The String Quartets Op. 54 Nos. 4 - 6

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 invitee^ his parish priest, his estates manager, Haydn and Albrechtsberger, brother of the famous contrapuntist, in order to have a little music. Furnberg asked Hayan 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 qu.utet 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 "cassations" or divertimenti a quattro, as the composer dubbed them, well deserved their 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 textures, which are sometimes more characteristic of orchestral music — indeed, three of the works published in Op.1 and Op.2 sets (Op.1 no.5 and Op.2 nos.3 and 5) are not genuine string quartets at all, but adapted from works for larger ensemble (and consequently omitted from the present recording). But the exuberance and melodic freshness of these early quartets already mark out the young composer as someone special; so, too, do their fondness for irregular phrase-lengths, their lively sense of ensemble and their sense of fun, most obvious in movements like the Presto scherzo of Op.1 no.3, with its impish, quickfire repartee between first violin and viola on the one hand and second violin and cello on the other — the kind of piece that prompted po-faced North German critics to accuse Haydn of "debasing the art with comic fooling". The adagios, invariably conceived as quasi-operatic arias for the first violin, are often touching in their innocence and candour; that of Op.1 no.4, with its shy, con sordino echoes from the second violin, is particularly charming. Framing the slow movements (except in Op.1 no.3 and Op.2 no.6, which open with an adagio) are two distinctive minuets, the first a leisurely minuetto galante, the second brisker and earthier, sometimes, as in Op.1 no.1, featuring the rough, sansculotte two part counterpoint and octave doublings that are feature of Haydn´s later minuets right through to the Op.76 quartets.