String Quartet in E flat major Op.33 No.2, Hob. III:38 “The Joke” (1781)

The “joke” that gives Op.33 No.2 its nickname occurs at the very end. That does not mean, however, that there are no jokes – or shafts of wit, or deliberate provocations – elsewhere in the work. The first movement, for example, is positively eccentric. The melody introduced by violin in the opening bars, has the linear interest and, in the much repeated rhythm of its first three notes, the motivic identity of an authoritative main theme of a regular sonata-form construction. That is what it leads us to expect as, by way of its three-note rhythmic motif, it approaches a modulation to the dominant, apparently in preparation for a second subject. But when it gets there, far from introducing a new theme or repeating the old one in the new key, it tempts the first violin into a display of triplet figuration of little apparent relevance. But. surely, later events will integrate that material into the fabric of the construction? In fact, there is an only brief allusion to it at the end of the development section, which is otherwise concerned with a masterly contrapuntal treatment of the main theme, and it is varied rather than recapitulated in the closing section of the movement.

As one of a set of works written, as the composer put it, “in a quite new and special way,” Op.33 No.2 has a scherzo rather than a minuet as its second movement. Ironically, there is nothing very jokey about the example in E flat major, entertaining though it is, particularly in the sweetly Ländler-like trio section. The Largo e sostenuto, on the other hand, is as eccentric as the Allegro moderato. Thematically, it is based on the melody introduced in B flat by viola and cello, immediately repeated as another duet by the two violins and recalled later as a trio and finally as a quartet, always in the same key. The eccentricity is in the two intervening episodes with deliberately tuneless passages of repeated chords, each one with its own articulation and dynamic marking.

As for the concluding Presto, although Haydn twice teases his listeners with delays before resuming his cheerful main theme, nothing could prepare them for the intervention of three bars of Adagio on the last page and then the fragmentation of that theme into five isolated phrases, the last one after not far short of five bars of silence.