Mozart's The Clown is one of 12 string quartet arrangements for intermediate strings included in Richard Young's Comprehensive String Pedagogy & Curriculum. A portion of the proceeds of sales for all CSPC music goes to support free music education at The People's Music School.

This arrangement for quartet of The Clown is based on the string orchestra piece from CSPC’s Elementary section. (Please refer to those background notes.) It is an ideal introduction to Classical quartets by Haydn, Beethoven, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
 Some well-intentioned individuals suggest that the reason inexperienced chamber music students might start with the Haydn string quartets is because they are “easy.” Professional quartet players shudder whenever they hear such ignorance! It is true that many Haydn quartets are less challenging than works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, and that Haydn’s 2nd violin, viola, and cello parts are usually not so demanding. However even the early Haydn quartets have very challenging 1st violin parts. This is because they were composed at Esterházy where the leader of the strings was Luigi Tomasini, a remarkable virtuoso. So unless teachers have an unusually advanced 1st violinist, they must be extremely careful to select pieces that are exciting and challenging, but also realistic. The Clown is an ideal piece to start with, not just because all four parts are within reach and have similar technical challenges, but because it provides an excellent context for learning “the classical style.”
 -Richard Young

Full program notes are included with the score. There are fingerings and bowings in all the string parts of every one of CSPC's pieces. These "cooked-in" technical solutions target the particular levels of the students. They are not just pragmatic but "musical."

Please note that due to a loss of source files, the PDF files of the music have been generated from scanned copies of printed parts. While every effort has been made to produce high quality parts, the limitations of scanning will result in some degradation of print quality.