Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Erdödy Quartets, Opus 76 Nos. 4 - 6
String Quartet No.4 in B flat major
Hob.III:78
String Quartet No.5 in D major Hob.III:79
String Quartet No.6 in E flat major
Hob.III:80
Joseph Haydn was as prolific as any
eighteenth century composer, his fecundity a matter, in good pan, of the nature
of his employment and the length of his life. Born in 1732 in the village of
Rohrau, the son of a wheelwright, he was recruited to the choir of St.
Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna at the age of eight, later earning a living as
best he could as a musician in the capital and making useful acquaintances
through his association with Metastasio, the Court Poet, and the composer
Nicola Porpora.
In 1759, after some eight years of
teaching and free-lance performance, whether as violinist or keyboard-player,
Haydn found greater security in a position in the household of a Bohemian
nobleman, Count Morzin, as director of music, wintering in Vienna and spending
the summer on the Count's estate in Bohemia, where an orchestra was available.
In 1760 Haydn married the eldest daughter of a wig-maker, a match that was to
bring him neither children nor solace, and by the following year he had entered
the service of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy as deputy to the old Kapellmeister
Gregor Werner, who had much fault to find with his young colleague. In 1762
Prince Paul Anton died and was succeeded by his brother Prince Nikolaus, who
concerned himself with the building of the great palace of Esterháza. Four
years later Kapellmeister Werner died, and Haydn assumed the full duties of the
position, spending the larger pan of the year at Esterháza and part of the
winter at Eisenstadt, where his first years of service to the Esterházy family
had passed.
Haydn's responsibilities at Esterháza
were manifold. As Kapellmeister he was in full charge of the musicians employed
by the Prince, writing music of all kinds, and directing performances both
instrumental, operatic and liturgical. This busy if isolated career came to an
end with the death of Prince Nikolaus in 1790. From then onwards Haydn had
greater freedom, while continuing to enjoy the title and emoluments of his
position as Kapellmeister to the Prince's successors.
Haydn's release from his immediate
responsibilities allowed him, in 1791, to accept an invitation to visit London,
where he provided music for the concerts organised by Johann Peter Salomon. His
considerable success led to a second visit in 1794. The following year, at the
request of the new Prince Esterházy, who had succeeded his elder brother in
1794, he resumed some of his earlier duties as Kapellmeister, now in Eisenstadt
and in Vienna, where he took up his own residence until his death in 1809.
Haydn was to write some 83 string
quartets over a period of forty years. The form itself is closely associated
with that of the classical symphony as it developed from the middle of the
eighteenth century in Mannheim and elsewhere in south Germany, Austria and
Bohemia, emerging, from its origins in the Baroque sonata. Haydn's achievement
is as remarkable in quality as in quantity, his own development following those
of the century, reflecting in the 1780s the influence of his younger
contemporary Mozart, who expressed his own debt to Haydn in a set of quartets
dedicated to him. In old age he seemed unwilling to follow the uncouth example
of the Great Moghul, his recalcitrant pupil Beethoven, whose Opus 18 Quartets
were published in 1801. Haydn's last quartet, started in 1803, remained
unfinished, his major achievement in the genre ending with the century.
The set of six quartets that Haydn
dedicated to Count Erdödy was completed in 1797 and published two years later.
The Count, who had married in 1796 a woman who was to become a particularly
enthusiastic supporter of Beethoven, belonged to a group of noblemen that
included Count Appónyi, to whom Haydn dedicated the Opus 74 Quartets, and
Prince Lobkowitz, to whom he dedicated the last two completed Quartets, Opus
77. It was to the last that Beethoven dedicated the six Opus 18 Quartets in
what must have seemed a deliberate challenge to the older composer.
The fourth of the Op. 76 quartets has won
in England the descriptive title "The Sunrise", an ingenuous comment
on the opening of the first movement, in which the first violin opens with an
ascending phrase over the sustained chord of the other instruments, its
counterpart the descending phrase later proposed by the cello. The E flat slow
movement, like the first, has suggestions of a sadder world. It is followed by
a Minuet in which the same semitone interval retains the motivic importance it
has had hitherto. The final sustained notes of viola and cello continue as an
accompaniment to the opening bars of the Trio, with its excursion into the
ominous key of F minor. The final Rondo has a first episode in the tonic minor,
playful use of counterpoint and a final varied re-appearance of the principal
theme as the movement speeds towards its close.
The gentle first movement of the Quartet
in D major, Opus 76 No.5, is in the form of a theme and variations, a D
minor version of the theme from the cello giving scope for contrapuntal
imitation, a procedure continued in the rather faster conclusion of the
movement: The F sharp major Largo, which lies at the heart of the work, opens with
its principal theme announced by the first violin and goes on to explore
remoter keys before it is done. The characteristically inventive Minuet has a
contrasting D minor Trio that starts with a running figure in the cello,
followed briefly by the other instruments. The quartet ends with a movement,
the beginning of which wittily anticipates its ending, the pairs of chords of
the first figure serving purposes of modulation as the movement makes its
lively progress.
The remarkable E flat Quartet, the
last of the Erdödy set, has a first movement in the form of a theme and
variations, ending with an energetic fugue. This is followed by a Fantasia, an
Adagio, apparently in B major or, to the ear, C flat major, but at first
without a key signature, and passing through various keys, adjusted
enharmonically, although not simultaneously in all pans. The intensity of the
slow movement relaxes in a scherzo-like Minuet, the contrasting Alternativo,
its title a reference to much earlier practice, based on a cunning imitative
use of the descending and ascending scale. The last movement opens with a
figure of rhythmic ambiguity which dominates, in one form or another, what
follows. Here, as throughout the Erdödy Quartets, there is the subtlest use of
the technical resources of counterpoint, learning that Haydn, unlike Beethoven,
wore lightly. Haydn's masterly command of technique and fund of inventiveness
amply justify his contemporary reputation as the greatest living composer of
the day.
Kodály Quartet
The members of the Kodály Quartet were
trained at the Budapest Ferenc Liszt Academy, and three of them, the second
violin Tamás Szabo, viola-player Gábor Fias and cellist János Devich, were
formerly in the Sebestyán Quartet, which was awarded the jury's special diploma
at the 1966 Geneva International Quartet Competition and won first prize at the
1968 Leo Weiner Quartet Competition in Budapest. Since 1970, with the violinist
Attila Falvay, the quartet has been known as the Kodály Quartet, a title
adopted with the approval of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education.
The Kodály Quartet has given concerts throughout Europe, in the Soviet Union
and in Japan, in addition to regular appearances in Hungary both in the concern
hall and on television.