String Quartet in D minor, Op.76, No.2 (“Fifths”)

String Quartet in D minor Op.76 No.2, Hob.III.76 “Fifths” (1797)

Allegro

Andante o più tosto allegretto

Menuetto: allegro man non troppo

Vivace assai

One of the few really useful Haydn nicknames, the “Fifths” attached to Op.76 No.2, draws attention to a feature which is not only prominent in the first movement - from the opening bars onwards - but is also a factor in unifying the whole work. The main theme of the Andante incorporates two heavy falls down a fifth and, while the interval is not conspicuous in the so-called “Witches’s Canon” Menuetto and its Brucknerian trio, a gypsy-violin gesture draws attention to it at the beginning of the finale. A later, grotesque variant was reputedly suggested to Haydn by a braying donkey.

Haydn’s late Quartet in D minor, one of the six commissioned by Count Erdödy in 1797 and published as Op.76 two years later, has attracted more than its fair share of attention from nick-namers and myth-makers. The “Fifths” title commonly attached to it does, however, draw attention to a feature which is not only prominent everywhere in the first movement but is also an influential factor in unifying the whole work. It would be pointless to count the number of times the opening theme of two descending fifths appears in the first movement: the art in it is the way in which the fifths imprint themselves on the memory while the ear is intrigued by the extravagant harmonic and rhythmic events designed to offset the rigorous thematic economy.

The salient intervals of the Andante are actually minor and major thirds but in this context it is the fifths which stand out. At the same time, because it is such a melodiously appealing and simply constructed movement firmly based in D major, it arouses expectations that this might turn out not to be such a sternly uncompro­mising work after all. Such notions are immediately contradicted by the Menuetto, which is a deliberately rough-sounding two-part canon in D minor. While the “Witches’ Canon” label is not very helpful here, the Witches could make a more legitimate claim on the Trio with its curiously pre-Brucknerian percussive articulation and widely fluctuating dynamic levels.

Assuming that the interval of the fifth is still fixed in the memory, the fanciful rise up the E-string of the first violin at the end of the opening theme of the Vivace assai is more than just a gypsy-violin mannerism. The ear is not, on the other hand, prepared for the startling downwards leaps on the same instrument soon after the key changes to F major: this is presumably why the story has arisen that Haydn incorporated here the sound of a donkey braying outside his studio. Whatever the origin of this episode, D minor austerity cannot survive the comedy associated with it.

Haydn’s late Quartet in D minor, one of the six commissioned by Count Erdödy in 1797 and published as Op.76 two years later, has attracted more than its fair share of attention from nick-namers and myth-makers. The “Fifths” title commonly attached to it is more truthful and more useful than most labels of its kind, however. It draws attention to a feature which is not only prominent everywhere in the first movement but is also an influential factor in unifying the whole work. It would be pointless to count the number of times the opening theme of two descending fifths appears in the first movement - including such variants as inversions, diminutions and augmentations and contractions and expansions, it must be approaching a hundred - because the art in it is the way in which the fifths imprint themselves on the memory while the ear is intrigued by the extravagant harmonic and rhythmic events designed to offset the rigorous thematic economy. It is a little like a stripped down version of the first movement of Mozart’s Quartet in D minor, K.421, itself influenced by an earlier Haydn Quartet in D minor.

The salient intervals of the Andante are, in fact, minor and major thirds but in this context it is the fifths which stand out. At the same time, because it is such a melodiously appealing and simply constructed movement firmly based in D major - a key scarcely touched on in the opening Allegro - it arouses expectations that this might turn out not to be such a sternly uncompro­mising work after all. Such notions are immediately contradicted by the Menuetto, which is a deliberately rough-sounding two-part canon in D minor, always forte and always executed by the two violins in octaves with the viola and cello in octaves a bar behind them. If the “Witches’ Canon” label is not very helpful here, the Witches’ rival claim to the Trio does at least draw attention to the curiously pre-Brucknerian percussive articulation and the widely fluctuating dynamic levels of the D major middle section.

Assuming that the interval of the fifth is still fixed in the memory, the fanciful rise up the E-string of the first violin at the end of the opening theme of the Vivace assai is more than just a gypsy-violin mannerism. The ear is not, on the other hand, prepared for the startling downwards leaps on the same instrument soon after the key changes to F major: this is presumably why the story has arisen that Haydn incorporated here the sound of a donkey braying outside his studio. Whatever the origin of this episode, it is evidently not be taken seriously and, indeed, a work which began so austerely in D minor ends in a cheerful, even reckless assertion of D major - though not without incorporating a few fifths here and there in the celebration.