String Quartet in B minor Op.33 No.1, Hob. III:37 (1781)

Haydn’s declaration that his Op.33 Quartets were “written in a quite new and special way” has aroused endless speculation as to what he could have meant by it. Some Haydn specialists have dismissed it as sales talk - the composer was looking for subscribers to an expensive “correctly copied” manuscript edition when he made that claim - while others have exercised their ingenuity in detecting technical features that are not apparent in the previous set. In fact, the most obvious difference between the Op.33 Quartets of 1781 and the Op.20 Quartets of 1772 is that the minuets have been replaced by scherzos. True, it amounts to little more than a change of name but it is no less significant than the disappearance of the fugal last movement. Both those things are part of a process of modernising the string quartet of making it less overtly serious, more entertaining, and more popular in melodic style.

That said, it has to be admitted that the first movement of Op.31 No.1 is a little old-fashioned in melodic style and rather austere in texture. What is new about it is that it begins, in a sense, with the second subject: the opening theme is initiated by the two violins not in B minor but in D major, the key which in a conventional B minor movement would be reserved for the second subject. Sure enough, after the entry of a robust new theme in the manner of a first subject on an emphatically double-stopped chord of B minor, the opening theme is reintroduced as a second subject in D major. Whatever it is, main theme or second subject or both at once, it dominates the development section. It also starts the recapitulation, again in D major, but then it disappears, leaving the robust B minor theme more room to expand and so retrieve the balance.

The Scherzando second movement is remarkable not so much for itself – it effectively contrasts stark, contrapuntal outer sections in the minor with a more yielding Trio section in the major – as for its discovery of the theme that it is to be taken up at the beginning of the Andante third movement. Introduced here in D major, at a much reduced tempo of course, it is only one theme in an exposition abundant in ideas. The lovely chromatic melody introduced by viola and cello in octaves under repeated quaver dissonances on the violins surely qualifies as something “quite new and special.”

The Presto finale seems to revert to the high-pressure “Sturm und Drang” manner of the late 1760s and early 1770s. But that impression lasts only as long as the exposition of the B minor first subject – which turns out, incidentally, to be another variant on the Scherzando theme. When the key changes to D major and the first violin indulges in a fit of grotesquely comic figuration the situation, though still hectic, is clearly not so serious. In the recapitulation, however, that same figuration reappears in B minor and, far from laughing off the underlying anxiety, finally confirms the reality of it.