The String Quartet No. 3 in D major, op. 18, No. 3, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1798 and 1800 and published in 1801. Although it is numbered third, it was the first quartet Beethoven composed. It consists of four movements, and it is one of the first works in which Beethoven experiments with shifting the center of gravity towards the end of a multi movement work.
