Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Quartet in C, Op. 74, No. 1

    1. Allegro

    2. Andantino grazioso

    3. Menuetto

    4. Vivace

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Scottish Folk Music

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Clarinet Quintet, K. 581

    1. Allegro

    2. Larghetto
    3. Menuetto
    4. Allegretto con variazioni

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Haydn is often appraised in terms of the legacy he left future composers. His popular nicknames, ‘Father of the Symphony’, ‘Father of the String Quartet’, or simply ‘Papa Haydn’ all pay respectful tribute to his originality, but implicitly frame him as an older relation to Mozart and Beethoven, both of whom studied with Haydn himself, and both of whom drew heavily on the stylistic and formal innovations Haydn perfected in his vast output. Haydn’s 104 symphonies, 68 string quartets, 45-or-so piano trios, 52-odd keyboard sonatas, 11 keyboard concertos and 15 masses are somehow staggeringly varied, whilst also converging on a crystalline conception of style. These works are especially notable amidst a vast number of other pieces for more obscure instrumentation (there are a few dozen works for mechanical clock, for example) partly because they helped define these genres as the most significant of all, inspiring further contributions from not only Mozart and Beethoven, but from almost all major composers even to the present day. However, there is something patronising in this view of him; Haydn’s achievement stands on its own merit, rather than in terms of where it eventually led in the music of his successors.

 

We perhaps tend to find Haydn’s long life, vast output and success within the establishment as rather less poetic than the unhappy or tragically short lives of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and other less fortunate artists. Haydn’s life and career was not without its difficulties, including about 8 years as a struggling freelancer from 1749-1757, teaching himself composition from various treatises and taking work where he could get it – including sometimes as a street performer. However, in 1761 he was eventually taken into employment by the Esterházy family, who became his longtime benefactors. Their love and appreciation of music – and wealth – gave Haydn the ideal context in which to develop as a composer; he even had access to his own orchestra. Moreover, when the terms of his contract were renegotiated in 1779, Haydn suddenly gained his artistic and commercial independence: his music was his own property, and no longer belonged to his employer. His career exploded, and he found fame throughout Europe and travelled widely, including repeatedly to London. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was the most famous musician in the world.

 

Against that backdrop, it is interesting that his output includes not only large numbers of ‘public’ works like symphonies, but also intimate chamber music works. The string quartet was characterised as a sophisticated conversation amongst ‘amateurs’ (a word without pejorative implications in the eighteenth century); for example, Haydn and Mozart played through some of their quartets together. Domestic music making of this kind was a primary form of entertainment, and enthusiasm for published works in ‘private’ genres such as string quartet, piano trio and piano sonata was sufficient for Haydn to achieve wealth and fame internationally long before he was able to visit the far corners of Europe.

 

The success of Haydn’s chamber music in fact led to these pieces finding their way out of the home and on to the concert platform. The three Op. 74 quartets were composed in 1793, one half of a commission from Count Anton Apponyi, on Haydn’s return to Vienna from London. He had been astonished to find his Op. 64 quartets performed not in private settings, but in Johann Peter Salomon’s public subscription concerts in Hanover Square. At a time when concert etiquette had not yet been refined, and silence was not expected, the Quartet in C, Op. 74, No. 1 is one of a number of string quartets in which Haydn uses grand gestures at the beginning of the work in order to hush the crowd.

 

Beyond the first movement’s bold, silence-inducing opening chords, the Quartet in C also seems to have captured some of the brilliance of the sonority of his London Symphonies. The first movement dazzles with flights of virtuosic passagework, but also creates the illusion that there are more than just four players.

 

Emotionally, the second movement tends towards stylishness rather than the confidential outpouring of emotion we sometimes find in Haydn’s more introverted quartets. It is high-minded, clear-eyed music, yet full of surprising harmonic twists.

 

The Menuetto, usually the scene of courtly humour, provides rustic vigour in its outer sections, whilst its lilting central Trio section, in the unrelated key of A major, is disarmingly sweet-natured.

 

Perhaps more than any of the other movements, the Finale sees the quartet doing an impression of a fine orchestra in full flow. There is an almost exhausting array of articulation styles, and virtuosic demands are made on all four players. The two violins shouting in octaves over rustic cello drones are the big arrival points in the movement, the last of which concludes the work with a flourish.

 

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Mozart is frequently hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of all time, whose work amounts to musical perfection. He was an astounding child prodigy who had his first piece, Andante pour le clavecin, published when he was five years old. By the age of 10 he was famous throughout Europe, thanks to his father Leopold, who not only educated him but also took him on ambitious concert tours. Despite his renown, he died aged 35 and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, leaving his Requiem, K. 626, ominously incomplete. Such talent combined with such tragedy has made him irresistible to dramatists, biographers and gossips ever since. We get nearer to the essence of his appeal, though, through Wye J. Allanbrook’s phrase about the purpose of the artists of the Enlightenment: ‘to move the audience through representations of its own humanity’. For many, Mozart gives us a truer reflection of life — with all its nuances, momentary sadnesses and joyful vitality — than any other composer. His Clarinet Quintet in A, K. 581, is an apt example.

 

Just as many of Mozart’s greatest operatic roles were conceived for specific singers Mozart knew personally, we owe the existence of several late works by Mozart featuring the clarinet to a friendship that blossomed between Mozart and the clarinettist Anton Stadler (1753-1812). The Clarinet Quintet  in A, K. 581 was composed in 1789, following on from the Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, K. 498; in 1791, shortly before his death, Mozart would complete his Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622 for Stadler.

 

The two musicians first met in 1781, and it is likely that the introduction of clarinet parts to much of Mozart’s orchestral and chamber music in the last ten years of his life was inspired by Anton Stadler and his brother, Johann, also a clarinettist. Friedrich Schink was a contemporary of Mozart who heard Stadler playing Mozart’s music, and wrote to Stadler saying,

 

My thanks to you, brave virtuoso! I have never heard the like of what you contrived with your instrument. Never should I have thought that a clarinet could be capable of imitating the human voice as it was imitated by you. Indeed, your instrument has so soft and lovely a tone that no one can resist it.

 

The Clarinet Quintet combines three areas in which Mozart was expert: most obviously the string quartet; but also the concerto, in the soloistic writing for the clarinet; and opera, in the arioso writing for clarinet and strings alike. The work, however, takes the form of a Classical string quartet, with a substantial Allegro first movement, a sublimely beautiful Larghetto slow movement, a courtly Minuet and Trio and an energetic Allegro set of variations as a finale.

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Anthony Friend