Haydn is perhaps the most important of the early Classical composers. The son of a wheelwright, he was a member of the Choir School of St. Stephen’s Church in Vienna. At age 17, he was tossed out of the school when his voice changed. For the next few years he tried to support himself as a street musician in Vienna and by teaching children. A self-taught composer, except for the musical education at St. Stephen’s, Haydn became Kapellmeister to Count Morzin in 1755.

He received his most important and long-lasting appointment in 1761 when he was engaged by Prince Paul, as Kapellmeister to the Esterhazy court at Eisenstadt, located in the countryside of the Austro-Hungary borderland. He held this position for almost thirty years, directing concerts and composing music under the patronage of Prince Paul and his successor, Prince Nicholas Esterhazy. This position allowed Haydn to have at his disposal, orchestras, an opera house, countless musicians and singers in order for him to produce the music required for the court. It allowed Haydn to literally ‘experiment’, creating and establishing the modern ‘sonata form’ as well as establishing the string quartet and symphony as viable musical genres. In 1790, at the death of the prince, his successor dissolved the orchestra and granted Haydn a pension. This freedom enabled Haydn to accept the invitation of the impresario J.P. Salomon to travel to London in 1791 and 1794. On each of these journeys, he spent a year and a half in England, gave enormously successful concerts and gained both international fame and fortune.

By all accounts, throughout his life, he was a person of great warmth, kindness, graciousness and generosity. These traits, not his age, earned him the name "Papa." As stated earlier, he was also ‘Papa’ of the symphony and the string quartet. He produced no less than 104 symphonies. In the field of chamber music, he was equally productive, having composed 83 string quartets, 67 string trios, 31 piano trios, as well as numerous miscellaneous chamber works. He also wrote numerous operas and oratorios, most notably The Seasons and The Creation. The 25 string quartets Franz Joseph Haydn composed during the 1780s were not part of his duties as Kapellmeister to Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, but were self-motivated and meant for the general public. By the end of the decade Haydn’s reputation had spread throughout Europe with his music in great demand. Haydn composed the six quartets of Op. 64 during 1790, the last two after the death of Prince Nicolaus. The death of his music-loving patron and the accession to the title by his musically indifferent son coincided with the sudden arrival in Vienna of the impresario Johann Peter Salomon. Salomon came to lure the composer to his London concert series but it took Haydn no time to agree, and by the end of December he was on his way to London.

Of course, Haydn brought with him his latest chamber music creation, but on hearing the six quartets performed in London, he realized that the last two, No. 5 and 6, were the weightiest of the set and placed them at the front for publication in London in 1792. They were then re-published in every major city in Europe. A new firm in Vienna, Magazin de Musique, issued them in the chronological order that has prevailed to this day.

The nickname "The Lark" was given to the Quartet in D Major because of the soaring violin melody above the staccato accompaniment of its opening. The Quartet has also occasionally been referred to as the "Hornpipe" Quartet because the perpetum mobile in the finale and the melody that recalls an old English sailors’ dance. Although we do not know exactly when Haydn completed the last two quartets -- whether before the London trip or even in London itself -- his biographer H. C. Robbins Landon has suggested that the popular nature of the final movements of the last two quartets points to composition with the London audience in mind.