String Quartet in D major, Op.76, No.5 (“Famous Largo”)

Based on its siciliano opening theme, the first movement of Op.76 No.5 is neither theme-and-variations nor sonata-form in shape but both at once and, in consequence, something new at the same time. The Largo, famously set in the awkward key of F sharp major, is also based on one melodic idea, which proves to be touchingly vulnerable to minor-key examination in the development section. As though to compensate, the Menuetto takes the opening phrase of the Largo theme and makes light of it. The Finale begins, paradoxically, with a perfect cadence that generates unstoppable forward momentum.

The fact is that Haydn was always able to find something “new and special” for his string quartets. When he felt he no longer had the strength for it, which is what happened when he was halfway through what would have been a Quartet in D minor in 1803, he resigned himself to abandoning the form altogether. Six years earlier, when he was working on his Op.76, he was at the height of his powers. Although he was still to write the two Op.77 Quartets, the earlier set has long been regarded as representing the ideal alliance of maturity and creative vitality. One unlikely but interesting example is an entry in the diary of Eugène Delacroix who in February 1847 recorded Chopin’s opinion that “experience has given these works the perfection we so much admire in them.”

Whatever Chopin made of the Largo of the Quartet in D, Op.76, No.5 - Mendelssohn is said to have found it “cheerful” - he can only have admired Haydn’s achievement in securing here the elusive combination of harmonic freedom and structural integrity. The first movement is no less inspired. Neither theme-and-variations nor sonata-form in shape, it is both at once and something new at the same time. The siciliano opening theme seems to be presented by first violin as a subject for variation but what follows its introduction is not so much a variation as a development section, beginning on the cello alone in D minor but then proliferating in contrapuntal interest before breaking out in dramatic virtuoso activity. The theme is recapitulated in D major and much as before, it seems, until it is cut short to make way for an unstoppable and brilliantly sustained Allegro coda based on little more than its opening phrase.

The slow movement which gives the work its “famous Largo” nickname - and which achieved its notoriety not least through the six sharps of its F sharp major key signature - is also based on one idea. There is no simulation of a variation structure in this case, however. The whole of the extended central section of the movement is a contemplative development of the melodious but emotionally vulnerable theme introduced by the first violin in the opening bars. The cello does much of the thinking, usually by presenting the rising arpeggio element of the theme in a new key and inviting a response from the others. They, it transpires, are by no means disinclined to probe the painful implications of the minor keys postulated by their colleague. The return to F sharp major occurs apparently by chance.

As though to compensate for the Largo experience, the Menuetto takes that same rising arpeggio as its main theme and makes light of it in D major, though not without some grumbling from the cello in the D minor Trio section. The impatient gesture repeated by the violins over the cello part in the Trio reappears at the beginning of the Finale but now, curiously enough, harmonised as a perfect cadence - which, far from halting proceedings, generates the energy for another highly resourceful, harmonically wayward monothematic construction. The opening chords are allowed to perform the conclusive function proper to them only when the Presto activity has run its course.