The six string quartets Op. 20 by Joseph Haydn are among the works that earned Haydn the sobriquet "the father of the string quartet".Adolfo Betti, "Quartet: its origins and development", in . The first use of this expression is earlier than this, but its origin is unknown. The quartets are considered a milestone in the history of composition; in them, Haydn develops compositional techniques that were to define the medium for the next 200 years.Ron Drummond, "An Essay Inspired by the Quartet for Strings in F Minor, Opus 20, No. 5", ClassicalNet (1999)Tovey, in Cobbett (1929), p. 533Pohl, in Grove's (1946), p. 583.Solomon (1980), p. 116.
The quartets were composed in 1772 at a time of tensions in Haydn's life, and also when Haydn was influenced by new philosophical and political ideas sweeping Europe. Some analysts see the impact of these emotions and ideas on the quartets.See, for example, Geiringer (1982), Tovey (1929).
The quartets
The set of quartets, along with their incipits are shown below in order of Haydn's own catalog [].Joseph Haydn, String Quartets Book IV, Op. 20 (Sun Quartets) (Urtext edition published by Henle, editors Sonja Gerlach, Georg Feder, 2009), ISMN M-2018-0208-4. The numbers assigned by the publisher J. J. Hummel and adopted by Hoboken, are not the order of composition. Nor is Haydn's order necessarily the order of the composition.
No. 1 in E major
No. 2 in C major
No. 3 in G minor
No. 4 in D major
No. 5 in F minor
No. 6 in A major
Composition
Haydn was 40 years old when he composed the opus 20 quartets and was already well-established as one of the leading composers of Europe.Geiringer (1982), pp. 57–74 He was Kapellmeister to the Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, a great lover of music. Haydn presided over the busy musical life of the court, producing operas, oratorios, and symphonic and chamber concerts, and writing a steady stream of new music for the prince's amusement.
Nikolaus had eight years prior to this date built the Eszterháza palace southeast of Vienna (in Hungary), where the court resided for most of the year. While the palace itself was one of the most splendid in Austria, and was dubbed the "Hungarian Versailles",Robbins Landon and Jones (1988), p. 95 it was built over a large swamp; it was humid throughout the year, with a "vexatious, penetrating north wind"from a letter by Haydn, quoted in Geiringer (1982), p. 60 from which Haydn and the other musicians in the court suffered. Moreover, it was far from Vienna, and the musicians (Haydn, as Kapellmeister, excepted) had to leave their wives and families behind for many months. Consequently, there was much discontent among the musicians, and Haydn, like the others, suffered from bouts of depression and illness.
This atmosphere found its expression in the opus 20 quartets. "The designation affettuoso found twice in the directions for the tempo of slow movements can be applied to the whole opus", writes Geiringer.Geiringer (1982), p. 257. Haydn chooses minor keys for two of the quartets, unusual in a time when the minor was rarely used for this ensemble. In particular, the fifth quartet is in the unusual key of F minor, "a key that predisposes even Haydn to sombre thoughts", writes Cobbett.Cobbett (1929), p. 546
But the sodden air of Eszterháza was not the only influence on the emotional character of the quartets. It was a time of ferment: new ideas that were to spur the Romantic movement in another 30 years were taking root. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau expounded a philosophy of human freedom and a return to nature. Poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller espoused the new Sturm und Drang movement, that "exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism"."Sturm und Drang", Britannica Online For Haydn, this meant the rejection of the galante style, the courtly, simplified, somewhat slender musical style prevalent at the time.
Analysts trace specific musical choices in the Opus 20 quartets to these new ideas. For example, the minuet movement of the D major quartet (number 4) is replaced by a frenetic gypsy air titled "alla zingarese", full of offbeat rhythms. "Rousseau's 'back to nature' movement resulted in a general reawakening of interest in national folk music. Haydn showed himself in complete sympathy with this tendency", writes Geiringer. Three of the six quartets have fugues as finales. Counterpoint, the densely complex style of the Baroque, had fallen out of favor with the galante composers. "To emphasize his rejection of rococo lightness, Haydn reverted to Baroque features", writes Geiringer.Geiringer (1982), p. 258
The opus 20 quartets were the third set of quartets Haydn wrote at Eszterháza.See List of string quartets by Joseph Haydn. His dedication to the string quartet form is something of a mystery; there is no record of a string quartet concert performed at the palace during this period. The set became known as the "Sun" quartets, because of the picture of a rising sun that graced the cover of an early editionGeiringer (1982), p. 256. The first known publication of the quartets was in 1774 by Louis-Balthazar de La Chevardière in Paris and later (undated, probably in the 1780s or 1790s) by Artaria in Vienna. The most commonly used Urtext edition is by Eulenburg, published in the 1880s.
Opus 20 and the development of the string quartet Assessment by music historians When Haydn published his opus 33 quartets, ten years after the opus 20, he wrote that they were composed in "an entirely new and particular manner".A letter from Haydn to his publisher Artaria, 1782, quoted in Geiringer (1982), p. 285. But, if the opus 33 was the culmination of a process, opus 20 was the proving ground. In this set of quartets, Haydn defined the nature of the string quartet – the special interplay of instruments that Goethe called "four rational people conversing".Christina Bashford, "The string quartet and society" in Stowell (2003), p. 4. The quote was from a letter to C. F. Zelter, November 9, 1829. Many of the compositional techniques used by composers of string quartets to the present day were tried out and perfected in these works.
"This cannot be overstated", writes Ron Drummond; "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 writes of the quartets, "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".
The musicologist Roger Hickman has demurred from this consensus view. He notes a change in string quartet writing towards the end of the 1760s, featuring characteristics which are to day thought of as essential to the genre - scoring for two violins, viola and cello, solo passages, and absence of actual or potential basso continuo accompaniment. Noting that at this time other composers were writing works conforming to these 'modern' criteria, and that Haydn's earlier quartets did not meet them, he suggests that "one casualty [of such a perspective] is the notion that Haydn "invented" the string quartet...Although he may still be considered the "father" of the "Classical" string quartet, he is not the creator of the string quartet genre itself...This old and otiose myth not only misrepresents the achievements of other excellent composers, but also distorts the character and qualities of Haydn's opp. 1, 2 and 9".
The musicologist Cliff Eisen contextualizes the op. 20 quartets as follows: "Haydn's quartets of the late 1760s and early 1770s [opp. 9, 17 and 20] are high points in the early history of the quartet. Characterized by a wide range of textures, frequent asymmetries and theatrical gestures...these quartets established the genre's four-movement form, its larger dimensions, and ...its greater aesthetic pretensions and expressive range."
Some of the innovations of Haydn's op. 20 quartets, as stated by Tovey and others, are as follows:
Use of counterpoint The fugal finales of three of the six quartets are Haydn's statement of rejection of the galante. Not only has Haydn rejected the freedom of the rococo style, he has emphasized that rejection by adhering to strict formality and writing comments into the score explaining the fugal structure. "Al rovescio" he writes at one point in the last movement of quartet number two, where the fugal melody is played in inversion. "In canone" he writes in the finale of number 5. The finale of number six is a "Fuga a 3 Soggetti" (a fugue with three fugal subjects).
The fugal finales are not mere formalism, however; Haydn clothes them in a dramatic structure suitable for the Sturm und Drang. All three movements start out sotto voce; as the fugue develops formally, the tension mounts, but Haydn does not increase the volume, until a sudden, startling burst of forte. "Haydn has, in the quartets of opus 20, a hint of the emotional and dramatic impulse which became so volcanic in Beethoven's fugues", writes Donald Tovey.Tovey, in Cobbett (1929), p. 535.
Haydn's fugal finales are not the only use of counterpoint in these quartets. Haydn revives Baroque compositional techniques in other movements as well. The opening of the second quartet is essentially contrapuntal, with the viola and the second violins playing countersubjects to the cello's principal melodic line. Haydn also uses more obscure techniques; in the adagio movement of the fifth quartet, for example, he writes at one point "per figuram retardationis", meaning that the melodic line in the first violin lags behind the harmonic changes in the accompaniment. "Enormous importance lies in these fugues", writes Tovey. "Besides achieving in themselves the violent reconquest of the ancient kingdom of polyphony for the string quartet, they effectively establish fugue texture from henceforth as a normal resource of sonata style".Tovey, in Cobbett (1929), p. 536. Equality of voices
Prior to opus 20, the first violin, or, sometimes, the two violins, dominated the quartet. The melody was carried by the leader, with the lower voices (viola and cello) accompanying. In opus 20, Haydn gives each instrument, and particularly the cello, its own voice.Tovey, in Cobbett (1929), p. 536. An outstanding example of this is the second quartet in C major. The quartet opens with a cello solo, accompanied by the viola and second violin. Another example is in the slow movement of the fourth quartet, in D major. This movement is a set of variations, written in D minor; the first variation is a duet between viola and second violin, and the third variation is a solo for cello.
According to Tovey, much of this equality of voices is achieved through the use of counterpoint. Fugue texture "is a most important resource as a type of instrumentation. Obviously it solves the problem of equality in quartet-writing by a drastic return to Nature, and puts the four instruments where the voices were when all harmony was counterpoint."Tovey, in Cobbett (1929), p. 536. However, some scholars argue by pointing to earlier works such as the Opus 5 string quartets (1756) of Franz Xaver Richter, Haydn was not the first to achieve such "equality of voices" in string quartets.
Structural innovations