet as a quartet. Therefore, it is useful to avoid misunderstandings, to call other works, as well as stanzas, which have four verses, as a four-line. The terms quatrain and quartine are rather less common.
The Quartet in the Sonnet
As described, two quartets and two terzets stand in the sonnet. These perform a very special function in the sonnet. On the one hand, they are, of course, an optical break; on the other hand, tasks are assumed and clearly communicated.
In the Italian sonnet, which is the origin of the sonnet poetry, it was quite common to assign an additional poetic function to these different stanzas. In the first quartet, an assertion (thesis) was made or an experience described. In the second, a counter-assertion (antithesis), a counter-design, or the contradiction was disproved.
The task of the terzette was now to form a kind of compromise or to present a result (result) and thus to form a synthesis of the quartet. In part, what has been said has only been summarized. Sometimes the synthesis was also omitted. Then the assertion stands in the quartet, the counter-design in the third.
