Quatuor Terpsycordes - Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 33, Nos. 3, 4 & 6 (2025)

Joseph Haydn often said that he had enjoyed an “exem­plary destiny”: starting from nothing, he became one of the most celebrated composers of his time. He was born in Rohrau, some fifty kilometres east of Vienna, into a relatively modest family – his father was a wheelwright, a recognised and respected mas­ter craftsman. The child’s musical talent was quickly recognised; he was first sent to Hainburg and later to Vienna, where he served as a chorister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral until he turned sixteen. His firm refusal to embrace an ecclesiastical career led him to take to the streets; he then encountered the famous choirmaster Porpora, who engaged him as an accompanist for his singing lessons, lodging him in a garret where snow would sometimes seep through to his bed during the winter, but allowing him to learn Italian, singing, and composition. However, his career was launched with string quartets: in 1757, the young Haydn composed his first quartets (Opp. 1 and 2) for Baron Fürnberg. Of a new genre, distinct from the usual divertimenti, these pieces quickly achieved immense success, and copies were to be found throughout Europe. Shortly afterwards, the composer was appointed Kapellmeister, and a year later, following his unhappy marriage to Maria-Anna Keller, he entered the service of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy, one of the wealthiest families in Hungary. Deeply attached to Prince Nikolaus, Haydn held his position for thirty years, composing for the two theatres on the Esterháza estate almost all of his operas and most of his symphonic and chamber music works, before discovering London during two sojourns during which he was triumphantly celebrated. After his return to Vienna in 1795, he composed his most famous oratorios and masses alongside many other works, until his death on 31 May 1809, two weeks after Vienna’s surrender to Napoleon’s troops.

Joseph Haydn was one of the most important musi­cians of his time, both for the sheer number of his works and for his significant contributions to various genres. Alongside Boccherini, he was the founder of the string quartet, a new genre placing four instruments of the same family on equal footing and allowing them to dialogue without the need for a continuo bass. For a long time, the composer was credited with eighty-three string quartets, based on the complete 1801 edition by his pupil Ignaz Pleyel. Today, their number stands at sixty-eight, spanning the period from 1757 to 1803, from the birth of the genre to the dawn of Romanticism.

The six quartets Op. 33 occupy a central position within this rich output. Composed between June and Novem­ber 1781, “they are of a completely new and special genre, for I have not written any for ten years,” the composer declared. Haydn, by then known through­out Europe, had already written some thirty quartets and would go on to write over thirty more. So what was this “new and special” genre? Firstly, a change of tone: whilst the quartet remained a “scholarly” work, it incorporated a truly popular dimension, as evidenced by the rondo-form finales. Secondly, the pieces are more concise and the tone lighter, with the composer’s characteristic humour coming to the fore, while “most often concealing great internal complexity” (Orin Moe), since the composer delighted in developing each small thematic element. These quartets had a decisive influ­ence on the young Mozart and inspired many followers, such as Franz Hoffmeister and Ignaz Pleyel, who helped to perpetuate the string quartet form.

Nicknamed “The Bird”, the third quartet of Op. 33 (Hob. III.39) opens with a descending theme spanning two octaves in the first violin, perhaps evoking the trills of a bird, with a small semiquaver motif in the melody immediately taken up by the viola and the cello as an accompaniment figure. This ambiguity between melody and accompaniment is one of the characteristics of Haydn’s style, which “aims to seek unity in diversity”. Sometimes humorous, these attributes are principally addressed “to connoisseurs capable of appreciating their refinement and wit” (Frédéric Gonin). The second movement, Scherzando, begins with the four voices in homophony in C major, at a piano dynamic, contrasting with the light dialogue between the two violins, the sole protagonists of the trio. The Adagio, in F major, is tender and expressive, then dramatic in its central section; it is “Haydn’s last quartet movement to make use of the varied reprise dear to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach”, while the final Presto, with its very popular character, is “the first” of the composer’s quartets “to bear expressly the denomination of rondo ‘ (M. Vignal). It is therefore understandable why Op. 33 is considered a true stylistic turning point.

The fourth quartet, Op. 33 (Hob.III.40), in B flat major, opens with an Allegro moderato whose theme is char­acteristic of Haydn’s humour. The composer loved to surprise with melodies that do not follow the usual pattern of “impulse, climax, conclusion”: the theme, in the first violin, launches into a repeated cadential motif underlined by trills. A few bars later, the composer repeats the F-F-D cell three times, before it reappears in the cello, as if the latter had been unable to stop in time! Mozart recalled the joke in the Finale of his Quartet K. 458, dedicated to Haydn and written in the same key. Other surprises await the listener in this sonata-form Allegro. The Scherzo that follows, in triple time, is reminiscent of a minuet, framing a trio in minor, before the beautiful Largo in E flat, which is constructed in three parts around three iterations of the principal theme: first stated, then developed in a highly modulating discourse, it reappears in a luminous major, then undergoes further developments before its third appearance and the coda. The Finale is a new example of Haydn’s characteristic humour. Constructed as a rondo in an A-B-A’-C’’ structure, it passes through modulations that sometimes give the impression of a false note and ends with a coda in which the theme is riddled with silences, then extends in long values, before ending in pizzicatos, like a jest, proving once again that the humour expressed by Haydn – a composer who was both serious and jovial according to his contemporaries – derives “from an aesthetic and analytical reflection sufficiently profound and elevated that […] we continue today to still appreciate it with delight” (F. Gonin).

Finally, the sixth quartet, Op. 33 (Hob.III.42) is in D major. Subtly constructed, playing on small motifs, its first movement exposes an eight-bar theme, the last four bars of which are a variation on the first four. It surprises the listener with a false recapitulation, preceding the actual recapitulation, which only incor­porates the varied part of the theme. This is followed by the soothing and meditative Andante in D minor, whose theme is presented by the second violin over a long sustained note played by the first violin, before a genuine dialogue between the four instruments. The Scherzo, with its well-marked beats and accents, gives pride of place to the cello in the trio, before the return of the Scherzo. The tranquil Finale is a series of variations (A-B-A’-B’-A’’-B’’), alternating between a major and a minor section and, as a little joke, a false ending before the proper conclusion.

Joseph Haydn was in the habit of playing the first violin when performing his quartets, as Giovanni Paisiello, an Ital­ian composer who had come to Vienna for one of his operas, reported in his memoirs in 1784. The viola part was then played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who said of his mentor, twenty-four years his senior: “He alone has the secret of making me smile, of touching me to the depths of my soul…” These quartets, where complexity is combined with humour, and the scholarly with the popular, will undoubtedly touch their listeners.