String Quartets nos. 5 & 6

String Quartets Nos. 5 and 6 are the fifth and sixth string quartets by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, composed in 1934 and 1939 respectively. They employ Bartók's mature modernist language, featuring folk-derived motifs, modal and chromatic harmonic language, complex rhythmic interplay and percussive string techniques, and they occupy later positions in his quartet cycle that consolidate his harmonic and structural experiments in 20th-century chamber music.