String Quartet in F major, Op.77, No.2 (Hob.III.82) [1800]

Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

String Quartet in F major, Op.77, No.2 (Hob.III.82) [1800]

Allegro moderato

Menuetto: presto ma non troppo

Andante

Finale: vivace assai

After his return to Vienna from his second visit to London in 1795 Haydn devoted himself almost exclusively to large-scale vocal music: the last six Masses and the two great oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons, were all written within the next seven years. Happily, however, although he refused to undertake any more symphonies or sonatas, he was still interested in the string quartet. He supplied Count Erdödy with a full set of six quartets in no more than a few months in 1797 and two years later he undertook to write another set for Prince Lobkowitz - although in this case, his time and his energy having been consumed by problems with The Seasons, he had to give up half way though the third work in the series.

“Gone is all my strength,” he wrote on the last page of his unfinished last quartet in 1803, “old and weak am I.” But he was surely not short of ideas. Certainly, there is no sign of decline in the two Lobkowitz Quartets he had found time to complete three years earlier. In the old-fashioned graciousness of its double-dotted opening theme, the first movement of the Quartet in F major, Op.77 No.2, must have seemed fairly conventional to Haydn’s contemporaries, while those who knew the composer well would not have been surprised to hear a close variant of the same theme presented by the second violin as a second subject. But Haydn is interested not so much in those events as in the activity that comes between them - the vigorous exchange of semi-quaver runs between first violin and viola and the curiously obsessive repeated notes spreading through the ensemble from cello upwards. The development section is devoted almost exclusively to that apparently less engaging material, which actually turns out to be so gripping that it leads the tonality through an extraordinary series of enharmonic modulations. A general pause is necessary to clear the air before the recapitulation can graciously begin.

Although it is labelled as a Menuetto the second movement is an unmistakable and ingeniously contrived scherzo, its duple-time main theme wittily contradicting the underlying triple-time metre and so generating all kinds of rhythmic anomalies. The smoothly articulated Trio, which is often taken at a slightly slower tempo, usefully offsets the eccentricities on either side of it.

Those who knew Haydn would not have been surprised either to find that the slow movement is based on just one theme. But is it really a slow movement, or a march perhaps, or something in between? And is it a theme and variations or a rondo or, again, something in between? The Andante theme, which is introduced by the first violin mezzo voce over the regular tread of the cello, might be better described as a stroll than as a march. Whatever it is, its melodic interest is such that, given the abundant variety of contrapuntal and harmonic treatment Haydn applies to its seductively drawn line, it can safely be presented several times over, most effectively of all perhaps by the cello - but only until it is interrupted by a dramatic cadenza from a first violin eager to undertake one more, very quiet, statement of the theme.

Haydn’s last quartet finale - if, that is, the two Op.77 works were written in the order in which they were published - is also one of his most brilliant. Another monothematic construction, it is so resourcefully put together, with all four instruments tirelessly involved in unfailingly imaginative contrapuntal activity, that it seems that there is just no room for any other subject than the bright little tune introduced by the first violin in the opening bars and the impulsive polonaise rhythm that goes with it.

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

String Quartet No.3 [1927]

Prima parte: moderato -

Seconda parte: allegro -

Ricapitulazione della prima parte - moderato -

Coda: allegro molto

When Bartók left Hungary for a tour of America in 1927 he took with him his recently completed Third String Quartet in the intention of entering it for a competition organised by the Music Fund Society of Philadelphia. Much to his delight, tempered a little perhaps by having to share the rewards with Alfredo Casella, it won a joint first prize. Welcome though the prize money of 3,000 dollars was to a composer who was always short of funds, it must have been just as pleasing to receive such tangible encouragement on the strength of a score which was among the most radical of any he had written so far.

In his First and Second Quartets Bartók had been able, with increasing difficulty, to reconcile his style with conventional forms. By 1927, when his new language was fully developed and when he had clearly decided to extend the sound of the string quartet as drastically has he had extended that of the piano in Out of Doors in 1926, he was on his own. The lasting solution he was to work out a year later in the symmetrical arch-shape or concentric construction formed by the five movements of his Fourth Quartet - an arrangement which he found so satisfactory that he could use it again, with a little internal reorganisation, in the Fifth Quartet in 1934. The Third Quartet, though presented in one continuous movement, is an approach to the same kind of construction. The central point in this case is what he calls the “second part,” which is framed on one side by the “first part” and on the other by the “recapitulation of the first part.” The “coda,” though an anomaly as far as the symmetry is concerned, is an appendage necessary for the working out of the material.

It is characteristic of Bartók at this period that the most memorable and attractive version of the main theme of the Prima parte he reserves until near the end. That event is, in fact, the goal of a variation process that starts in the opening bars where the basic motif, a rising fourth and a falling third, is actually hidden from the ear. As it is gradually revealed, it generates more and more melodic interest, the most vivid of its early manifestations being on an emphatic viola in canon with first violin. A general pause precedes the introduction of a second kind of material, an eerie night-music episode of violins uttering insect sounds pianissimo and sul ponticello over a muted ostinato (based on the basic motif) on viola and cello. The night music merges with another new string-quartet sound in the middle of the movement, where massive chord clusters equivalent to those scored for piano in Out of Doors mark the central climax. The melodic transfiguration of the main theme, which appears in lyrical octaves on second violin and viola between plucked chords and bagpipe drones on first violin and cello, occurs just before the transition into the quicker second part of the work.

The Seconda parte is much less evasive about the identity of its thematic material. Against a prolonged trill on second violin, the viola whispers a rising chromatic phrase (quasi glissando) and the cello introduces a rudimentary dance tune in double-stopped pizzicato harmonies. That, basically, is the source of all the developments that follow in a continuous process of variation. The first and most extended of them is a rhythmically ingenious peasant dance evolved out of the cello tune and introduced by first violin while the second violin sustains its trill (which must be one of the longest in musical history) and cello and viola pluck an off-beat accompaniment. The most intense, which begins at the height of a series of accelerations in tempo, is a hectic but lightly articulated fugue beginning on second violin, which passes the subject of running semiquavers to cello, viola, and first violin in turn. It leads eventually, as the tempo falls again, into a recall of the pizzicato cello tune and, with another acceleration, an extraordinary passage of glissando exclamations in contrary motion at all levels of the texture.

The Ricapitulazione della prima parte is not so much a recapitulation of the first part as a comparatively brief review of it from a different point of view. The basic motif is so expanded, on the first entry of the cello, that it is scarcely recognisable. The staccato chattering of the night music, on the other hand, is unmistakable, even when it is deliberately hammered out at the heel of the bow on all four instruments just before the end of this section.

Although the pizzicato cello tune of the Seconda parte was recapitulated, the peasant dance was not. It is the latter material which, after a swirling sul ponticello introduction, becomes the main subject of the Coda. A brilliantly conceived combination of thematic development and cumulative exhilaration, provoking double-stopped glissando wails of excitement on viola and cello, it secures an ending that is both structurally convincing and physically irresistible.