The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Joseph Haydn · six string quartets, Op. 76, Hob. III:75 to 80, scored as one set · twenty-four movements, in G, D minor, C, B flat, D and E flat · composed in 1796 and 1797 for Count Joseph Erdődy · about two hours and more for the six in performance
Mode
Chamber music as conversation; sonata, variation, canon, fugue, fantasia, and the minuet quickened to a scherzo
Mythos
A sovereign’s hymn held unaltered by each of four voices in turn; elsewhere only names given by listeners: the fifths, the emperor, the sunrise
Phase
Six quartets of four movements each, in G, D minor, C, B flat, D and E flat; no key plan across the set, and no return
Presentation
Concert music; six quartets for two violins, viola and cello, published together as one opus and scored here as one set
Register
From a canon like a stamping dance and minuets in one beat to a Largo marked mesto and a Fantasia through remote keys; no word anywhere
Scale
Four voices in conversation; the court, the country dance and a monarchy at war; about two hours and more for the six
Governing Proposition
Six quartets by the composer who had made the form make the quartet a conversation among four equals in which strictness and wit are one civility: a canon becomes a stamping dance, a scale becomes a game, and a sovereign’s hymn, in a year of war, is handed to each voice in turn and kept whole. The set is six excellent works by one hand, and the hand is all that binds them.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Op. 76 is six quartets, numbered in the Hoboken catalogue III:75 to 80: No. 1 in G major, No. 2 in D minor, No. 3 in C major, No. 4 in B flat major, No. 5 in D major and No. 6 in E flat major. Haydn composed them in 1796 and 1797 for Count Joseph Erdődy and dedicated them to him, and they were published in 1799. Three carry names in common use, the Fifths, the Emperor and the Sunrise, and a fourth is sometimes called the Largo; none of the names is Haydn’s. The six are scored here as one work, the set as published. No single quartet, movement or performance is the object.
No. 1 begins Allegro con spirito with three chords, and then the cello alone states the theme. The instrument that earlier quartets kept at the bass is given the first word, and the others take the theme from it. The slow movement, Adagio sostenuto in C major, is a hymn. The minuet is marked Presto and goes one beat to the bar, a scherzo in all but name. The finale, Allegro ma non troppo, opens in G minor and ends in G major. In four movements the first quartet shows most of what the set will do: the cello as partner, the minuet quickened past dancing, and a finale that turns from minor to major.
Haydn had written the Op. 71 and Op. 74 quartets for London in 1793. Op. 76 was his last complete set: the two quartets of Op. 77 followed in 1799, and Op. 103 is an unfinished fragment. The six were made as a publisher’s six, and the set shows it. The home keys fall from G to D minor, C, B flat, D and E flat, down five semitones, down two, down two, up four and up one. No key plan is evident, no quartet returns to another’s material, and nothing in No. 6 answers No. 1. The six are bound by one hand, and the set is charged for having no other bond.
Movement II
No. 2, in D minor, opens Allegro on falling fifths, and the fifths give the quartet its name. Four notes are the whole of the material: the first movement is drawn from them, and they return in the minuet and the finale. It is the plainest case of the economy that runs through the set, a quartet built out of an interval. The slow movement, Andante o più tosto allegretto, turns to D major, and the turn is made without a break in the manner.
The minuet is a strict canon at the octave. The two violins play in octaves, and the viola and cello answer them in octaves, a beat behind: two voices doubled into four, the law of the canon heard as the stamp of a heavy dance. Listeners named it the Witches’ Minuet. The trio is in D major. A strict learned form, the oldest proof of contrapuntal skill, is set where a court dance stood, and it comes out as comedy: law as play, and the play rough.
The finale, Vivace assai, opens in D minor and ends in D major. Three of the six finales do this, in Nos. 1, 2 and 3. These are among the departures from Haydn’s own road. The minuets of Nos. 1 and 6 are marked Presto; two first movements, in Nos. 5 and 6, are not in sonata form; the slow movements of Nos. 5 and 6 sit outside the tonic, subdominant and dominant. The departures accumulate across the set. None is a wager of the order Beethoven placed in Op. 131; a master secure in his form, on a nobleman’s commission, extended it.
Movement III
Early in 1797 Haydn composed a hymn to a text by Lorenz Leopold Haschka, Gott erhalte, an anthem for the Emperor Francis, written for a monarchy at war with France, with the French armies advancing. In the slow movement of No. 3, Poco adagio, cantabile, in G major, he set the hymn at the centre of a private chamber work. No words are sung in the quartet. The text bears only as the hymn’s known meaning, and the hymn’s later history as an anthem is its own and is not credited here.
The hymn is heard first in four parts. Then come four variations, and in each the tune is given unaltered to one instrument while the others make counterpoint around it: to the second violin, then the cello, then the viola, then the first violin, with new harmony. The variations do not ornament the tune; they pass it on whole. The form is a cantus firmus moved between voices, and the meaning is in the passing: the sovereign’s tune becomes something each member of the quartet carries in turn, each in its own register. In the fourth variation the harmony beneath it darkens and turns chromatic, and the tune rises by its plainness.
This is where the set’s disclosure is plainest: reason as conversation among equals, the state’s song held by each voice and by none alone. It is the one particular in the set that acquires a meaning beyond itself, and the meaning was the hymn’s before it was the quartet’s. Around the slow movement No. 3 has an Allegro, a Menuetto: Allegro, and a Presto that opens in C minor and ends in C major. The Emperor quartet is among the most performed quartets in existence.
Movement IV
No. 4, in B flat, opens with a sustained chord in the three lower instruments and a line rising above it in the first violin, and the name Sunrise was given for it. The first movement, Allegro con spirito, is drawn from that rising line. The slow movement is an Adagio in E flat major. The finale, Allegro ma non troppo, quickens at the end, and its quickening close is more effect than argument.
No. 5, in D major, does not begin in sonata form: its first movement is an Allegretto in 6/8 built on variation. Then comes the Largo, cantabile e mesto, in F sharp major, a key a major third above the home key, and the heading says what it is, singing and sad. It is the set’s deepest slow movement and among the most inward of its century, and it has lent the quartet a name. A finale marked Presto follows it.
The slow movements of the six stand in C, D, G, E flat, F sharp and B. The first four are on the subdominant, the tonic major, the dominant and the subdominant, the keys the tradition expected. The last two, at the end of the set, are on the major mediant and on the flat submediant, written enharmonically: the set’s furthest steps come late, though not by any plan the published order shows. The minuets of Nos. 4 and 5 are among the lighter movements; most of the twenty-four movements are wit and energy, and the heights are few and chosen.
Movement V
No. 6, in E flat, opens with an Allegretto in variations, and the last variation is a fugal Allegro: the single theme becomes counterpoint before the ear. The slow movement is headed Fantasia: Adagio, in B major, and it moves through keys no quartet of its time had visited, reason searching and not finding its key. It is the sublime of search, and with the Largo of No. 5 and the hymn of No. 3 it carries the set’s height.
The minuet is marked Presto, one beat to the bar, and its Alternativo is built on nothing but scales of E flat, rising and falling and passed between the voices. The plainest material in music is made into a game, and the form is the scale. The finale is an Allegro spiritoso. Beethoven composed his Op. 18 quartets in Vienna from about 1798 to 1800, after his lessons with Haydn, and the Presto minuet of Nos. 1 and 6 passes straight into his scherzo.
The set stood as the model of the mature quartet for the nineteenth century, and Haydn’s late quartets have never left the repertory of professional and amateur players. Tovey wrote on Haydn’s chamber music, Charles Rosen wrote on them in The Classical Style in 1971, and Hans Keller wrote The Great Haydn Quartets in 1986. The members are heard singly more often than the six are heard together, and that is the set’s account of itself: six quartets by one hand, the cello given the first word, a canon made a dance, a scale made a game, and a sovereign’s hymn held whole by each voice in turn, with nothing to bind the six but the hand.
Act III · The Twelve
Inside each quartet the subtractive test meets resistance. No. 2 is built on its falling fifths, which return in the canon and the finale; the Emperor variations cannot lose a variation without losing an instrument’s turn at the tune; the Alternativo of No. 6 is nothing but the scale it is built on. The give is at the level of the set. Six was a publishing convention, and it shows: the home keys run G, D minor, C, B flat, D, E flat, with no plan, no return and no cross-reference. Remove No. 1 or No. 4 and the set is smaller, not broken. Some movements are lighter: the minuets of Nos. 4 and 5, and No. 4’s quickening close.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it is a social one: reason as conversation among equals, in which strictness and wit are one civility. In 1797, with the French armies advancing, the state’s hymn is handed to each of four voices in turn and kept unaltered, so that the sovereign’s tune becomes something each member carries, and the last variation darkens the harmony beneath it. The canon of No. 2 shows law as comedy; the Fantasia of No. 6 shows reason searching and not finding its key. Held down by the line between mood and meaning: what is disclosed is an ideal of sociability more than a condition, and much of the set is mood rather than meaning.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Height is reached several times, in more than one register. The Largo of No. 5, cantabile e mesto in F sharp major, a major third above the home key, is among the most inward slow movements of its century. The Fantasia of No. 6, moving through keys no quartet of its time visited, is the sublime of search. The fourth Emperor variation, the tune in the first violin over new chromatic harmony, rises by plainness; the Adagio sostenuto of No. 1 is a hymn; the opening of No. 4 is beauty as an event. Frequency is held down by design: the register is mainly wit and energy. The Goldberg Variations, at 8.9, go further.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One particular acquires a significance beyond itself, and Haydn did not build it: the Emperor hymn, a ruler’s anthem written in a war, set at the centre of a private chamber work. The quartet makes something of it, the realm’s song held unaltered by each voice, but the archetype of sovereign, people and land is evoked by the tune’s use, not constructed by the set. The hymn’s later history as an anthem belongs to the hymn and is not credited. The set builds no journey, no return and no figure, where the Goldberg Variations, at 8.4, build a homecoming. Its myth is the civil one under The Unconcealment, and that is not archetype.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The inheritance is Haydn’s own: the quartet he had made in Op. 20 and Op. 33 and carried to Op. 71 and Op. 74. Op. 76 departs from it in many places: minuets marked Presto, one beat to the bar, in Nos. 1 and 6, scherzos in fact; two first movements not in sonata form, one of them variations ending in a fugue; a Fantasia for a slow movement, and slow movements in remote keys; a strict canon for a minuet; the cello opening a quartet alone; three finales that begin in the minor and end in the major. The stake was small: a secure master, on a nobleman’s commission, extended his own road. The swerve is real, but one of degree.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Within the members, form is the instrument of the knowledge. The Emperor variations know what they know because the form is a cantus firmus passed between voices: make them variations that ornament the tune, and the tune is no longer held whole by each player. The canon of No. 2 is the form of law as play; the first movement of No. 6, variations that end in a fugue, turns a single theme into counterpoint before the ear; the Alternativo makes a scale a form. The charge is the unit. Six quartets in sequence know no more than six quartets apart, and the set’s form is a container.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Evidence of return is long, and thinner than at the summit of the repertory. The set has been played without interruption since publication and recorded complete many times. The literature runs from Tovey’s writing on Haydn’s chamber music through Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style (1971) to Hans Keller’s The Great Haydn Quartets (1986). The work keeps opening: at the Fantasia’s tonal path, at the Largo’s key, at the relation of the Presto minuets to Beethoven’s scherzo, and at the political meaning of the Emperor variations. Held below Op. 131, at 9.5, and the Goldberg Variations, at 9.4: the literature mostly treats Op. 76 inside Haydn’s quartets as a whole.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The set enlarged what the Classical quartet could hold, a Fantasia, fugal variations, minuets at a scherzo’s tempo and distant keys for slow movements, without changing what a quartet was: the founding reorganisation had been made by Haydn’s own Op. 20 and Op. 33. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Beethoven composed his Op. 18 quartets in Vienna within about two years, after his lessons with Haydn, and the Presto minuet passes straight into his scherzo; the set stood as the model of the mature quartet for the nineteenth century, and is the most played of Haydn’s sets. Reach is discounted where it is the reach of Haydn’s quartets as a body, and where the Emperor’s fame is the hymn’s.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Survival is weighed in form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: in print since 1799, the six quartets complete and none of them in doubt. Presence is continuous. Haydn’s late quartets never left the repertory of professional and amateur players, and Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are among the most performed quartets in existence, over a span of more than two centuries. Nothing in the fabric has needed retouching. The surface fixed to its moment, a court commission and a wartime hymn, reads as the work’s world, not a date on it. The charge is in the unit: the set is heard whole more on record than in the hall, where its members are played singly.
Score: 9.3 / 10
The making bears weight throughout. Motivic economy: No. 2 drawn from four notes of falling fifths, and the first movement of No. 4 from its rising line. Counterpoint: the octave canon of No. 2 made to sound like a stamping dance, and the fugal close of the variations that open No. 6. Voice writing: the Emperor variations give each instrument the tune in its own register, with the others’ counterpoint fitted around it, and the cello leads where earlier quartets gave it the bass. Harmony: the Fantasia’s journey and the Largo’s F sharp major are as advanced as anything of the 1790s. The cost is small: the first violin still dominates some outer movements, and some minuet trios are routine.
Score: 9.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the canon of No. 2 and the Largo of No. 5, or the Emperor hymn and the Alternativo of No. 6. One manner governs them: motivic economy, four voices as partners, wit and learning in one texture. That is a style, and it holds across a wide range. But the axis asks for one physics across the whole unit, and the set is six physics of one maker. Each quartet obeys its own law, No. 2 its fifths, No. 6 its scale and its variation theme, and nothing binds No. 1 to No. 6 but the hand. Op. 131 and the Goldberg Variations, each at 9.6, are one law in one work.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The set holds more orders than most wordless chamber music. The state is present: the hymn written for a monarchy at war stands at the centre of No. 3. The sacred is there in the hymn’s character and in the Adagio sostenuto of No. 1; society in miniature in four voices in conversation, and the court and the country dance in the minuets and the stamping canon; consciousness in the mesto Largo and the searching Fantasia. The orders are held together by the conversation, not listed. What holds the axis here is absence: the family, labour, history as such and death do not appear. The figure stands above Op. 131, at 7.3, for the state, and below Winterreise, at 7.7.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.5, then The Imperishable at 9.3, with The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.6. A command of four voices that bears weight in the fifths of No. 2, the canon, the Emperor variations, the fugal close of No. 6 and the Fantasia; six quartets in print since 1799 and never out of the repertory; and height in the Largo, the Fantasia and the hymn’s last variation, inside members whose forms are what they know.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.5: the state, the sacred, society in miniature and consciousness are held in one conversation, but the family, labour, history and death are absent. Next above it, The Archetypal Deep at 7.6: one particular, the hymn, carries a meaning beyond itself, and that meaning was the hymn’s before the quartet used it. Then The Inevitable and The Unconcealment at 8.1: a set of six with no plan to bind it, and a disclosure of sociable reason that is more temper than condition.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.1 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Made at 9.5, The Living Form at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.3 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.4, The Swerve at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 8.1 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.6 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met, by a tenth: the lowest axis it covers is The Archetypal Deep at 7.6, against 7.5. The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.5. Four of the five summit conditions are met, and with the Epochal Gate unmet and an aggregate of 8.4 the work stands in Tier IV.
Basis · the scores of the six String Quartets Op. 76, Hob. III:75 to 80, as one published set, and their performance tradition, read from knowledge under the desk’s convention for concert music; no score, edition or recording was in hand, and the running time is a range across the recorded tradition, not a measurement. The six quartets, twenty-four movements in all, are scored as one set: no single quartet, movement or performance is the object, the quartets are cited as members of the set, and where the set is weaker than its best members the set is charged. There are no words. The hymn behind the slow movement of No. 3 is named by its first words and its author; its text is not sung in the quartet and is not quoted. Haydn’s headings are given as he wrote them; the nicknames are not his. The home keys, the keys of the slow movements, the modes of the finales and the formal departures were counted by script. Facts that could not be verified, among them the publishers and the form of the first editions, the date of the hymn’s first singing, the keys and character of several minuet trios, the close of the first movement of No. 5, the notation of the Fantasia, a letter of praise from 1799, the names of the ensembles that have recorded the set complete and a later study of the quartets, are not given. Bar numbers are not given. The sound of the work as heard is beyond this reading and is neither credited nor charged.