The String Quartets Op. 9 Nos. 1 - 4

Abstract

If the old cliche of Haydn as "the father of the symphony" no longer holds good, his status as the father of the string quartet has never been seriously challenged. Not that he composed the first string quartet of all: before Haydn alighted on the genre some time in the late 1750s, there had been spasmodic examples of divertimentos for two solo violins, viola and cello by such Viennese composers as Ignaz Holzbauer and Georg Christoph Wagenseil; and there had long existed a tradition of performing orchestral works with one instrument to a part. But these older composers showed no interest in exploring the potential of the string quartet as a medium. And it fell to Haydn who, by his own admission, stumbled on the form "by accident", to raise the string quartet from its humble beginnings in the outdoor serenade to a vehicle for the most sophisticated and challenging musical discourse. The birth of the form One of Haydn's early biographers, Georg Griesinger, gives an account of the chance circumstances that led him to try his hand at string quartets. A Baron Furnberg had an estate in Weinzierl, several staging posts from

Vienna; and from time to time he invited his parish priest, his estates manager, Haydn and Albrechtsberger, brother of the famous contrapuntist, in order to have a little music. Furnberg asked Haydn to write something for these four friends of the art. Haydn, who was then eighteen years old, accepted this proposal, and originated his first quartet, which was praised immediately after its appearance. This encouraged him to produce more works in this field. Griesinger, relying on Haydn's memory nearly half a century after the event, got the date wrong: Furnberg's summer quartet parties almost certainly took place in the years between 1757, when Haydn was twenty-five, and 1759; and some of the earliest string quartets — the works published as Op.1 and Op.2, plus the E flat quartet known as Op.O, which went missing until the 1930s — may even have been written as late as 1761-62, after Haydn's appointment as vice-Kapellmeister to the Esterhazy family. Whatever their precise dating, these little I "cassations'* or divertimenti a quattro, as the composer dubbed them, well deserved the early popularity. Their succession of five compact movements and air of breezy, alfresco cheerfulness are typical of Austrian serenade music of the time, as are their :extures, which are sometimes more characteristic of orchestral music — indeed three of the works published in Oc.T arc Op.2 sets (Op.1 no.5 and Op.2 nos.3 and 5) are not genuine string quartets a: a btfl adapted from works for larger erse~oe and consequently omitted from the present ecording). But the exuberance and melodic freshness of these early quartets already mark out the young composer as someone soecial; so, too, do their fondness for regular phrase-lengths, their lively sense of ensemble and their sense of fun. most :ovious in movements like the Presto scherzo of Op.1 no.3, with its impish, cuickfire repartee between first violin and .'iola on the one hand and second vor grc cello on the other — the kind of piece that orompted po-faced North German critics IB accuse Haydn of "debasing the ar .VT :cmic fooling". The adagios, invariably conceived as quasi-operatic arias for the • -st violin, are often touching in their nnocence and candour; that of Op.1 noA .vith its shy, con sordino echoes from the second violin, is particularly charming, -raming the slow movements (except ifi Op.1 no.3 and Op.2 no.6, which open «A an adagio) are two distinctive minuets. *m ■ rst a leisurely minuetto aalante. the, second brisker and earthier, sometimes, as in Op. 1 no .1, feuturing the rough, sansculotte two part counterpoint and octave doubling that are a feauture of Hydn´s later minutes right trough to the Op. 76 quartets.