String Quartet in C major, Op.74, No.1 (1793)

The series of six Quartets written for the Count Apponyi in 1793 - eventually to be published in two separate sets of three, Op.71 and Op.74 - differ from all Haydn’s previous works of their kind in that they are scored specifically for performance by a virtuoso ensemble before a paying audience in a comparatively large hall. Chamber music was never presented that way in Vienna but on his first visit to London Haydn had heard Johann Peter Salomon lead public performances of the Op.64 Quartets and, although they were not intended for such conditions, he seems to have enjoyed the experience. Certainly, when he returned to England in 1794 he brought with him the new Quartets which, while Apponyi had commissioned them, were actually written with Salomon and the London concert halls in mind.

It was not just a matter of providing a particularly brilliant first violin part for Salomon and upgrading the technical interest of the other parts in proportion. The prospect of public performance seemed to inspire a kind of virtuosity in Haydn himself, who clearly delighted in taking all kinds of risks and in effortlessly surmounting them. The major risk in the first movement is not so much the introductory chordal progression as the chromatic nature of the main theme. Presented not only as the first subject but also, in a slightly altered form, as the second subject, it is the inevitable centre of attention in the development section, where its contrapuntal treatment has a dangerously disorientating effect on the tonality. Far from compensating by offering a straightforward recapitulation, Haydn first telescopes the events of the exposition and then spontaneously expands them, causing more harmonic problems in the process.

The Andantino grazioso, which is neither slow movement nor minuet, is so innovative in concept and so fresh in its scoring - not least in the second subject with its ostinato of lightly articulated octaves on viola - that Beethoven remembered it when writing the equivalent movement of his own String Quartet in C major, Op.59, No.3. The Menuetto is neither minuet nor scherzo but, at its allegretto tempo, something between the two. Structurally prudent in the relationship between its chromatic main theme and that of the first movement, it is harmonically reckless in the way it slips out of C major into to A flat major for its second section and, having got us used to that idea, disingenuously changes direction into an airy A major for the Trio section.

There are more anticipations of Beethoven’s Op.59, No.3, in the Presto finale, both in the vigorous rhythmic syncopations associated with the first subject and in the contrapuntal brilliance associated with the second. The development section makes virtuoso features of both these vital elements, which animate further activity in the recapitulation and which are suppressed in their self-renewing energy only by a timely recall of the robustly rustic closing theme of the exposition.