String Quartet in C major Op.20 No.3, Hob.III.33 (1772)

Haydn’s six string quartets Op.20 are known as the “Sun Quartets” for no better reason than that an early edition carries a rising-sun image on the title page. It would probably not have stuck as tenaciously as it has, however, if it were not appropriate for some other reason. It cannot be claimed that Op.20 represents the dawning of a new day for the string quartet – that had already happened with the Op.9 and Op.17 sets – but it does shed new light on its texture.

In Op.20 No.3 in G minor Haydn seems at times to be testing what he had established as the authentic string-quartet texture to its limits. The opening bars, which introduce the main theme of the first movement, represent the texture in a classical formation of four-part counterpoint with the thematic message clearly on the top line. But shortly before the end of the exposition that coherence is so shattered that all that is left is a series of three-note fragments on first violin. The development picks up the pieces but is itself broken into a brief but emphatic exchange of isolated quavers between. In the recapitulation the fragmentation on first violin is so extended that it is only just in time, that the opening bars are recalled in a reassuring approach to a G major ending.

The Menuetto, with its sturdy four-part writing in the G minor outer sections and its mellifluous E flat major violin solo in the middle, takes no risks. A new threat emerges, however, in the G major Poco adagio, where the cello liberates itself from its normal duties in such a way that it challenges the others, first violin in particular, to emulate it. Although a lovely little viola solo in the closing bars suggests that the cello danger has disappeared, it returns in the Finale. In this last case the four instruments cohere in counterpoint round the theme introduced in G minor in the opening bars – until, that is, the intervention of the cello at the end of the development. In securing a G major ending the cello has the decisive last word.