Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic musics, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research. While his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák, his later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis.

Written in 1923 when he was sixty-nine, Janáček's first quartet was inspired by Tolstoy's novella, "The Kreuzter Sonata," named after Beethoven's violin sonata dedicated to the French violinist, Rudolph Kreutzer. Leo Tolstoy's story is told by an inconsolable man who, in a fit of jealous rage, murders his apparently adulterous wife only to be consumed by regret and disillusionment about marriage and the treacherous urges of the human animal. His wife's supposed lover is a violinist, and she, a pianist. A pivotal moment in the story occurs when they play Beethoven's sonata for a social gathering. Janáček was so affected by Tolstoy's story that he had already tried previously to capture it with an unfinished piano trio.