1772 – The Music part 2 - String quartets to match

Hob. #	Genre	Key	Opus	New Grove No.	Instruments / Notes
35	Quartet	f	20 #5	23	2 Violins, Viola & Cello
36	Quartet	A	20 #6	24	2 Violins, Viola & Cello
32	Quartet	C	20 #2	25	2 Violins, Viola & Cello
33	Quartet	g	20 #3	26	2 Violins, Viola & Cello
34	Quartet	D	20 #4	27	2 Violins, Viola & Cello
31	Quartet	Eb	20 #1	28	2 Violins, Viola & Cello

 

An 18th Century String Quartet

So many things to say about Opus 20, the first one being merely a paean to its greatness. It is no exaggeration to say it was one of the most influential sets of works of the Classic Era. Of course, if we could impute dragon-slaying to a musical entity, most of the dragons slain are visible only retrospectively, when we know the history which follows.

What sorts of dragons? Well, the sniping of the German critics, for one. How can you carp over a composer who has managed to flawlessly integrate Baroque fugue into Classical sonata form? Or another, far more important issue; balancing the weight of the interest across the entire work, sliding it away from the first movement? Or managing to give each instrument a voice rather than an opportunity to play 'backup' for the first violin?

I mentioned in these pages a long time ago about the tendency of musicology, in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, to attempt to date the 'beginning of the Classic Era', mainly by the works of Haydn. In a vain attempt to create an analog between musical development and a pre-Darwinian belief about evolution, it was postulated that Haydn was intentionally trying to create Classicism and was tirelessly striving towards a goal which they could see clearly. The tipping point was a movable thing, but the laurel tended to go to the string quartets of Opus 33. Without a doubt, the 'Classical Era' is a construct which couldn't have been created until the period in question was completed. And its participants were blissfully unaware of what they were creating. If you had been sitting around the salon with Haydn and/or Mozart and asked them 'how does it feel to be creating the Classic Era, then?', the blank looks you would have got in return would have left you gasping. What amuses me is the fact that the beginning or ending of this supposed period, like of any other cultural period, is pretty much indefinable, so what is its true value?

I love the writing of Sir Donald Tovey, he is head and shoulders the most astute judge of music I have ever run across, coupled with being one of the most skillfully communicative writers in a genre largely populated by snooze-inducers. His assessment of Opus 20 strikes me as saying all that needs to be said and little that doesn't:

With Opus 20, the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next. Not all later works are equally valuable; inequalities of value are relatively more rather than less noticeable, and no further set of six quartets, not even Opus 76, is, on its own plane, so uniformly weighty and so varied in substance as Opus 20.

What was the audience for string quartets in 1772? Certainly there are professional musicians, but there is, as yet, no such thing as a professional string quartet, although there could be professionals playing a string quartet… there are terminology issues. But according to the influential encyclopedia of fine arts published in the 1780's by Sulzer and Kirnberger, chamber music itself had a specific audience. It wasn't the public, you can throw that out the window. It wasn't the professional performer, particularly. Specifically, it was the musical connoisseur. It was a mark of class distinction and education to be able to appreciate (and financially patronize) music. If you were a lady, you could sing and play the piano; a man played something in the violin family, usually. So you can break it down even further, then, to men who were musical connoisseurs. I use audience here in the sense of 'who it was written for to play' more than 'who was in the seats when it was played'. Who would hear and appreciate was obviously a broader field. In 1770's Vienna, upper class women heard and appreciated string quartets, they didn't play them. I'm sure there is an exception who proves the rule, possibly Regina Strinasacchi would be one. The day will soon be coming when we will be able to discuss the salon more fully, Vienna was far behind the curve in that realm, which was pioneered in Paris and spread to Berlin and London first. But even on the modest scale in which they existed, salons were the preferred performance venue for string quartets and the audience, then, consisted in upper class, well-educated connoisseurs of the fine arts. All of this is important in lending some understanding for the idea of chamber music, particularly string quartets, being a 'conversation among friends'. I am looking forward to discussing this concept more fully in the near future.

Cover page of Hummel of Amsterdam's Opus 20 "Sun Quartets"

Since we began with a quote from Tovey, let's continue mining that vein;

The next set of quartets was known to contemporaries by two titles: die Grossenquartette and die Sonnenquarttete. Great they are and, even after Opus 17, a sunrise over the domain of sonata style as well as of quartets in particular. Every page of the six quartets of Opus 20 is of historic and aesthetic importance; and though the total results still leave Haydn with a long road to travel, there is perhaps no single or sextuple opus in the history of instrumental music which has achieved so much or achieved it so quietly.

Of course, the so-called Sun Quartets have a totally different reason for their name as you can see, but poetic license is granted. It's nice when coincidence provides a double entendre!

Without going into an intricate analysis, of which I am incapable by either learning or inclination, I would like to point out a few highlights which make these works such a pleasure to listen to. As always with Haydn's earlier quartets, there is no known reason why he wrote them. Not for his patron, not for publication, not as a vehicle for a traveling virtuoso; in short, not for any of the reasons for which composers wrote in those times. Which brings me back to the ideas which I propounded during the discussion of Opera 9 & 17; he wrote them for himself and his own personal agenda. As another means of testing himself at the finish of the cours complet, possibly. To spite his German critics? Very likely indeed. An interesting feature is the inclusion in the autographs of numerous notations which, if just for the players, would be superfluous. For example; he marked certain passages in the fugues where the theme appears in inverted form with the inscription al rovescio ('reversed' in Italian). A passage in canon is marked 'in canone'. Of course, a musician would see this without a marking over it. In the third movement of #5, he put Baroque figured bass numbers under the cello part and wrote per figuram retardationis over the first violin part to indicate that notes required by the indicated harmonies are delayed by the figuration in the violin part. Could the actual pointing out of these obvious (yet sophisticated) musical devices have been a backhanded slap to the critics who were hounding him? You decide.

A fine recording of Opus 20

A few other notes of interest are based on the structural methods employed in the set when taken as a whole. It is the only set of six in which there are two minor key works instead of the usual one. A normal pattern in a sonata style work is for the slow movement to be in a different key (often the dominant if the work is in a Major key). Occasionally, maybe once in each opus, Haydn would forego that convention and write all four movements in the same tonic key, with the slow movement in the tonic minor. In Op 20, there are no fewer than four quartets which use this scheme. When Haydn began restructuring his formal framework in Op 9, and continuing through Op 17, he decided on having the minuet in second place. In Op 20, he wrote three minuets in second, but also three in third position. It seems clear that he was experimenting with the overall balance of the work by moving the inner movements closer to or further from the movement with more or less contrast. Finally, there is the obvious, the thing these works are known for; three have a fugal finale, three have a sonata-type finale.

The fact that Haydn was clearly both pleased and satisfied with his work on these quartets is demonstrable by the unusually effusive closing phrases which he penned at the end. You are probably well aware, although I haven't mentioned it yet, that at the end of his autographs, Haydn nearly always wrote Laus Deo, 'Praise God'. But in Op 20, each quartet has its own variation of this, progressively more flowery;

The first one, #5, starts out in the normal way: Laus Deo

The second, #6, becomes: Laus Deo et Beatissimae Virgini Mariae

#2 - Laus Omnip. Deo – Sic fugit amicus amicum (Praise God Almighty - Thus friend flies from friend)

#3 - Laus Deo et B.V.M. cum O.s St.s (Praise God and the Blessed Virgin Mary with all the Saints)

#4 - Gloria in excelsis Deo

#1 - Soli Deo et cuique suum (To God alone and to each his own)

It would be an oversight to not realize that Haydn was a sincerely religious man. By no means does this mean he wrote religiously inspired music, but his motivations for writing, completely his own, may well have stemmed far more from his love of his religion than from his dedication to his Prince. However that may be, the result for us is music which poured forth from his deepest feelings, and this is the real reason why they always ring true. And none truer than these.

Thanks for reading!