In the years since the Second World War, Haydn's music has undergone a radical re-appraisal. Scholars such as H.C. Robbins-Landon and David Schroeder have challenged what were once received ideas. The image of "Papa Haydn", "Father of the Symphony", a benign old craftsman whose innovations paved the way for the revolutionary genius of Mozart and Beethoven, but whose own music was no more than "charming" or "playful" has yielded to a more dynamic picture. We can appreciate now that the true "fathers" of the symphony were the composers of the Mannheim school, while recognising that Haydn first brought the form to its full potential - and research has shown that the "paternal", "conservative" Haydn was actually a progressive and sophisticated thinker, a freemason and the owner of a library of banned philosophical texts. More importantly for his music, he can now be seen as a radical, dazzlingly inventive figure - his innovations and experiments in form , harmony and thematic transformation surpassing Mozart and surpassed only by Beethoven. And if he is no longer called "Father of the Symphony", so his unquestioned achievement as "Father of the String Quartet" is all the more recognised. As the violinist Hans Keller writes "so far as the art of string quartet writing is concerned, he was not only the first, but actually turned what seemed an unpromising medium into what was to become the most expressive form of western instrumental composition – and it became that in his own hands too!"

Haydn's Opus 76 string quartets, a set of six works, were written between 1796 and 1799 and dedicated to Count Joseph Erdödy. The Opus 76 quartets are the culmination of the classical string quartet and of the numerous phases in Haydn’s artistic development. They combine to perfection the intimate dialogue and wit of the Opus 33 quartets, the thematic rigour and instrumental virtuosity of the Opus 50, 54, 55 and 64 quartets(written for the violinist Johann Tost) and the symphonic sweep and drama of the Opus 71 and 74 sets, written with a view to public performance in London-and without any audible effort. Of the set, Nos. 2, 3and 4, the three "named" works, are amongst the most popular of all string quartets, and of these, none demonstrates better than Op.76/2 the originality and power of Haydn's mature imagination. It is based in D minor, a key in which Haydn wrote a series of terse, dramatic works (the Quartet Op.42 and the "Nelson" Mass for example) and it balances intense thematic rigour with widely contrasting emotions. The work takes its nickname from the opening theme of the first movement, with its descending intervals of a fifth. In canon, inversion, fugato and the full range of musical transformations, they permeate this impassioned movement, which, at the height of its development explores strange, pungent harmonies, unprecedented in Haydn's output. The Andante gives relief; a graceful siciliano-like theme, accompanied, as if a serenasde, by pizzicato lower strings, provides the basis of a series of ornate variations, set in a warm D major. The Menuetto reverts to D minor severity; sometimes called the "Witches' Minuet", it is written in strict canon, the two violins preceding the lower pair of instruments in the sparsest anfd yet most intense minuet ever written. The propulsive Trio prefigures Beethoven. The finale, Vivace assai, also opens in the minor key, and, like the opening movement is fiery and brilliantly inventive. The climax of the movement resolves into D major and the quartet speeds to an optimistic, major-key close - not so much a conventional "happy ending" after the storm and stress of the earlier movements, but an expression of the Enlightenment ideal of unity, in which darkness and light are but different sides of the same coin when ordered by perfect Reason.

R.Bratby 1998


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