String Quartet in C major Op.50 No.2, Hob.III:45 (1787)

If any instrument in the classical string-quartet democracy was allowed to be more equal than the others it was the first violin – which meant that a conscientious composer writing string quartets for the cello-playing Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, like Haydn in 1787 or Mozart two or three years later, had a problem. Of the two, Haydn tended to be the more discreet about flattering the royal cello, but he indulged it even so. The opening bars of the first movement of the present work, the second of the six “Prussian” quartets, offer a good example. Although there is is no threat to the supremacy of the first violin in the quiet introduction of the rhythmically fascinating main theme, as soon as the violin breaks into a showy rising scale the cello does the same. Exchanges of scale figures between the two instruments remain a feature of a movement remarkable otherwise for its masterfully integrated four-part contrapuntal textures.

The Adagio is particularly interesting from the Prussian point of view. For the first half Haydn keeps the cello firmly in its place on the bass line while the second violin takes the melodic line and the first violin goes on to elaborate it in virtuoso detail. But then there is a remarkable passage for the cello rising in arpeggios from its lowest note and three times falling back again in dramatic leaps. It takes the rest of the movement for the first violin to re-assert its solo authority. The texture of the outer sections of the Menuetto is contrastingly close-knit and, while it is clearly led by first violin, no instrument has a solo role. It opens out in the central Trio section but to give prominence to not one but all four instruments in turn, beginning with the viola. The cello has a busy time in the closing Vivace assai, not often carrying the melodic interest but frequently, as when the opening theme passes to first violin, bustling the music forwards with a hyper-active bass line. It also has the very short last word.