John Sichel's Program Notes April 21-22, 2001 Haydn, String Quartet in A, opus 20 #6

Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809): String Quartet in A, opus 20 #6

 The six quartets published by Haydn as his opus 20 are often referred to as the “Sun Quartets,” because of a sunburst-shaped designed on the title page of an early edition.  This name is strangely apt, because the quartets represent the dawn of an art form.  But for a few accidental pieces here and there Haydn virtually invented the ensemble, and was the first to use the term “string quartet” to describe it.  In his first few sets of string quartets-- the opus 1, opus 2, opus 3 (attributed to Haydn, but frequently thought to be by someone else), opus 9 and opus 17-- he not only invented the ensemble but perfected what was to become the standard 4-movement form of the music written for it.  The Opus 20 set was written in 1772 as the composer was coming into his full powers, and is commonly held to be his breakthrough work in the genre he pioneered.
 These works were written during the so-called “Strum und Drang” period, an episode within the classical period in which a fashion developed for expressions of stormy and turbulent emotions (coinciding roughly with the Haydn symphonies of the middle and late 40’s).  Minor keys, generally rare in the classical period, were briefly fashionable and Haydn’s opus 20 shows a strong predilection for minor keys (though not in tonight’s #6).  The opus 20 quartets also show a new level of interest in contrast, contrast in textures, dynamics, registers, etc., and contrast was to become a hallmark of Haydn’s style, a boundless source of musical energy.
 One interesting hallmark of the opus 20 group is their use of complicated contrapuntal techniques, particularly fugues, as in the last movement of tonight’s work.  In general, the classical audiences did not favor contrapuntal complexity, though there were always a few pedantic composer types who like to perpetuate the form.  In the hands of lesser composers fugues or fugato passages could sound like empty headwork, an intellectually respectable way of passing the time (“uh oh, out of ideas...time to press the fugue button!”).  In the music of the greats, however, contrapuntal complexity seems to fill an emotional need (such as emotional intensity in Beethoven, or exultant joy in Mozart).  In Haydn, Opus 20, the fugues are reserved for the fourth movements, and create a sense of energy and power, adding emotional and intellectual weight to the finale, which in his previous quartets had been more lightweight.  Thus a new sense of rhetorical balance is achieved.
 One other important feature of the opus 20 quartets, which is well served by  fugal procedures, is a move away from a texture of first violin plus accompaniment , typical in earlier quartets, and towards a more equal sharing of importance among the instruments.  The cello, in particular, is freed from its basso continuo roots and given more rhetorical weight.  This is understandable in what was, after all, a genre geared towards amateur musicians, as opposed to audiences.  Quartets were intended as home entertainment for music lovers, not as high art for passive ears.  If the first violin has all the fun, getting 3 friends together to make music with would be a lot harder: who would want to come over just to play accompaniments?  In Opus 20 #6, this stylistic evolution can be clearly heard. The first and second movements feature the leader of the ensemble, but by the fugue everyone gets in on the act, everyone has fun, and everyone gets to make great music.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet in C, k. 465 (the “Dissonance”)
 Now when the Haydn was in Vienna, and wanted to have a “quartet party,” as they used to call it, he, as the most famous musician of his time, had the cachet to get together not just a bunch of amateurs, but a group of first-rate professionals.  For his second violin he had access to a leading Viennese composer, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf.  For his cellist he called upon another fine musician, the composer Johann Vanhal.  For his violist he chose Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  The thought of those two giants playing quartets together, reading down their respective new charts, makes one want to go out and invent time travel.  And, unlike many well acquainted pairs of great composers they actually valued each other’s gifts and enjoyed each other’s company.  After one of these quartet sessions Haydn is supposed to have said to Mozart’s father, “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either personally or by reputation-- he has taste and, moreover, the greatest possible knowledge of the science of composition.”  Mozart, who assimilated everything he heard into his own style, in his turn, was constantly showing his admiration from Haydn by modeling his instrumental works after those of the older master.  Haydn’s opus 20 quartets prompted him to write six of his own (K numbers 168-173) which show him assimilating Haydn’s innovations in the field.  And Haydn’s opus 33 quartets prompted a new set of six, which Mozart dedicated to Haydn, sending him the manuscript copy and assigning all the rights  to him-- a princely gesture from a composer who had little tolerance for most of his colleagues. 
 In the letter accompanying the music, Mozart called the quartets the result of “long and arduous labor” and so they were, especially for this phenomenon of nature from whom music usually flowed like water  from an open fire hydrant.  He wrote the six Haydn quartets over the course of three years (by comparison he wrote The Marriage of Figaro and his great c minor piano concerto [K. 491] in two months) and the number of false starts, erasures and alterations in the score bespeak the effort and care involved.  While the string quartet was always to remain a difficult genre for him, these six quartets mark the arrival on the scene of one of the giants of the field, and none of them is as fascinating a work as the last of the set, his Quartet in C, K. 465, which we hear tonight.
 This quartet bears an interesting nickname “The Dissonant.”  One often hears listeners bandying that word about, without knowing it’s specific meaning.  A dissonance is any sound that is unstable and requires resolution.  By this definition, Mozart’s music abounds in dissonances, as does almost all good music, but in this particular quartet the word really comes closer to the public definition (something that sounds wrong), resulting from the shocking sonority which occurs in the second bar, caused by what is called a false relation: A natural in the first violin succeeding Ab in the viola.  This startling effect sets the stage for a quartet which abounds in dissonances, sudden key changes and surprising chromatic effects.
 Usually in classical music, such chromatic effects are connected with emotional extremes (such as terror, anger, madness, etc.  Consider the Schnittke Quintet coming up on this program), but this quartet, except for the somber introduction to the first movement, is really quite an easygoing work.  Mozart’s less discerning contemporaries saw this contradiction as evidence of Mozart’s lack of taste (they never spoke to Haydn about it) and complained about his love of complicated effect for its own sake (as the Emporer Josef II is famously supposed to have said,“too many notes, my dear Mozart”).  In fact these Philistines were right, in a way: he did love complexity and compositional sleight of hand for its own sake: witness the exultation in contrapuntal wizardry so compelling in the finale of the “Jupiter” Symphony.  The Dissonant Quartet similarly revels in peppery harmonic effects...so that its joyous tone, in context, seems perfectly appropriate.