Haydn: String Quartet in C major, Op 20, No. 2
Haydn’s landmark Opus 20 quartets represent a laboratory of sorts in which coalesced the techniques and relationships that would govern string quartet writing for centuries to come. The scholar Ron Drummond asserts, “This cannot be overstated: the six string quartets of Opus 20 are as important in the history of music, and had as radically a transforming effect on the very field of musical possibility itself, as Beethoven's Third Symphony would 33 years later.” And Sir Donald Tovey concurs: "Every page of the six quartets of op. 20 is of historic and aesthetic importance... there is perhaps no single or sextuple opus in the history of instrumental music which has achieved so much.”
But for all his innovation in this set, Haydn is not immune to influence himself. His use in the opening bars of the C major Quartet of the cello as a bearer of melodic material suggests the influence of Boccerini’s contemporary cello-heavy quartets. With its slow harmonic motion and delayed first violin entrance, this opening Moderato sees a leisurely pace of musical development that lends a pastoral spaciousness, one that is enhanced by the movement’s central “bird call” motive. The second movement’s striking preponderance of unisons and octaves creates a hollow sonority that vaguely evokes music of yesteryear — chant, maybe, or Greek dramatic chorus, or most probably, a recitative style of early opera. Sure enough, Haydn creates operatic character development through the contrasting textures of the cello theme muddied by sixteenth notes versus the lone violin aria without cover from the rest of the ensemble. The musette style of the Menuetto channels a folksy bagpipe, made more so by the clumsiness of obscured bar lines. The intricate four-subject fugue that follows snowballs elegantly until the voices erupt into sixteenth notes and chase each other to the end.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival
Haydn’s landmark Opus 20 quartets represent a laboratory of sorts in which coalesced the techniques and relationships that would govern string quartet writing for centuries to come. The scholar Ron Drummond asserts, “This cannot be overstated: the six string quartets of Opus 20 are as important in the history of music, and had as radically a transforming effect on the very field of musical possibility itself, as Beethoven's Third Symphony would 33 years later.” And Sir Donald Tovey concurs: "Every page of the six quartets of op. 20 is of historic and aesthetic importance... there is perhaps no single or sextuple opus in the history of instrumental music which has achieved so much.”
But for all his innovation in this set, Haydn is not immune to influence himself. His use in the opening bars of the C major Quartet of the cello as a bearer of melodic material suggests the influence of Boccerini’s contemporary cello-heavy quartets. With its slow harmonic motion and delayed first violin entrance, this opening Moderato sees a leisurely pace of musical development that lends a pastoral spaciousness, one that is enhanced by the movement’s central “bird call” motive. The second movement’s striking preponderance of unisons and octaves creates a hollow sonority that vaguely evokes music of yesteryear — chant, maybe, or Greek dramatic chorus, or most probably, a recitative style of early opera. Sure enough, Haydn creates operatic character development through the contrasting textures of the cello theme muddied by sixteenth notes versus the lone violin aria without cover from the rest of the ensemble. The musette style of the Menuetto channels a folksy bagpipe, made more so by the clumsiness of obscured bar lines. The intricate four-subject fugue that follows snowballs elegantly until the voices erupt into sixteenth notes and chase each other to the end.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival