A string trio is a group of three string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

s or a piece written for such a group. The term is generally used with reference to works of chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 from the Classical period

Classical period (music)

The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...

 to the present.

History

The earliest string trio form consisted of two violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

s and a cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, a grouping which had grown out of the Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 trio sonata

Trio sonata

The trio sonata is a musical form that was popular in the 17th and early 18th centuries.A trio sonata is written for two solo melodic instruments and basso continuo, making three parts in all, hence the name trio sonata...

, while later string trios more commonly are scored for violin, viola

Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

, and cello (Tilmouth and Smallman 2001).

Beginning in the second half of the 18th century, although the trio configuration for two violins and cello was not wholly abandoned in classical chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 (even during the 19th century), the scoring for violin, viola, and cello began to take precedence. Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 appears to have been the first composer to use this combination (Tilmouth and Smallman 2001), though he was soon emulated by Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No...

 (Kennedy 1994).

Writing for a violin, viola and cello trio provides a wide palette of textures and colors for a skilled composer. The leaner instrumentation (as compared to the more common string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

) also poses compositional challenges especially within a musical tradition typified by four-part harmony writing. In the 19th and 20th centuries countless composers after Mozart and Beethoven have taken up this challenge, including Lennox Berkeley

Lennox Berkeley

Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.- Biography :He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford...

, Carlos Chávez

Carlos Chávez

Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...

, Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell

Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...

, Jean Cras

Jean Cras

Jean Émile Paul Cras was a 20th century French composer and career naval officer. His musical compositions were inspired by his native Brittany, his travels to Africa, and most of all, by his sea voyages...

, Paul Dessau

Paul Dessau

Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor.- Biography :Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family...

, Ernst von Dohnányi

Erno Dohnányi

Ernő Dohnányi was a Hungarian conductor, composer, and pianist. He used the German form of his name Ernst von Dohnányi for most of his published compositions....

, Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler

Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

, Jean Françaix

Jean Françaix

Jean René Désiré Françaix was a French neoclassical composer, pianist, and orchestrator, known for his prolific output and vibrant style.-Life:...

, Heinrich von Herzogenberg

Heinrich von Herzogenberg

Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg was an Austrian composer and conductor descended from a French aristocratic family....

, Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

, Gideon Klein

Gideon Klein

Gideon Klein was a Czech pianist and composer of classical music, organizer of cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp.-Life:...

, Frank Martin

Frank Martin (composer)

Frank Martin was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands.-Childhood and youth:...

, Bohuslav Martinů

Bohuslav Martinu

Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

, Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

, Ernest John Moeran

Ernest John Moeran

Ernest John Moeran was an English composer who had strong associations with Ireland .-Early life:...

, Manuel Ponce, Max Reger

Max Reger

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...

, Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

, Alexis Roland-Manuel

Alexis Roland-Manuel

Alexis Roland-Manuel was a French composer and critic, though he is remembered mainly for his work in the latter area.-Biography:...

, Miklós Rózsa

Miklós Rózsa

Miklós Rózsa was a Hungarian-born composer trained in Germany , and active in France , England , and the United States , with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953...

, Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

, William Schuman

William Schuman

William Howard Schuman was an American composer and music administrator.-Life:Born in Manhattan in New York City to Samuel and Rachel Schuman, Schuman was named after the twenty-seventh U.S. president, William Howard Taft, although his family preferred to call him Bill...

, Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...

, Robert Simpson

Robert Simpson (composer)

Robert Simpson was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music , and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells...

, Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

, Sergei Taneyev

Sergei Taneyev

Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...

, Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...

, Anton Webern

Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

, and Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...

.

More recently, notable string trios have been written by Murray Adaskin

Murray Adaskin

-External links:*...

, Alain Bancquart

Alain Bancquart

Alain Bancquart is a French composer. He had his musical formation at the "Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris" with Darius Milhaud. He was a violist with the Orchestre National de France until 1973...

, Robert Carl

Robert Carl

Robert Carl is an American composer who currently resides in Hartford, Connecticut, where he is chair of the composition department at the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford.-Music:...

, Pascal Dusapin

Pascal Dusapin

Pascal Dusapin , is a French composer born in Nancy. He is one of France's best-known living composers; his works have been performed worldwide....

, Donald Erb

Donald Erb

Donald Erb was an American composer best known for large orchestral works such as Concerto for Brass and Orchestra and Ritual Observances.-Early years:...

, Karlheinz Essl

Karlheinz Essl

Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser and composition teacher.- Biography :Essl was born in Vienna. His studies at the University of Music in Vienna included: composition , electro-acoustic music and double bass...

, Brian Ferneyhough

Brian Ferneyhough

Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...

, Berthold Goldschmidt

Berthold Goldschmidt

Berthold Goldschmidt was a German Jewish composer who spent most of his life in England...

, Sofia Gubaidulina

Sofia Gubaidulina

Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, is a Russian composer of half Russian, half Tatar ethnicity.Gubaidulina's music is marked by the use of unusual instrumental combinations...

, Bertold Hummel

Bertold Hummel

Bertold Hummel was a German composer of modern classical music.- Life :Bertold Hummel was born November 27, 1925 in Hüfingen . He studied at the Academy of Music in Freiburg from 1947 to 1954, taking composition with Harald Genzmer, and cello with Atis Teichmanis...

, Talivaldis Kenins

Talivaldis Kenins

Tālivaldis Ķeniņš was a Canadian composer born in Latvia.Kenins's father was a lawyer, poet and government official, and his mother was a journalist. He first began playing piano at the age of five, and his first compositions followed at age eight...

, Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

, Helmut Lachenmann

Helmut Lachenmann

Helmut Lachenmann is a German composer associated with musique concrète instrumentale.-Life and works:...

, Paul Lansky

Paul Lansky

Paul Lansky is an American electronic-music or computer-music composer who has been producing works from the 1970s up to the present day .-Biography:...

, Ljubica Marić

Ljubica Maric

Ljubica Marić was considered to be one of the most original composers to emerge from Yugoslavia. She was a pupil of Josip Štolcer-Slavenski. She was known for being inspired by Byzantine Orthodox church music...

, Krzysztof Meyer

Krzysztof Meyer

Krzysztof Meyer is a Polish composer, pianist and music scholar.-Biography:Meyer was born in Cracow. As a boy he played piano and organ. He began his composition study early – in 1954, with Stanisław Wiechowicz...

, Krzysztof Penderecki

Krzysztof Penderecki

Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...

, Wayne Peterson

Wayne Peterson

Wayne Peterson is a Pulitzer Prize winning composer, as well as a pianist and educator.Peterson earned B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Minnesota...

, Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...

, Bogusław Schaeffer, Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

, Graham Waterhouse

Graham Waterhouse

Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and a cellist. He is known for chamber music and for unusual scoring, such as Piccolo Quintet, Bright Angel for three bassoons and contrabassoon, Chieftain's Salute for Great Highland Bagpipe and string orchestra, and works for speaking voice and cello,...

, Charles Wuorinen

Charles Wuorinen

Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...

, La Monte Young

La Monte Young

La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...

, Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...

, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

While string trio ensembles are certainly more rare than string quartets, there have been, and continue to be, ensembles dedicated to performing and recording the string trio repertoire.

Examples of more unusual string trio configurations include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's trio for two violins and double bass

Double bass

The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

, and Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Dvorák

Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...

's and Frank Bridge

Frank Bridge

Frank Bridge was an English composer and violist.-Life:Bridge was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others...

's trios for two violins and viola. Others who have written trios for this combination include Robert Fuchs

Robert Fuchs

Robert Fuchs was an Austrian composer and music teacher.As Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, Fuchs taught many notable composers, while he was himself a highly regarded composer in his lifetime....

 (three, two in his opus 61 and one in his opus 107) and Sergei Taneyev

Sergei Taneyev

Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...

 (his op. 21). Wilhelm Killmayer

Wilhelm Killmayer

Wilhelm Killmayer is a German composer of classical music and an academic.-Professional career:Wilhelm Killmayer studied conducting and composition from 1945 to 1951 in Munich at Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen’s Musikseminar...

 has written a trio (1975) for the similar combination of two violins and cello and Stefan Hakenberg

Stefan Hakenberg

Born in Wuppertal, Germany, composer Stefan Hakenberg now resides in Juneau, Alaska. Reviewers have praised his music as "highly original," "dramatic and memorable," "creating strong musical expressions in a densely contrapuntal style." The integration of players of non-western classical...

 scored the third movement of The Displacement Map (2002), entitled "Monochrome", for this combination. The Masada

Masada (band)

Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.Masada is as much a "songbook" as a group, comprising more than 500 relatively brief compositions...

 String Trio, a group that performs the music of John Zorn

John Zorn

John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

, is configured for violin, cello, and double bass.

Selected compositions

• Ludwig van Beethoven
  Ludwig van Beethoven
  Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
  
  : String Trios 1–5 (1794–1998)
• Luigi Boccherini
  Luigi Boccherini
  Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No...
  
  : String Trios G 77 – G 142
• Carlos Chávez
  Carlos Chávez
  Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...
  
  : Invención II (1965)
• Karlheinz Essl
  Karlheinz Essl
  Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser and composition teacher.- Biography :Essl was born in Vienna. His studies at the University of Music in Vienna included: composition , electro-acoustic music and double bass...
  
  : à trois/seul for string trio (1998)
• Brian Ferneyhough
  Brian Ferneyhough
  Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer. His music is characterized by the extensive use of complex rhythmic tuplet notation which features in all his works...
  
  : String Trio (1995)
• Joseph Haydn
  Joseph Haydn
  Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
  
  : 21 String Trios
• Ernesto Halffter
  Ernesto Halffter
  Ernesto Halffter Escriche was a Spanish composer and conductor. He was the brother of Rodolfo Halffter....
  
  : Homenajes
• Heinrich von Herzogenberg
  Heinrich von Herzogenberg
  Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg was an Austrian composer and conductor descended from a French aristocratic family....
  
  : String Trios Op.27 Nos. 1 & 2
• Yefim Golyshev: String Trio, subtitled Zwölftondauer-Komplexe (twelve-tone-duration complex) (1925)
• Wilhelm Killmayer
  Wilhelm Killmayer
  Wilhelm Killmayer is a German composer of classical music and an academic.-Professional career:Wilhelm Killmayer studied conducting and composition from 1945 to 1951 in Munich at Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen’s Musikseminar...
  
  :
  • Trio for two violins and cello (1975)
  • Trio (1984)
• Ernst Krenek
  Ernst Krenek
  Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...
  
  
  • String Trio, op. 118
  • String Trio Parvula Corona Musicalis: ad honorem Johannis Sebastiani Bach, op. 122
  • String Trio in 12 Stations, op. 237
• Bohuslav Martinů
  Bohuslav Martinu
  Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
  
  
  • String Trio No. 1, H. 136 (1923)
  • String Trio No. 2, H. 238 (1934)
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
  
  : Divertimento KV 563 (1788)
• Max Reger
  Max Reger
  Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
  
  
  • String Trio No. 1 Op. 77b in A minor
  • String Trio No. 2 Op. 141b in D minor
• Carl Reinecke
  Carl Reinecke
  Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.-Biography:Reinecke was born in Altona, Hamburg, Germany; until 1864 the town was under Danish rule. He studied with his father, Johann Peter Rudolph Reinecke, a music teacher...
  
  : String Trio in C minor, Op. 249
• Guy Ropartz: Trio in A minor for Strings (1934–35)
• Alfred Schnittke
  Alfred Schnittke
  Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
  
  : String Trio (1985)
• Arnold Schoenberg
  Arnold Schoenberg
  Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
  
  : String Trio, Op. 45 (1946)
• Jean Sibelius
  Jean Sibelius
  Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
  
  :
  • Andantino in A major (1889)
  • Suite (Trio) in A major (1889, revised 1912)
  • Trio in G minor (1893–94)
• Nikos Skalkottas: String Trio No. 2 (1935)
• Karlheinz Stockhausen
  Karlheinz Stockhausen
  Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
  
  : Hoffnung (2007)
• Sergei Taneyev
  Sergei Taneyev
  Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev , was a Russian composer, pianist, teacher of composition, music theorist and author.-Life:...
  
  : String Trio in D major (1879/1880)
• Graham Waterhouse
  Graham Waterhouse
  Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and a cellist. He is known for chamber music and for unusual scoring, such as Piccolo Quintet, Bright Angel for three bassoons and contrabassoon, Chieftain's Salute for Great Highland Bagpipe and string orchestra, and works for speaking voice and cello,...
  
  : Epitaphium
  Epitaphium
  Epitaphium is a composition for string trio by Graham Waterhouse. In 2007, after the death of his father William Waterhouse, he composed Epitaphium In Memoriam W.R.W. as a tribute to his memory.- History :...
  
  (2007)
• Anton Webern
  Anton Webern
  Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
  
  : String Trio (1927), his first instrumental work using the twelve tone technique
• Egon Wellesz
  Egon Wellesz
  Egon Joseph Wellesz was an Austrian-born British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.- Life :...
  
  
  • String Trio, op. 86 (1962)
  • Four Works for string trio, op. 105 (1969, second version 1971)
• Charles Wuorinen
  Charles Wuorinen
  Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...
  
  : String Trio (1968)
• Iannis Xenakis
  Iannis Xenakis
  Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
  
  : Ikhoor (1978)
• La Monte Young
  La Monte Young
  La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
  
  : Trio (1958)

Sources

• Kennedy, Michael (ed.). 1994. "String Trio". The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second edition revised, associate editor Joyce Bourne. London and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198691629.
• Tilmouth, Michael, and Basil Smallman. 2001. "String Trio". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie
  Stanley Sadie
  Stanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Sadie was educated at St Paul's School,...
  
   and John Tyrrell
  John Tyrrell (professor of music)
  John Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in 1942. He studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. In 2000 he was appointed Research Professor at Cardiff University....
  
  . London: Macmillan Publishers.

Further reading

• Downs, Philip G. 1992. Classical Music: The Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The Norton Introduction to Music History. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 039395191X.
• Holloway, Robert James. 1962. "String Trio Literature of the Twentieth Century". MM Thesis. Washington, DC: American University.
• Unverricht, Hubert. 1969. Geschichte des Streichtrios. Mainzer Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 2. Tutzing: Hans Schneider.