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Rachmaninov twice attempted to write a string quartet, on both occasions leaving the works unfinished with only two complete movements in each. The Romance is from the earlier quartet, written in 1889-90 when Rachmaninov was only 17 and a precocious student at the Moscow Conservatory. One of his teachers at that time was Sergei Taneyev, who wrote his monumental Piano Quintet in 1910-11.