String quartets, Op.20 – Joseph Haydn
“Joseph Haydn playing string quartets“
Anonymous
_______
upon first hearing the first movement only
even of the opus 20, no 5 of Haydn, I was
immediately struck by the more determined,
insistent, peremptory strokes of the strings,
something not especially appropriate in an
aristocratic setting, where the music should
be polite, reserved, nearly unobtrusive, a
music composed for performance here
rather than as an after dinner mint
the second and third movements return to
a more conventional, which is to say courtly,
tone, but the end of the fourth movement is
also, and more virulently, vociferous
what’s up
you might view this as the very beginning
of the Classical Period, the stately
institutions of not only the aristocratic
social experiment, but also of the very
world order were being debated, personal
opinion was beginning to supersede
convention, the very core of the upcoming
Romantic Era, which saw the rights of the
individual installed rather than the voice
of an imperial, or an indeed spiritual,
authority
Haydn was expressing his musical, and
dare I say Delphic, anima, his inspired
spirit, setting the stage for what was to
come, however historically blindly, the
French Revolution was coming up
I have a beef with the third movement,
the adagio, however lovely – it’s right
out of Bach, without anywhere any
apparent attribution, I object to that
is this a tribute, or an appropriation,
or does it matter, you tell me, I think
it’s, again however lovely, and ever
so influential, not only not right, but
neither as lovely as the sublime
BWV1031, a complete and utter
serenity, a sin of the sons against
the fathers, or is it, rather, our
indifferent patrimony, like putting
a moustache on the Mona Lisa
the opus 20, no 2, is, for reasons I
won’t get into, a later work, it is
throughout vociferous, peremptory,
insistent, adamant, assertive,
vehement, uncompromising, it’s
nearly even Beethoven, it’s, in
other words, a scorcher, like
Beethoven, it takes no prisoners
check it out, it’s only 1772 and the
earlier model of civilizational order
isn’t any longer holding, opus 20,
no 2 is an augury, an omen of what
is to come, which is, of course, the
very task of the poet
R ! chard
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