WETA FM 90.9 Blog

Writing for the string quartet forces the composer to focus on the essentials of what makes classical music: “Melody, Rhythm, Harmony, and Counterpoint”. (Georg Feder) There is no room to hide, no place to take cover behind the splendor of massive sounds, no opportunity to dazzle with effects. It’s the composer laid bare and therefore the string quartet is, rightly, considered the most noble of genres in classical music; the royal discipline of the art of composing.

Goethe agrees, and his eminently quotable judgment (in a letter to Friedrich Zelter from 1829) of the quartet is worth repeating, no matter how many times it’s been dug up before: “The string quartet is the most comprehensible genre of instrumental music. One hears four intelligent people conversing with one another, believes one might learn something from their discourse and recognize the special characteristics of their instruments.”

The idea of communication and dialog among the instruments is about as old as the genre itself (Haydn’s op.1 was already published as “Quatuors dialogues” in France). The notable aspect of conversation does not so much stem from the equal treatment of all four voices as it does from the flexibility in which each voice is endowed with more and less important material. A fugue, after all the musical form in which each voice is absolutely equal, does not remind us of a civilized conversation… it’s more a chorus that forges harmony out of structure and sameness. And four voices equally having something to say without regard to who says what, or when, sounds more like a Sunday morning political talk show than a civilized conversation.

It is precisely the skill of letting each voice take its turn, for them to respond to one another, to reply, and to have voices take a back seat when others have their turn, some being more vocal, others more likely to nod in agreement: all that makes for the appeal of a quartet. It’s like a throwback to times when the most lucid point won the argument, not he or she who could yell the loudest, most persistently. No one—pace Luigi Boccherini—has done more to establish this art form than Joseph Haydn, the 200^th anniversary of whose death we remember today, Sunday, May 31^st.

With 69 ½ string quartets* plus the Seven Last Words in their—by now most popular—version, Haydn left as an enormous body of work that traces the string quartet from its very inception to something near its perfection. Between op.1 and op.20, Haydn establishes the form; from then on he expands and refines it.

The string quartets start with the ten works grouped (by the publishers, not Haydn) as op.1 and op.2, which are still called “Quartet Divertimentos”**, where Haydn begins to take the trio sonata by the hand (with the cello largely doubling the viola) and leads it to a four-voiced style which, by the time he reaches op. 20, largely means an increased independence of (and melody-duties for) the cello. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore these early quasi-quartets quite as much as we do. So far they only ever get their due in “complete” recordings—of which there are now seven (!) completed or near completion. Indeed, they would do very nicely, loosely sprinkled through quartet recital programs. (Especially after another Brahms-quartet-attack just forcefully reasserted that classical music need not be fun to be great.)

It’s hard to find all of op.1 (nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 0, and 6) outside a complete set. The excellent Petersen Quartet (Capriccio) comes to mind, or else individual CD releases from sets of the Kodály- (Naxos) and Buchberger- (Brilliant) quartets, or—my choice (and most economical, when it will finally be distributed in the US)—the Auryn Quartet (Tacet) who are very promisingly working on their complete cycle, sorted and released by Haydn’s own groupings. Until then, op.1 is one of the discs where the Kodály Quartet is at its most competitive; especially in the slow movements which are wonderfully ‘carried’ by the more resonant, less intimate acoustic. Just listening to the opening Adagio of op.1, no.3 should convince anyone that these are five (six) ‘worthies’.

* This counts the 10 early quartets (opp. 1 & 2), the six each of opp.9, 17, 20, 33, 50, 54 & 55, 64, 71 & 74, 76, the two from op.77 as well as the quartet usually called “op.1, no.0”, op.42, as well as the incomplete, two movements of op.103.

** Haydn used that term up to and including op.20.

This is continued by “The String Quartets (Part 2)” and “The String Quartets (Part 3)”

See also:
Haydn 2009 – The Seven Last Words
Haydn 2009 – Fricsay’s Symphonies
Haydn 2009 – Minetti Quartet(t)
Haydn 2009 – Harmoniemesse