Defining the String Quartet: Haydn

This course, in defining the string quartet in these various ways, pays particular attention to Haydn’s towering, history-shaping achievement. In the first part of the course, after providing some general background on the origins of the medium in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, we look at some examples of early string quartet writing by Allegri, Scarlatti and early-period Haydn. In the second half, because the very essence of the genre resides in musical detail and nuance, we develop the tools for informed listening and appreciation by presenting an in-depth analysis of a single work, Haydn’s String Quartet in F minor, opus 20, no. 5 from 1772. With frequent musical illustrations by the St. Lawrence Quartet, we explore the F-minor Quartet in terms of three complementary concepts: form, language, and gesture.

In a concluding section we analyze the final movement, comparing Haydn’s use of the compositional technique known as “fugue” to other fugues by Bach, Handel and Mozart. By means of this “learned style,” we argue, the composer connects his musical language to ecclesiastical traditions, just as the movement’s rhetorical character reflects his penchant for musical effects drawn from the world of opera. The aesthetic spheres of the chamber, church and theater converge. Haydn thus defines his watershed opus — in microcosm — as something at once intimate, recondite and playful.