Brhams worked at his First String Quartet for twenty years, not publishing it until 1873. He wrote as follows about it to his surgeon friend Theodor Billroth, to whom the piece is dedicated: "Composing is not difficult, but it is fantastically difficult to get rid of the superfluous notes", humorously adding that a doctor was urgently needed to assist this "forceps birth". Billroth replied: "It contains a great many beautiful things in compressed form: yet it is enormously difficult not only technically, but also in content." He meant that to the density of the motivic work was unique in Brahms's oeuvre. All four movements of the quartet develop out of a single motif in the firs tmovement.