String Quartet, opus 77, no 1 – Joseph Haydn
“The Red Cape (Madame Monet)“ (c.1870)
_______
for my mom
that’s a lot of Haydn, I said to my mom,
when I saw the list of my transmittals in
her hotmail, hm, I wondered, maybe it’s
too much
then I said, but it’s like when we’ve
toured, for instance, our European
art galleries, me propounding on
the paintings, as I am wont, however
incorrigibly, to do, but now, note, you
can tell the difference between your
Monets and your Klimts, however
similar their perspectives
or like your tour guide taking you
recently through Argentina,
highlighting spots, in the space of
a month only, the same amount of
time I’ve spent for the music of
Haydn
pronounced, incidentally, I specified,
like “hidin'” in English, not “maiden”,
just sayin’
I gathered that she’d ‘ve sensed by
now, if she’d been listening, which she
said she had, mornings over her
coffee, what a string quartet is, four
movements, different tempos, fast
at first, a joyful introduction,
followed by a lament, then a spirited
third movement, for countereffect,
then a big fourth movement finish
also, the internal structure of each
movement would’ve been internalized,
a theme, a counter theme, a
recapitulation of both, or either, all of
it, probably unconsciously, which is
how art fundamentally works till you
meticulously deconstruct it
the string quartet is the work of Haydn,
the house that Haydn built, from
peripheral aristocratic entertainment,
like modern day artists sporting their
wares in noisy restaurants, to the
glamour of taking on, in concert halls,
Europe, Brunelleschi did a similar,
sleight-of-hand thing with his dome
in Florence for its oracular Cathedral
remember that the string quartet lives
on as a form, where no longer does
the minuet, for instance, nor the
polonaise, nor even the waltz, not to
mention that concertos, and
symphonies have become now
significantly subservient to movies,
secondary players
watch the instrumentalists here live
out, in Haydn’s Opus 77, no 1, their
appropriately Romantic ardour,
something not at all promoted in
Haydn’s earlier Esterházy phase, to
raise their bow in triumph, as they
do at the end of most movements
is already an indication, not at all
appropriate for the earlier princely
salons, that times have changed
Haydn was a prophet, but also an
elder, with an instrument to connect
the oncoming, and turbulent, century
to the impregnable bond of his
period’s systems, the legitimacy of
the autocratic, clockwork, world,
Classicism, the Age of Reason, the
Enlightenment, for better or for
worse
we are left with its, however ever
ebullient, consequences
R ! chard
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