The history of music changed on May 1st 1761, when
Franz Joseph Haydn (or Joseph Haydn, as he would simply call himself)—born of peasants in rural Austria, ex-choirboy at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and subsequently leading a hand-to-mouth existence as more or less a Viennese street musician— was engaged as assistant
kapellmeister in the service of Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy, head of the great landed families of the Hungarian branch of the Habsburg Empire. By thirty years later, in the service of three different princes of that family, Haydn would be the most famous and respected composer in Europe, outliving his dear and younger friend, Mozart, and accepting commissions from as far away as London, Naples, Paris and Spain. In the ensuing decades of unceasing labor for the Esterhazy court—turning out a seemingly endless cycle of symphonies, operas, chamber music, incidental music for plays, even music for the family’s beloved marionette theater—Haydn would literally invent a new genre, transforming what were loosely called
divertimenti, for two violins and bass, into what we call the string quartet.
The listing of Opus 9 and Opus 17, from 1770 and 1771 mark the assured beginning of Haydn’s journey with the form, each opus containing six divertimenti for two violins, viola and cello, in which the influences of both the Italian late Baroque, the French galant style and the music of Carl Philip Emanuel Bach are wonderfully in evidence. But it is with the six Opus 20 Quartets, printed in 1774—which as Haydn himself would say to his publisher, were composed “in a new and original manner” —that Haydn enters his celebrated “middle period”, with six bona-fide string quartets which move on from the galant and Rococo styles and now express the new Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) style that was suddenly taking over German theater and literature, with its emphasis on originality over imitation, and passion over politeness. Dubbed by their publisher the “Sun-Quartets”, they truly represented a new dawn in German music, in which French rationalism and Rococo elegance (let us never forget that the string section of Haydn’s tiny but virtuosic orchestra at Eszterhaza was led by the immortal Italian violinist, Luigi Tomasini) would collide in conversation with a more natural range of expression. As Melvin Berger noted, here for the first time were “large, fully mature works, showing Haydn as a true master of the new quartet form”. As Keith Horner would write, in his notes for the St. Lawrence Quartet:
“The [Third] G-minor quartet opens in a serious vein. Its G-minor theme is purposeful and unusually constructed (seven plus seven bars, not the customary symmetrical eight-bar phrases). Haydn devotes great attention to the development of fragments of themes. He explores a wide range of emotions, from stirring fanfares that seem to call the audience to attention to the gentlest whispers of a theme. It is a long way from the graceful, untroubled rococo style of his earliest quartets. The second movement is a minuet, but the mood is a far cry from the genteel elegance of the courtly minuet. It’s in the minor key for one thing. And the theme is again unusually balanced (five plus five bars). The mood is poignant, although there is some relaxation of its dark emotions in the contrasting trio section. The movement ends on a troubled note. After a solemn, dignified slow movement in the major key, Haydn returns to the earnest intensity of the opening, and the finale ends with a sigh rather than a flourish.”
Composed between 1938 (soon after his public triumph and Soviet “rehabilitation” with the famous Symphony No.5) and just a few months before his death in 1975, the sixteen string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich—fifteen quartets completed, and a quartet-movement that was recently discovered—are the landmark of the chamber-music repertoire equivalent to the sixteen quartets of Beethoven in the early nineteenth century. The shortest of all of the Shostakovich quartets, the String Quartet No.7 unfolds in three compact movements; indeed it is as brief and elusive as his First Cello Concerto, written one year earlier in 1959, is monumental. As Jane Vial Jaffe eloquently noted in her notes for the Emerson Quartet:
“Shostakovich had set up a tonal structure for his cycle of quartets, intending to write one in each of the twenty-four keys. He placed each quartet a third below the previous, beginning with C major (C–A–F–D–B-flat–G), but he broke his scheme by choosing F-sharp minor for his Seventh. (He would resume with Nos. 8 and 9, but in reverse, C minor and E-flat, then continue without break through No. 15.) Commentators speculate that he associated F-sharp minor with the Quartet’s dedicatee, Nina, his first wife and mother of his two children; she had died six years previously from undetected colon cancer. He had recently extricated himself from his unfortunate second marriage of four years, and had perhaps grown nostalgic about his first wife. Nevertheless, their twenty-two year marriage had been anything but smooth, perhaps reflected in the work’s conflicting moods—impish, agitated, haunted, belligerent, and introspective.”
Attacca directives to the musicians keep the breaks between the work’s three movements to a minimum, creating the effect of one, overarching train of thought. The first movement begins with an impish enough theme, which then turns ominous, like a persistent knock on one’s door, so that now we are in that very familiar Shostakovich terrain: darkness, mockery, eeriness, and a hint of the grotesque. The movement ends with these tensions unresolved. The second movement is more openly expressive, with the second violin’s rocking arpeggios providing a gentle base for the the first violin’s lyrical theme; but those trademark groundswells of impending doom soon return, creating an overall unease. The little finale is as violent as the second movement is uneasy, with the music soon taking on the form of a manic, chaotic fugue. Suddenly, the first movement’s main theme reappears, with its original impishness now replaced by a heavy, mocking tone. But as Ms. Jaffe concludes, “miraculously, he then turns his fugue theme into a gentle, muted waltz. With a kind of nostalgic look at the impish material of the first movement, the piece dies away introspectively”, with a slow-motion version of that knock on the door.
– Alexander Platt
Benjamin Britten—who, with his partner Peter Pears, would spend the summer of 1939 living and working in Woodstock, along with their friends Aaron Copland and Victor Kraft—always knew that he wanted to make his living as a composer of music. In 1935, Britten got his first job, composing music for the GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit. He had the opportunity of working with painters, film directors, and poets, including W.H. Auden, who became a close friend and later a collaborator when both were in the United States. He began a five-movement string quartet—always intended not as a formal quartet in the style of Haydn but rather, a series of character-pieces—and then decided to cut two movements and settle on the remainder as Three Divertimenti for String Quartet. Though premiered in London shortly after its completion in 1936, it would not be published until 1983, six years after the composer’s death.
The work opens with a March, a genre Britten returned to very often during his career. Marked Allegro maestoso, the movement moves through a series of rising and falling lines that impel the music forward, with the raw sound of open fourths, like the open strings of the instruments that are heard when they are tuning up. In the Waltz (Allegretto), the first violin and viola play lyrical lines with pizzicato (plucked) accompaniment. The cello takes the lead, and the relaxed pace gives way to a somewhat hectic feeling. The final Burlesque is a fast (it’s marked Presto) playful romp, but with an edge. As with many of Britten’s works, a calm surface barely conceals a mysterious undercurrent.
Franz Schubert’s String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804 was published in 1824 as Op. 29, No. 1. It was to be a set of three, but the publisher decided against the others. The two rejected quartets—Death and the Maiden and the masterpiece in G major—are now among the most beloved chamber works of all time. This is the only string quartet that was published within the composer’s lifetime. The quartet was premiered in Vienna by the finest quartet in the city—the Schuppanzigh Quartet, led by famed violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh.
In the Allegro ma non troppo, the violin sings a poignant aria, starting with the notes of the descending A minor chord. The second violin provides a “spinning wheel” accompaniment. This theme is immediately developed, with alternations of major and minor treatments, as well as contrasts between lyrical sections and short but forceful musical exclamations. The descending triad is used as a unifying motif throughout the movement.
The slow movement (Andante) gives the quartet its nickname of “Rosamunde.” Schubert borrowed the gently dotted melody from one he composed as an entr’acte (music played between the acts of a stage performance) for the short-lived play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus. Once again, the song in the first violin is accompanied by faster notes in the second violin, emphasizing the innocent sweetness of the theme.
In the minuet movement (Menuetto: Allegretto), the cello sets an intense mood with a simple but dramatic three-note figure that is another self-quotation, this time from a Lied (art song) setting of a mournful Schiller poem. The central trio section, which often provides a more lively contrast to the minuet, is here more wistful than cheerful. One audience member at the premiere remarked that the whole piece was well received, especially the “extraordinarily tender” minuet.
Although the dynamic markings are piano and pianissimo for most of the Finale (Allegro moderato), this movement is enlivened by the strong dotted accents and the independence of the four instrumental lines.
– after Miriam Villchur Berg (2015)
