Quartet in F major, Op.77/2
Allegro moderato
Menuet: Presto
Andante
Finale: Vivace assai
Haydn’s chamber music could be said to be the victim of its own success. Huge lists of music languish unplayed –some, like the 126 trios for Baryton, viola and bass, because the instrument for which they were written has vanished from musical life, yet more often, as with the majority of his 61 keyboard sonatas, and 29 piano trios, because the sheer number of works has prevented more than a handful from becoming well-known. This seems to have been the case with the string quartets. At current reckoning, Haydn wrote some 68 surviving string quartets, of which 46 have been described by the violinist and scholar Hans Keller as ‘absolutely flawless, consistently original master-quartets, each a multi-dimensional contrast to any of the others’. Faced with this embarrassment of riches, it’s hardly surprising that players and audiences have largely stuck with a select group of ‘celebrated’ quartets, most often with memorable names-the "Joke", the "Lark", the "Fifths", "Emperor" and "Sunrise", and all too few others. Yet every one of Haydn’s mature quartets is a masterpiece as perfect in form and inspiration, as brilliantly original, as any of these - or any other great quartet, whether by Beethoven, Schubert or even Mozart. Such an achievement is without parallel in music - Haydn’s artistic development was such that, even as he reaped the benefit of decades of technical experience, his inspiration grew still fresher and more youthful.
All of which makes the relative neglect of Haydn’s last completed quartet, Op.77/2, the more disappointing. Keller tells how, in a Royal Academy of Music exam, he was given the first violin part of this quartet as a sight-reading test. The examiners simply assumed that he would never have seen the piece. Matters have certainly improved since then, but the stature of this magnificent quartet, the culmination of a 44-year career, is still not fully reflected in the frequency with which it is performed. It was originally planned as one of six quartets commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz, the Viennese nobleman who was later to be so generous a patron of Beethoven. Haydn commenced work in mid -1799 but found his strength flagging – he was 67 years old, and was also struggling with his final oratorio, "The Seasons". He completed two quartets and the two inner movements of a third, but the task was too great and by 1806 he conceded defeat, publishing the final fragment as Op.103 and appending to it the sad motto "Gone is all my strength, old and weak am I". The two completed quartets had been published as Op.77 in 1802.
The Op.77 quartets are "old man’s music" only in the most literal sense. There is no frailty, weakness or compromise in either work; Haydn is at the peak of his inspiration and technique. Throughout Op.77/2 he experiments boldly with tonality and metre; after writing 66 string quartets he is still capable of writing four movements unlike any others in his output. Strokes of imagination and resoucefulness abound; the second theme of the first movement Allegro moderato, for example, is simply the opening theme expanded, re-scored and decorated. The development section of this movement moves into harmonic regions far darker than any explored by Haydn’s pupil Beethoven in his near-contemporary Op.18 quartets; in this respect, at least, Haydn’s age and experience show through. Haydn places his Minuet second, as if to point out that it is a Minuet only in name; as in the Op.33 quartets, where he also employs this layout, the second movement is truly a scherzo, with its brilliant rhythmic tricks and playful imitation of orchestral timpani. The central trio section drops into the distant key of D flat major; its serene and tender music is the perfect foil to the wit and high spirits on either side. The Andante, in D major, has been described as part-rondo, part-variations – it eludes definition but is simply the perfect form for its wonderfully measured material. First stated as a simple duet for violin and ‘cello, Haydn achieves one of his most magical effects simply by the quiet manner in which the remainder of the quartet join in at the end of the initial statement. Steadily and calmly the movement builds toward the moment when, as Rosemary Hughes puts it "the tireless tread falls silent, and the music rises, over slowly-shifting harmonies, to its great cadenza-like climax – a moment of vision on which the return of the melody in its initial simplicity sets the seal of truth". Haydn opens his last quartet finale with a chord and a dance-theme of such metric ingenuity that, Keller suggests, a modern composer might have written it out in three different time-signatures! This last Allegro assai has all the energy and playfulness of the typical Haydn finale, but here poured into one of his most complex and closely-worked sonata movements. This gives it an unusual breadth and intensity – one hesitates to say finality, for, as this quartet gives supreme proof, although Haydn’s body was exhausted when he wrote this music, his creative imagination was brighter and more powerful than ever.
R. G. Bratby
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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