11 The Austro-Germanic quartet tradition in the nineteenth century

Stephen E. Hefling

With the publication of Haydn’s Op. 33 (1782) and Mozart’s ensuing ‘Haydn’ Quartets (1785), the influence of the Austro-Germanic string quartet spread throughout Europe concurrently with the gradual emergence of professional quartet ensembles. Like nineteenth-century symphonists, quartet composers faced a formidable heritage, especially after Beethoven. Brahms summed it up famously: ‘You have no idea how it feels to the likes of us always to hear such a giant (Beethoven) marching behind one.’¹ In the context of current musical discourse, it might seem naive to accept Brahms’ observation as the starting point for an historical overview of quartet literature. Yet careful study of works by both famous and lesser-known composers points one repeatedly to the problem of the Viennese inheritance, and not only in German-speaking lands.² Accordingly, this chapter focuses on the quartets of four acknowledged nineteenth-century masters of the genre and one whose works, although all but forgotten today, were widely acclaimed during his lifetime.

Schubert

Among the first to sense the giant marching behind him was Franz Schubert (1797–1828), who was born in Vienna just as the twenty-six-year-old Beethoven was becoming securely established in the Austrian capital; he would survive Beethoven by only twenty months. Although he is best known today for his Lieder, chamber music occupied Schubert more consistently than any other type throughout his regrettably short career: string quartets dating from 1810 or early 1811 (D. 18–19a) are among his earliest known pieces, and his last completed instrumental work is the extraordinary C major String Quintet with two cellos (D. 956) composed just weeks before he died.

Schubert’s quartets as a whole fall conveniently into two groups: (1) eleven early works from the years 1810/11 to 1816, which are rarely heard today, and (2) three quartets from 1824–26 – the ‘Rosamunde’ in A minor (D. 804), ‘Death and the Maiden’ in D minor (D. 810), and the vast G major quartet (D. 887) – which are performed and recorded by nearly every prominent professional quartet. Between these two clusters is the Quartettsatz of 1820 (D. 703),³ the head-movement of an unfinished quartet, which in its bold design and expressive intensity stands apart from all Schubert’s previous instrumental works.

The early quartets can be further subdivided into: (a) seven compositions of a talented but not-yet-mature student (D. 18, 94, 32, 36, 46, 68, and 74, 1810/11 – August 1813), plus (b) five works written between November 1813 and 1816 that are, on the whole, more imposing and better focused (D. 87 in E, Op. 125 no. 1; D. 103, in C minor, now incomplete; D. 112 in B, Op. 168; D. 173 in G minor, and D. 353 in E, Op. 125 no. 2); in these the young composer has begun to find his own musical personality.

As a boy Schubert was violist of the family string quartet, and his studies at the Stadtkonvikt (City Seminary) provided additional opportunities for chamber music. The fruits of his early practical experience are twofold: from the outset Schubert handles the ensemble assuredly, yet most of the early works contain frequent echoes of Mozart, Haydn, and (less often) Beethoven. The first seven are experimental in nature, sometimes rather awkwardly so. Nevertheless, they provide ample evidence of young Schubert’s prodigious talent, and they reveal notable growth in technique from the time he began studying with Antonio Salieri (D. 32 and 36, 1812–13). To listen through them in chronological order is to retrace a wonderful journey of discovery.⁴

In 1814 Schubert composed both his earliest consummate Lied, ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’, and his first enduring piece of chamber music. In the B major Quartet, D. 112 (posthumously published as Op. 168) he successfully manages his own style of first-movement sonata form comprising a three-key-area exposition and a development based on plateaux and repetition, both of which become characteristics of several later works. And he produces a finale fitting for the work as a whole.⁵

As far as is known, Schubert wrote no more quartets for four years. Then in December 1820 he penned the C minor Quartettsatz, D. 703, which heralds his full maturity as an instrumental composer. It is a brilliant projection of drama through form. The entire movement is dominated by its opening, a traditional symbol of lament: the descending tetrachord (c¹–b–a–g),⁶ embellished by trembling neighbour notes. Like the onset of a sudden squall, the music sweeps within seconds from a single hushed middle c to a shrieking Neapolitan chord, ffz through four octaves, then collapses into a weary cadence. (Brahms clearly recalls this gesture in the opening of his own C minor Quartet, Op. 51 no. 1.) Hitherto the development section had generally not been Schubert’s strongest suit (nor would it be in future by comparison with Mozart or Beethoven). But the Quartettsatz transforms limitation into virtue. The ceaselessly regular, repetitive two-bar units characteristic of its exposition are not highly malleable; yet as regards affect and drama, what is there to develop, or to resolve through reprise, in a piece so fixated on its beginnings? Abandoning the premise of conflict resolution, Schubert elides the development into the recapitulation of the second theme. The agitated opening bars, which have never really left our awareness, are withheld until the movement’s bitter, inevitable close – an extraordinary instance of the tragic reversed recapitulation.⁷ Why Schubert left unfinished a quartet that begins so impressively remains a mystery.

Once again, four years passed yielding no new quartets. Meanwhile Schubert had contracted syphilis, which would make him intermittently miserable during his remaining years. Yet in February 1824 as his health declined, his productivity soared: by the end of March he had completed the Octet, D. 803, as well as two string quartets in a projected set of three: the A minor and ‘Death and the Maiden’. Nevertheless, he characterised himself at this time as ‘the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world’, and the poignant pathos often apparent in the two quartets strongly suggests that they reflect his inner world.⁸

The A minor Quartet D. 804 is a fundamentally lyrical work cast in a satisfying succession of movements. Like the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, it opens with a broad sonata form based on two Lied-like themes. The sombre opening already reflects in memory, as it were, the development’s dissonant denouement (bb. 140f.): the trembling vamp of the first two bars is the shockwave of the crisis yet to be revealed.⁹ Overall, the first movement and the third, a touching treatment of the age-old minuet, sing of longing, disappointment, and occasionally horror, with no resolution of affective discord. Between them the Andante, based on an entr’acte from Rosamunde, is a bucolic interlude (like the scene it introduced in the play),¹⁰ yet is also disrupted by agitation. Neither in this quartet nor in later chamber works does Schubert attempt a heroic conclusion. The A minor closes in a free-wheeling sonata-rondo based entirely on gypsy idioms – drone harmonies, accented second beats, a variety of dotted rhythms, and quasi-improvised ritardandos. Such style hongrois is apparently Schubert’s symbolic identification with the gypsies, those passionate, melancholy bohemians rejected by bourgeoisie and aristocrats alike, whose wretched circumstances probably seemed similar to his own.¹¹

The end-dance without consolation shapes Schubert’s last two quartets as well. Each ends in a long tarantella, the legendary ritual dance to prevent madness and death, which also carried ironic overtones of the carnivalesque.¹² The subtitle ‘Death and the Maiden’ is not Schubert’s, but comes from his famous song that furnishes the theme of the quartet’s slow-movement variations. There Schubert ignores the maiden’s terrified outbursts in the song and incorporates only Death’s solemn, oracular phrases; the last portion of the theme (bb. 17ff.) originally bore his words, ‘Be of good courage! I am not savage, / You shall rest peacefully in my arms.’ Thus, in contrast to the first movement, the reaper with the scythe (for so he is depicted in the volume from which Schubert got the poem) initially seems benevolent rather than punitive. But as the variations unfold the conflict re-emerges, and it is not difficult to associate the roles of Death and the Maiden with the voices of cello and first violin respectively. The ensuing buildup reaches a point of crisis and disintegration. Then all energy and resistance subside, and there follows a celestial coda almost devoid of material substance. If Death has won, he seems at last a comforter, as promised in the song.

Reportedly Ignaz Schuppanzigh, the Viennese quartet leader and friend of Beethoven to whom Schubert dedicated his A minor Quartet, did not like ‘Death and the Maiden’. And not until June 1826 did Schubert return to the genre, dashing off in approximately ten days his last and most extraordinary string quartet. As Gülke suggests, the G major seems in certain respects like an expansion and intensification of the D minor (although they lack thematic connections).¹³ By this time Schubert had probably heard some of the late Beethoven quartets, which Schuppanzigh premiered in 1825 and 1826. Yet the scope and originality – epic strangeness, one may even say – of the G major Quartet are without precedent. The vast opening movement quakes feverishly in tremolos and triplets almost throughout, and is fraught with the ambivalence of seemingly endless oscillations between major and minor modes. As Dahlhaus notes, this is music that unfolds through remembrance, turning from later events back to earlier ones, rather than through goal-consciousness (i.e. by pressing onward from earlier to later). Therein lies one of its chief differences from Beethoven.¹⁴ Moreover, Schubert treats the exposition’s materials episodically, much as he might in a development section. The result resembles a double variation set almost as much as a sonata form, and seems to proceed sans but précis.

The Andante begins fz in all four voices, rather like the momentary interruption of an ongoing dream. A wafting cello melody ensues – yet what, we wonder, could have come before? The answer emerges retrospectively when the unison fz returns (b. 109) after the shocking secondary section (bb. 40ff.). Here somnolent quiescence yields to nightmarish horror in merely four bars, a contrast more violent than any other in Schubert’s chamber uvre. As in sleep and dreaming, the kaleidoscopic shifts of feeling proceed in a rondo-like format, eventually arriving at a temporarily peaceful conclusion that in no sense resolves the movement’s conflicts. Following a scurrying nocturnal scherzo, Schubert again strikes up the tarantella, more riotously and relentlessly than in ‘Death and the Maiden’. As there, the vast structure is logical: a sonata-rondo with displaced reprise of the primary material. But its perpetually rushing rhythm, endless two-bar phrases, dizzying modal shifts, lurching modulations (frequently by half-step), and wild dynamic changes yield forth a driving delirium that sweeps beyond all boundaries – an infinite Dionysian dance whose purportedly curative powers seem irrelevant.

Spohr

Among the most prolific and respected German musicians in the first half of the century was the violinist, composer, and conductor Ludwig (Louis) Spohr (1784–1859). At the age of twenty Spohr was already an outstanding soloist and quartet player. He was deeply impressed by both the playing and the compositions of Pierre Rode, leading exponent of the French violin school, whom he sought to emulate. Although Spohr was prolific in nearly all genres, chamber works comprise about half of his 152 opus numbers; the 34 string quartets, largely unknown today, span most of his fifty-one-year career.¹⁵ They are of two types: eight that he regularly termed quatuor brillant or Solo-Quartett, which, in the French manner, are chiefly three-movement violin solos with string-trio accompaniment (Opp. 11, 27, 30, 43, 61, 68, 83 and 93), while the remainder are of the type a contemporary chronicler termed the ‘true quartet’, in which all four voices are prominent.¹⁶

Spohr recognised that the ‘true’ string quartet was ‘possibly the most difficult type of composition’.¹⁷ His first venture in the genre was a pair of works in C major and G minor written during 1803–5 and published as Op. 4 in 1806. Promising though they are, Spohr was soon dissatisfied, and understandably so.¹⁸ Much of the music is clearly indebted to Mozart, whom Spohr admired deeply, as well as to Haydn and, occasionally, early Beethoven,¹⁹ whose quartets he performed regularly. To be sure, Spohr’s Op. 4 rarely approaches their assured mastery. But certain features of his own style found frequently in his later quartets are already emerging: (1) a generally lyrical rather than dramatic approach to the first movement, with a good deal of symmetrical phrasing, and an outburst of passagework after the second theme followed by more lyrical ‘simmering down’ just before the double bar; (2) the tendency to build periods through repetition of two- or four-bar units; (3) a predilection for the dotted rhythms (particularly in catchy finales), trills, passagework, up-bow staccatos, and ‘Viotti’ bowings of the French violin school (especially for the dominant first violin, but also sparingly for the other instruments); (4) the sharing of motivic kernels across the various sections of a movement; (5) a fair amount of neighbour- and passing-note chromaticism, both in the melody and the lower voices (a trait that would increase in later works); (6) an apparent delight in establishing the dominant of an unusual key area and then side-stepping to another tonal centre (predictably via an augmented sixth chord); (7) relatively short development sections based largely on harmonic movement rather than motivic working-out; and (8) the tendency to turn the trio of a minuet or scherzo movement into a little character piece for the first violin. As Brown notes, the slow movements of Op. 4 are the most interesting:²⁰ here Spohr’s capacity to write singing melodic lines with rich harmonic and textural support is most clearly in evidence.

Spohr’s next pair of quartets, Op. 15, was composed in 1807–8 and published in 1809. Here he adopts the elegant triple-time opening movements of Mozart (K. 464 and 589) as models for his first movements, as he would in several later works as well. Overall, Op. 15 no. 1 in E is Spohr’s closest imitation of classical style.²¹ No. 2 in C, however, is a much gawkier piece in which classical techniques of motivic concentration are pedantically overworked. During the same period Spohr wrote his first quatuor brillant, Op. 11 in D minor (1807, published in 1808). Based on the Rode model, Op. 11 also establishes patterns found in Spohr’s later works of this sort. All of the principal material is given to the solo violin, and the other parts merely accompany. In essence, the first-movement exposition is a sandwich of two lyrical themes interspersed with bravura transitional passages, while the development comprises just under a minute of non-stop virtuosity over a simple harmonic plan. The slow movement, in classical binary format, opens with a warm hymn-like symmetrical melody for the violin. Trills and fioriture gradually emerge and predominate, and in the reprise Spohr maintains the eighteenth-century custom of further embellishing the principal theme. Predictably, however, the rondo finale is his tour de force: a jaunty, dotted march tune in French style gradually gives way not only to the usual runs, arpeggiations, and trills, but parallel thirds in the second theme, broken tenths, and, just before the final appearance of the rondo tune, parallel tenths alternating with a dominant pedal. Yet for all their showiness, this and the later quatuors brillants contain pleasant, characteristically Spohrian music of greater substance than much of the vapid virtuoso repertoire that remains perennially popular, and enterprising ensembles should consider including them in recitals.

Spohr spent the years 1813–15 in Vienna, where interactions with many prominent musicians, including Beethoven, were a powerful stimulus to his creativity. In addition, the merchant and music patron Johann Tost, who had commissioned several Haydn quartets, now sought chamber music from Spohr, who did not disappoint him. In the latter two of the three quartets he wrote for Tost – Op. 29 nos. 1 (E) and 2 (C) – Spohr’s quartet style crystallised: they are among his finest, and the critic Fröhlich, having heard Spohr play them in 1815, later declared no. 2 ‘one of the most significant works which this branch of music possesses’.²² There is greater assuredness and variety, more momentum and integration, yet also greater craftsmanship and charm than in the earlier works, and certain passages are quite memorable. Overall, the E seems slightly bolder, particularly in the wide-ranging harmonic tour of its first-movement development. The C minor slow movement is a variation set on a treading theme that vacillates intriguingly among tonic, submediant, and tonic major; subsequently Spohr varies the harmonic scheme further. If the variation spotlighting the first violin seems a bit trivially cheery, one can forgive him. The scherzo is successfully canonic in its first half, and interestingly imitative throughout. Characteristically Spohrian, as Brown notes, is the theme of the finale, in which the harmony and texture transform a potentially banal idea into one of pervasive good spirits.²³ Here and elsewhere, one hears harbingers of Mendelssohn.

Some thirty-five years later, when Spohr’s thirty-second string quartet, Op. 141 in C major, had appeared in print, an anonymous critic in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik would observe: ‘Spohr’s 31st quartet [recte: 32nd], 141st opus! This really says all that is necessary for our review. Whoever has become acquainted with the 141st opus of this composer has got what he expected!’²⁴ If exaggerated, this viewpoint conveys a kernel of truth: despite various attractive works one might point out – e.g. Op. 45 nos. 1 and 2, and especially Op. 84 no. 1, with its unusually intense first movement – the fundamental aspects of Spohr’s quartet style did not greatly change after he left Vienna in 1815. Overall, this is music of Gemütlichkeit – always well crafted, yet avoiding high drama, and somewhat prone to lulling repetitions, predictable patterns, chromaticism that can seem cloying, and occasional echoes of Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven. But although Spohr had been on good terms with Beethoven and would frequently perform the first four symphonies and the piano concertos, he never took up the challenge of Beethoven’s middle-period style, and was openly critical of his late works.²⁵ Indeed, Beethoven’s Op. 18, published in 1801, arguably presents greater variety, drama and dynamism than any six contiguous Spohr quartets written from fifteen to fifty years later. It can be tempting to bracket these works as a manifestation of the convivial, complacent Biedermeier Zeitgeist, although Carl Dahlhaus has underscored the difficulties of successfully distinguishing a Biedermeier musical style from that of the ‘genuine romantics’.²⁶

In any case, at the time of his death Spohr was widely regarded in Germany, Austria and England as one of the most important composers in the history of music, ‘the last representative of that noble line . . . that had its roots fixed in Classical ground,’ according to the Neue Berliner Musikzeitung.²⁷ But his popularity soon plummeted, and by the 1920s his chamber music was almost entirely neglected. As Brown notes, the self-contained distinctiveness of the style he had brought to ripeness by the age of thirty provides the key both to his influence in his own day and to his long-term decline;²⁸ ultimately he was overshadowed by both older and younger contemporaries.

Mendelssohn

Undoubtedly among the best educated musicians of the nineteenth century, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–47) was ideally situated to enhance the legacy of the Austro-Germanic string quartet. Tutored in the Bach tradition by Carl Friedrich Zelter, young Mendelssohn was a master of counterpoint at the age of twelve. A capable violinist and violist, Mendelssohn played chamber music gladly, and was thoroughly steeped in the Viennese Classical repertoire. His writing for strings, while challenging, reveals the insider’s knack for obtaining the best effect with the least technical awkwardness.

Mendelssohn’s musical style was formed in the conservative cultural milieu of Restoration Berlin; clarity, polish and symmetry are the heritage of his methodical training.²⁹ And perhaps owing to his extraordinary talent and precocity, he appears to have been relatively unintimidated by the weight of the past and the imperative of novelty; in the best case, he declared, the artist ‘did things imperceptibly better than his immediate predecessors’.³⁰ Schumann famously dubbed him ‘the Mozart of the nineteenth century’.³¹ Yet he was deeply affected both by Beethoven’s powerful innovations and by the swelling currents of Romanticism.

All of these influences are apparent in the seven string quartets spanning Mendelssohn’s career from his student days to his last months. The most adventurous and impassioned of them are the first he published (A minor, Op. 13, 1827) and the last he completed, just before his death (F minor, 1847, published posthumously as Op. 80). Between these extremes lie the trilogy of Op. 44, rich in variety and craftsmanship yet tamer overall, and an early counterpart to the A minor, Op. 12 in E (1829).

Mendelssohn left unpublished a student quartet in E written in 1823.³² The first quartet of his maturity, the A minor, Op. 13, was composed in 1827, very much under the spell of Beethoven’s late A minor Quartet, Op. 132 (1825).³³ Motivic connections between the two works have often been noted, especially in their first movements, and both employ an impassioned violin recitative to introduce their finales.³⁴ The bleak, chromatic fugal section of Mendelssohn’s Adagio non lento (bb. 20ff.) recalls that in the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Op. 95, and at various points Mendelssohn evokes the late Beethovenian sound world, particularly in its individualised and often fragmentary part writing. Mendelssohn is thus the first composer to come partially to grips with a musical style widely considered unfathomable during the next half-century. In correspondence with the Swedish composer Adolf Lindblad, Mendelssohn reveals he was especially impressed by Beethoven’s organically relating ‘movements of a sonata to each other and their respective parts, so that from the bare beginning throughout the entire existence of such a piece one already knows the mystery . . . that must be in the music’.³⁵ Yet in many if not more respects, Mendelssohn does not emulate late Beethoven:³⁶ the intensity of Op. 13’s outer movements notwithstanding, they lack the elemental, sometimes bizarre, disruptiveness and formal daring of Op. 132, as well as its macrocosmic sense of irresolution. (To be sure, Mendelssohn becomes re-engaged with such matters in his final quartet, as noted below.) Overall, in Op. 13 he is much more inclined than Beethoven to write balanced antecedent–consequent phrases with internal repetitions, and his suave stylistic control is everywhere apparent beneath the anguished surface. Indeed, this quartet grows directly from the lyrical, symmetrical impulse of Mendelssohn’s song ‘Frage’ (‘Question’), Op. 9 no. 1, a simple setting of love poetry (possibly his own) that he appended to the quartet as its ‘theme’. ‘You will hear its notes resound in the first and last movements’, he wrote to Lindblad, ‘and sense its feeling in all four.’³⁷ Through this unifying device, and also by explicit cross-references in the finale to both the first and second movements, Mendelssohn achieves a degree of taut integration approaching that of late Beethoven while maintaining his own musical identity throughout, ‘bridging the realms of chamber music and the art song and testing the ability of instrumental music to imitate a vocal model’, as Todd aptly observes.³⁸

Just as E stands far removed from A minor, so the warm affective world of Op. 12 contrasts with the agitation of Op. 13 – at least for the first three movements. Nevertheless, in this quartet of 1829 Mendelssohn pursues even further his goal of developing the ‘entire existence’ of the work from its ‘bare beginning’: the introduction presents kernels significant throughout, and the first movement generates a gentle, yet far-reaching tension resolved only on the last page of the finale.³⁹ Quite possibly the compact, yet passionate slow movement was inspired by Mendelssohn’s covert crush on his childhood neighbour, Betty Pistor, the private dedicatee of Op. 12.⁴⁰ Most striking is the finale, launched not in E but in C minor. Its racing triplets, relentlessly driving compound metre, block-like hybrid form, and extensive quotations of previous movements suggest possible acquaintance with late Schubert.⁴¹ Ultimately the serenity of the E first movement prevails, far more convincingly than in its own coda, yet still through cyclic persuasion rather than heroic force. Only Mozart could manage the minor-to-major finale conclusion with equal sophistication and effectiveness.

Not until 1837 (during his honeymoon) did Mendelssohn resume quartet composition: his first effort was the E minor work subsequently published as Op. 44 no. 2. Traditional wisdom has long maintained that compared to his earlier quartets, Op. 44 represents a reactionary retreat to classicism.⁴² Mendelssohn’s sister, Fanny Hensel, reveals a partial reason for this in a letter to Felix of 1835: ‘we were young precisely during the last years of Beethoven, whose manner we readily and extensively assimilated. It is, however, entirely too agitating and forcible. You lived and composed your way through this . . .’⁴³ Whatever the reason, a sea change is unmistakable – yet so, too, is the masterly beauty of Op. 44 no. 2. Like much Mozart, the excellence of this music may be missed owing to its exquisite polish.

Although eschewing Beethovenian extremes – Op. 59 no. 2 in E minor (1806) is more radical – Mendelssohn’s E minor is a richly dramatic work based on the Classical conflict of minor mode versus major: the tension between them is sustained until the very end. As so often throughout these quartets, the impetus for the first movement is song. Yet beneath the poised, often symmetrical surface is a current of impassioned restlessness (first manifest in the agitated syncopations and rushing semiquavers) that remains unresolved at the movement’s end. And the agitation is simply shunted aside during the two ensuing intermezzos, both quintessentially Mendelssohnian: a puckish four-minute scherzo and an elegant song without words shaped like a Classical binary slow movement.

The work’s overarching drama resumes in the finale. The driving metre and tempo of the scherzo return, but now in the minor, as though the scherzo’s symmetrically phrased exhilaration had turned demonic. Although lasting only seven minutes, this quasi-Schubertian sonata-rondo can seem long, repetitive, and discursive,⁴⁴ and its waltzing second subject (bb. 75ff.) somewhat Biedermeier. But these features also contribute to the ongoing tension: when, for example, headlong quavers combine with sentimental waltz in the Animato section (bb. 155ff.), a positive major-mode conclusion seems plausible. Ironically, however, just this passage (bb. 405ff.) at length yields without resistance to the minor mode at the onset of the coda (b. 425). Yet only the last thirty bars – the most intense of the entire quartet – seal the minor outcome irrevocably.

It must be admitted, however, that Mendelssohn does not consistently maintain such dramatic continuity within a classicising context throughout Op. 44. In the E no. 3 (chronologically second, February 1838), no unifying thread binds either the cycle overall or the outer movements within themselves, which are the longest and most discursive in all of Mendelssohn’s quartets. Their brilliant moments nostalgically evoke his Octet, Op. 20 in the same key, yet never quite achieve the fusion of panache plus coherence central to that youthful triumph. The C minor scherzo, by contrast, is vintage Mendelssohn, skilfully seasoned with contrapuntal zest.⁴⁵ And the A major Adagio non troppo, thematically inspired by Mozart, is exquisite in its emotional depth and formal novelty – a rich blend of sonata and ternary structures that Brahms cannot have overlooked.⁴⁶ In Op. 44 no. 1 (July 1838), the contrasts between outer and inner movements are similar but less pronounced. Both the first and the final movements sound more virtuosic than they are, and the traditional brilliance of D major string writing in Op. 44 no. 1 is perhaps its strongest unifying feature.

Nine years after completing Op. 44 Mendelssohn drafted his final quartet, the F minor, in the wake of his beloved sister Fanny’s death (May 1847): this highly discordant work seems permeated with his shock, outrage and grief. From the first tremblings of the opening movement everything sounds amiss; symmetrical phrasing, so central to Mendelssohn’s earlier style, here becomes a foil for agitation that swamps formal boundaries right through to the last raging bars of the finale. Nevertheless, the cycle is subtly unified by a recurring motivic cell first heard in the opening five pitches of the first violin, and there are numerous other links between movements.

The swell of the first nine bars is the first of three false starts. The resigned effort at transition (bb. 28ff.) turns straight back towards the tonic, yielding a surge of storming triplets recalled in the coda of the finale. At length this outburst gives way to the lyrically lamenting second theme, but the underlying agitation remains. There is no double bar: the development’s sudden onset (b. 96), quaking like the movement’s opening, only underscores how fundamentally unstable the entire exposition has been. What follows becomes more so, culminating in a rising wail that soars to b³ for the first violin (bb. 161–5). Only retrospectively do we realise that, meanwhile, the development has collapsed into the reprise. In the coda this agonising chromatic ascent clatters diatonically downward in a demonic mockery of the movement’s previous high point.

The fury continues in the F minor Scherzo, resembling a Czech furiant in its rampant hemiolas;⁴⁷ the trio approaches late Beethoven in its oddness. Even the binary Adagio (possibly an elegy for Fanny) is unsettled in several respects. Its second half (bb. 50ff.) expands into a climactic passage that recalls swelling chromaticism from previous movements and fragments into dejection before the course of the reprise resumes, ‘cantabile’, as though nothing were amiss (b. 83). The finale is filled with the syncopations, diminished sevenths, distorted symmetry, and interrupted periodicity of musical Zerrissenheit. Wistful reminiscences of earlier Mendelssohn in the transition (bb. 49ff.) and Schubert in the development (bb. 213ff.) are of no avail. The reprise (b. 269) brings back the storming triplets of the first movement, and in the coda (b. 375) they combine contrapuntally with the main theme, dramatically highlighting its cyclic derivation from the first movement (bb. 41ff.) in a manner anticipating Brahms.⁴⁸

Op. 80 is a work of gripping intensity and strong contrasts, which Mendelssohn heightened in his polishing of the score.⁴⁹ It ventures into new expressive regions within the standard four-movement format; save for Schubert’s last quartet (G major, D. 887, then still unpublished), nothing this unusual had been written since late Beethoven. Yet like Beethoven and Schubert, Mendelssohn ended his career with chamber music for strings: the F minor Quartet was his last completed composition.⁵⁰

Schumann

Schumann’s three string quartets, Op. 41, date from the summer of 1842, his ‘chamber music year’, during which he also composed three works for piano and strings (Opp. 44, 47, and 88). Mendelssohn, to whom Op. 41 is dedicated, considered these quartets the best works of Schumann’s earlier period, and Schumann agreed.⁵¹ Long a chamber-music enthusiast, Schumann in 1836 began attending rehearsals of the quartet led by Ferdinand David (Mendelssohn’s friend and concertmaster); there he learnt a wide variety of music, including late Beethoven. As editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, he declared in 1838 that Beethoven’s Quartets in E, Op. 127, and C minor, Op. 131, were works ‘for whose greatness no words can be found’; together with the best of Bach, they ‘represent the outermost limits that human art and imagination have yet reached’.⁵² Thus inspired, Schumann attempted a first quartet of his own, of which nothing survives. The following summer (1839), he was determined to conquer the genre, and sketched openings of two quartets while assiduously studying late Beethoven ‘right down to the love and hate in them’– all to no avail.⁵³

Two more years elapsed before Schumann completed a quartet. Meanwhile, as Daverio has shown, Schumann the journalist was shaping his own aesthetic of the genre while reviewing the efforts of others.⁵⁴ Two main points emerge. First, in ‘a true quartet . . . everyone has something to say’; it should be ‘a conversation, often truly beautiful, often oddly and turbidly woven, among four people’.⁵⁵ This echoes Goethe’s famous pronouncement (to Mendelssohn’s teacher Zelter) that in a quartet ‘one hears four rational people talk among themselves, one believes that one gains something from their discourse . . .’⁵⁶ Accordingly, ‘operatic, overladen’ music as well as ‘symphonic furor’ must be avoided.⁵⁷ Second, the composer must be steeped in the heritage of the genre without slavishly imitating older models.⁵⁸ Late Beethoven should be the benchmark, and for Schumann, only Mendelssohn and Onslow among his contemporaries approached that standard.⁵⁹ Nevertheless, he believes there is much to be gleaned from further study of Haydn and Mozart as well.⁶⁰

Schumann’s First Quartet Op. 41 no. 1 begins with a rather bleak A minor introduction perhaps influenced by that of Beethoven’s Op. 132, and also by the haunting C minor fugue of Op. 131.⁶¹ But if so, Schumann clearly avoids slavish imitation: only the first six bars are strictly imitative, and the music lacks the premonitory power inaugurating Op. 132. Indeed, it almost constitutes a short movement unto itself. The ensuing sonata form, a lilting 6/8 Allegro, is surprisingly in F major: whether F or A is the true tonic will be settled only in the finale. Metre, rhythms, and texture here all recall the quirky D major Allegro molto vivace that follows the fugue in Beethoven’s Op. 131; and a quick comparison spotlights a problematic aspect of Schumann’s thematic style throughout Op. 41. Even over static pedals, Beethoven generates phrase overlaps and ambiguities that propel the piece forward, whereas Schumann proceeds in repetitive two-bar segments always adding up to eight (or ten).⁶² Such self-contained symmetry smacks more of songs and character pieces than of traditional Viennese sonata forms; nevertheless, this is an aspect of Schumann’s effort to revitalise the genre.

Just when a transition is expected a fugato arrives, its subject derived from the close of the first group (bb. 76–9 = melody of 72–5). Yet this dissolves after the fourth entry (bb. 92ff.). For the second theme proper an idea from the exposition’s third phrase (bb. 50–1) combines with a jagged countersubject (bb. 101ff.) recalling the rushing triplet passages in Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge (albeit without their ferocity). This is, however, sequential material, treated as one might expect in a Mendelssohn development section. And Schumann indeed recycles both this idea and the next (bb. 117ff.) twice in his own development section – one of several in his works composed in ‘sequential block’ manner.⁶³ Such a procedure derives from Schubert, whose music Schumann loved. Yet this quartet’s development proceeds consistently in restless four-bar segments lacking apparent overriding purpose. Then with no preparation and little sense of resolution, the recapitulation (bb. 231ff.) precisely retraces the course of the exposition, adjusting only the modulatory scheme – a more ‘classical’ treatment of form than one often finds in Haydn and Mozart.⁶⁴

A minor returns in the scherzo, whose clipped phrases and scurrying parallel motion are clearly indebted to Mendelssohn (Op. 44 no. 3). But Schumann’s formal scheme (ABA′) is less complex than Mendelssohn’s: the scherzo proper is ternary whilst the trio is a delightful ‘Intermezzo’ in C major and duple metre that flows gracefully over drone basses. The Adagio, an extraordinary mixture of strophic variation and ternary form, is undoubtedly the highpoint of this quartet. Following three bars of rhythmic and harmonic ambiguity, a hymn-like melody initially recalling the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth settles into F major as the ostinato accompaniment evokes the song-without-words style of Mendelssohn. By the fourth phrase, however (bb. 16ff.), Schumann’s harmonic and melodic intensity portend greater complexity that emerges fully in the middle section, launched by an abrupt plunge into A (b. 29). Such brusque contrast plus fragmented texture and the ensuing slow-motion intensification of the theme’s fourth phrase all invoke the world of late Beethoven. In the reprise these tensions recede, yet without resolution, and the music sinks slowly back into its dream-like introduction.

His earlier objections notwithstanding, Schumann unleashes considerable symphonic furor in the A minor finale, a swashbuckling sonata form that is essentially monothematic. The cascading quavers of the opening are inverted (in C, b. 22), then re-inverted (sequential, bb. 43–62), and at length augmented and combined with the inverted quaver form (in C, bb. 63ff.). F major makes a strong appearance in both exposition (bb. 31ff.) and development (bb. 152ff.), signalling that the question of overall tonality still remains undecided. A restless affair, the development continues to rehearse the bustling combined scale contours, often moving sequentially in four- or eight-bar clumps. Then suddenly, F major from nowhere (b. 152): Schumann makes an audacious false reprise by splicing in the entire 52-bar block, transposed, from the exposition’s arrival in the relative (bb. 23ff.) until just before the double bar. It now seems that the movement must surely end in F. Yet in three bars’ time the course shifts back towards A minor, and by bar 214 it is clear there will be an A minor reprise as well. In the manner of Mozart and Mendelssohn, a last effort to escape the minor tonic fails (bb. 234–42), and just when closure seems inevitable, the whimsical musette variant, Moderato and major, appears as though by magic (bb. 254ff.) – shades of Op. 132, but also a moment of arabesque probably inspired by early Romantic literature.⁶⁵ This sets the stage for the concluding minor-to-major transformation, which, if less elegant than that of Mendelssohn’s Op. 12, is convincing nonetheless.

The opening movement of Op. 41 no. 2 in F major swings with the exuberance of a waltz, in sweeping eight-bar units. In other respects, however, it proceeds along the lines of the First Quartet’s F major Allegro. Like that movement it is essentially monothematic; the entire exposition through the first ending is a perfectly symmetrical 96 bars (8 × 12). And the development is of the sequential block variety, containing a direct splice of material from the exposition.

Perhaps the most unusual movement in all of Op. 41 is the ensuing 12/8 Andante, quasi Variazioni in A. Not, however, the initial music but rather the second, more complex sixteen-bar segment (bb. 16–32) actually becomes the basis for four ensuing variations (all delineated by double bars). The first and third of these reveal the influence of Beethoven’s variations in Op. 131; the second begins like a Ländler, but subsequently becomes rather bravura. Variation 4 could be an ironically cheery song from Schumann’s Dichterliebe cycle, and ends flippantly in its thirteenth bar. The introductory section returns, followed by a coda in the style of the Ländler variation.

The C minor scherzo in ABB′ form is an arpeggiating syncopated tongue twister. Beneath the frolicsome surface, however, are the same regular phrase units (here eight bars) standard in this quartet. The finale has the madcap gait of a Galopp, the German dance popular for the rousing conclusion of a ball,⁶⁶ combined with moto perpetuo figuration chiefly for the first violin – all within the structure of a full-blown sonata form (including repeated second half).

Schumann’s Third Quartet Op. 41 no. 3, long his most popular, is also the longest and in many respects most idiosyncratic. Shadows of late Beethoven have largely receded here, yet each movement contains innovative variants upon standard procedures, the best of which are richly satisfying. A brief introduction highlights the first movement’s motto gesture – a falling fifth (initially f²–b¹) over a ii⁶ ₅ chord.⁶⁷ The motto’s non-tonic ictus generates momentum within the main theme of the Allegro and at each of the movement’s structural divisions. The early onset of transitional material (b. 17) leads to a song-like second theme cleverly derived from the first and driven by sequencing plus a restless off-beat accompaniment. Such simple yet effective procedures give new life to Schumann’s penchant for symmetrical phrasing. A moment of characteristically capricious arabesque briefly interrupts the momentum (un poco ritenuto, bb. 77ff.) shortly before the exposition’s close. And the development, the most concise in Op. 41, dissolves similarly. It is based entirely on sequential treatment of the motto; accordingly, the recapitulation is reversed (beginning with the second theme at b. 154), and a brief coda brings this bright movement to a close.

Variations are common in string quartets, but not in the place of a scherzo. The F minor Assai agitato begins as though it were a nervous, fleeting post-Beethovenian 3/8 (constant syncopations recall the Vivace of Op. 135). Then follows the loosely imitative first variation, in which the syncopated anacruses have expanded to two detached quavers. The second variation presents tight stretto imitation in duple time with a flavour of archaic severity. Variation 3, Un poco Adagio, reduces the theme to classical simplicity, revealing that it is derived from Mendelssohn’s scherzo in Op. 44 no. 2 (bb. 141ff.). The fourth variation evokes style hongrois, the passionate, exotic idiom of the Gypsies. This stomping energy is suddenly defused by the magical stroke of the coda – tonic major over drones. A memorable drop by third relation (F to E, bb. 233, 241) brings a reminiscence of the capricious arabesque from the first movement, and the piece fades dreamily in major–minor undulation.

The ensuing Adagio molto is a poignant rondo form alternating lyrical tenderness and intense, unresolved anguish in a manner distinctly Schumann’s own.⁶⁸ The crowning achievement of Op. 41, it comes closest to his ideal of ‘a conversation, often truly beautiful, often oddly and turbidly woven, among four people’. The viola is the voice of angst here (bb. 8ff.). Its dialogues with the first violin in the B sections reveal the menacing undercurrent of the main theme (bb. 26, 66f.), and two-thirds through these episodes the viola breaks into low-register sobbing (bb. 35, 74ff.). By the coda this tenor voice can no longer respond to the soprano, having become fixated upon the ominous dotted motive from the accompaniment of the B material. At movement’s end only the viola part is marked morendo (dying).

In the rondo finale, a ‘mosaic-like succession of miniature character portraits’,⁶⁹ the morose dotted rhythms of the Adagio transmigrate into the energetic skipping of the refrain, while the ‘Quasi-trio’ features the characteristic rhythm of a gavotte.⁷⁰ Although the tiles of a mosaic traditionally create the illusion of a larger picture, here the disjunctiveness of the fragments seems to obscure the broader line as Schumann stands the rondo paradigm on its head: atypically, the episodes are harmonically and metrically more stable than the refrain.⁷¹ Only in the coda does the music really take flight, in a Dionysian dithyramb of dotted quavers enlivened by unusual harmonic twists. And therewith Schumann took his leave of the string quartet, never to return.

Brahms

Johannes Brahms (1833–97) was already writing string quartets when, in 1853, Schumann famously declared him the composer ‘called to utter in ideal manner the highest expressions of the times’, who had sprung forth ‘fully armed like Minerva from the head of Jupiter’.⁷² But Brahms destroyed those juvenilia as he would some twenty quartets before finally releasing Op. 51 no. 1 in C minor in 1873, twenty years after his first visit to the Schumanns.⁷³ Having also met Liszt in 1853, Brahms already realised his aversion to ‘“symphonic poems” and all that stuff’,⁷⁴ an opposition he and Joseph Joachim made public in 1860. Thus, it was natural that Brahms should champion chamber music, which the New German School regarded as passé, and within his lifetime he became recognised as the pre-eminent chamber composer. His friends in Vienna’s Hellmesberger Quartet would perform his music there frequently, as would Joachim in Berlin and elsewhere. Publication of several important Schubert chamber works as well as Mendelssohn’s last quartet during the 1850s placed Brahms among the first to experience the full weight of the Austro-Germanic tradition.

By the mid-1860s Brahms had published an impressive amount of chamber music (including Opp. 8, 18, 34, 36, 38, and 40). But Beethoven overshadowed the string quartet as much as the symphony, and Brahms lacked Mendelssohn’s equanimity towards the ‘giant marching behind’. He entered both genres with C minor works long in the making and of decidedly Beethovenian stamp.

Brahms’ First Quartet Op. 51 no. 1 is a milestone, markedly different from anything the forty-year-old composer had previously written.⁷⁵ Terse, inexorably logical in its local and long-range motivic concentration, and obdurately agitated in three out of four movements, it is a tragic work – determinedly so, as MacDonald observes.⁷⁶ By comparison, Brahms’ earlier chamber music, strongly influenced by Schubert, seems capaciously luxuriant.⁷⁷ Initially the first movement’s main theme echoes that of Beethoven’s C minor ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, Op. 13. But the quaking accompaniment and rapid swell from c¹ to a shrieking a³ (b. 7) followed by immediate collapse point to Schubert’s C minor Quartettsatz, D. 703.⁷⁸ Brahms also adopts Schubert’s lamento bass (c–b–a–g) in his first seven bars, doubled in thirds.⁷⁹ Between the A (b. 5) and G (b. 7) of the cello part, however, Brahms interpolates the pitches E and C: this articulates an augmented inversion of the violins’ A arpeggiations in bars 5–6, which grew from the tonic arpeggiation motive of bar 1. Derived from Beethoven, such ‘developing variation’ (Schoenberg’s term) is impressive throughout this quartet; unfortunately very few instances can be discussed here.⁸⁰

From the outset this music projects nervous instability. Already in the first phrase chromaticism destabilises the tonic; the second phrase drifts past V to an unharmonised f (bb. 20–1: lower neighbour to V, or V of B minor?). Then, almost diffidently, cello and viola assume the arpeggiating main motive as the violins execute a furious diminution of it. Now the lamento tetrachord arrives on top via invertible counterpoint (bb. 24–31), and bars 24–5 invoke the grim ‘omnibus’ harmonic progression that Mozart and Schubert had linked to fear of death.⁸¹ Like the opening antecedent phrase (bb. 1–22), this consequent is also open-ended. As in the ‘Pathétique’, the mediant minor is the unstable harmonic goal of the exposition, but it is fully confirmed only some forty-three bars later (with substantial modal mixture). Motivically, everything is developed from the first group: there is neither the time nor the poise for a distinctive second subject. Even the Schumannian arabesque closing the exposition (bb. 63ff.) is motivically derived.

The relatively brief development focuses on familiar material while dramatic harmonic action renders it more volatile than the exposition. Block-like episodes (bb. 92–9, 100–7) and further sequencing precipitate a fierce struggle over the tonicization of C minor (bb. 112ff.), which is then inconclusively displaced. The ensuing Brahmsian recapitulatory overlap liquidates the developmental process and launches a large-scale anacrusis to resumption of the exposition’s agitation.⁸² The tonic, however, will not recur in root position until the coda, which glimmers with a fury fully released only in the finale.

Entitled ‘Romanze’, the ternary Poco adagio transforms the anxiety of the first movement’s opening. Its charmingly asymmetrical main theme is cast in a simple aaba′ Lied form, yet does not quite achieve closure. The ensuing ‘B’ section reveals uncertainties that will affect the quartet’s finale as well: minor mode, hushed quaking, cross-rhythms, and fragmentary phrasing characterise this music (which partially recalls the beklemmt mid-section of Beethoven’s Cavatina in Op. 130). Its triplets proliferate into the reprise of the main material that, formerly veiled in intimacy, becomes overtly ardent. Yet the ‘B’ music returns as coda, almost tipping the movement’s form to binary (ABAB), and unsettling its idyllic closure.

The lamento tetrachord (c²–g¹) plus wailing chromaticism over a relentless 4/8 tread mark the ‘scherzo’, whose motto progression is Neapolitan to dominant in C minor. That tonality predominates until the closing section of the second half (bb. 66ff.), where F minor (equally grim) at length prevails. In contrast, the F major trio is this quartet’s sole invocation of Brahms’ earlier chamber music style; here the rustic bariolage accompaniment and cheerful Schubertian themes recall the Sextets, Opp. 18 and 36.

If the F minor Scherzo provides tonal impetus for the finale’s raging off-tonic onset, the ‘Romanze’, ironically, furnishes both rhythm and initial contour of its unison motto motive (the high a³ and falling diminished seventh stem from the quartet’s beginning).⁸³ A transformation of the Scherzo’s repetitive slurred duples (bb. 3ff.) animates much of the principal material, and the bass expands the ubiquitous descending fourth down to the open C string. Two-bar phrase units, inaugurated by the motto, are the most regular feature of the exposition overall, yet their combination into larger configurations is often unpredictable. These basic kernels are spun out further in the second and third tonic-minor ideas (bb. 21, 33ff.).

Like the first movement, this music is too agitated and obsessively developmental to entertain seriously the possibility of tonal and thematic contrast. At length the motto returns and collapses (bb. 68ff.), yielding to the ‘second subject’ – the main idea of the ‘Romanze’, piano and poco tranquillo over a dominant pedal of E, which blossoms into a rhapsodic reminiscence of the slow movement’s ardour. But E is never fully confirmed, and gradually the initial anxiousness resumes. The motto launches the brief ‘sequential block’ development in bar 94. Here Brahms’ masterly tactics are apparently derived from the tragic reversed recapitulation of Schubert’s Quartettsatz: the development is elided into the recapitulation of the exposition’s third idea (bb. 124ff.; cf. b. 33), now in A minor. Yet escape from the tonic is illusory. The exposition’s stepwise descent (c B (=V/E)) must here bring on the dominant of C. And therewith arrives the ‘Romanze’ second subject, imploringly extended – to no avail. As though a horrid force were suddenly released in all its fury, the primary material returns, surging forth into a coda bound relentlessly to the tonic pedal of the cello’s open C string (bb. 231ff.). The final cry from this musical maelstrom is the very opening of the first movement (bb. 244–6), quaking now in the paired duplets common to all four movements. Three clipped cadential chords, and all is done.

Joachim had urged his friend to compose quartets, and Brahms evidently responded by spelling their bachelorhood mottos in the primary theme of his Second Quartet, Op. 51 no. 2: a¹–f²–a² is the inversion of Brahms’ ‘frei aber froh’ (free but happy), and f²–a²–e² represents Joachim’s ‘frei aber einsam’.⁸⁴ In the event this proved ironic: the friends quarrelled seriously in 1873, and the dedication of Op. 51 went to Dr Theodor Billroth; subsequently Brahms supported Joachim’s wife in his divorce suit. That notwithstanding, the Second Quartet is generally less frenetic and determinedly tragic than the First, even though it ultimately yields to just those two attributes. A certain melancholy lyricism prevails in the A minor, yet its contrasting theme groups and key areas function with greater autonomy than those of the C minor.

From the outset the pace is more regular and contemplative (Allegro non troppo), and Brahms’ penchant for endless development is somewhat less daunting. It swells up (as in Beethoven) during the transition (bb. 20ff.), then simmers at the approach of the generously lyrical second theme (bb. 40ff.) – which nevertheless recycles pitches prominent in the first six bars of the main subject (e², g², f², d², a²). Characteristically Brahmsian are its cross-rhythms and violin fioriture as well as its subsequent brusque transformation (bb. 84ff.); the whimsical halt of this onslaught, however, is indebted to Schumann. The development proper is shorter than that of the C minor Quartet, yet more volatile because driven by a seemingly impotent rage unable to achieve anything other than an unwanted reprise. At its crisis point the entire quartet becomes mired in obsessive repetition emphasising e³–f³ in the treble and E in the bass (bb. 159–60). Then follows a four-bar collapse from f³ to E, grimly invoking Joachim’s motto as the recapitulatory overlap begins. None of this tension is resolved, and the movement ends much as it begins, only more vehemently.

Even more than the ‘Romanze’ of the First Quartet, the modified ternary A major Andante moderato of the Second is a study in lyrical ambivalence. Pellucid in its overall bar format (aab), the tightly woven principal material nevertheless seeks digression, most notably as its segments approach closure.⁸⁵ The source of uneasiness is starkly revealed in the B section – a two-fold outpouring of anguished alienation in gypsy style, almost surely influenced by Schubert.⁸⁶ Although only seventeen bars long (including a recall of A at b. 48), this disruption is far-reaching: through three varied false reprises the music searches for centrality, wistfully regaining it only thirty-odd bars later, and ending in fragility. What follows is among Brahms’ most original intermezzos, anticipating that of his Second Symphony. The archaic-sounding ‘Quasi Minuetto’ (A minor) proceeds haltingly in three- and six-bar units, largely over rustic musette drones. This alternates with a chipper 2/4 Allegretto vivace in the major; the two segments are subtly related,⁸⁷ yet neither seems to hold sway until, as though reluctantly, a full reprise of the minuet brings ambivalent closure.

Although related to the finale of the First Quartet, the Second’s concluding movement differs in significant respects.⁸⁸ In honour of Joachim, who was Hungarian, its main theme converts both contour and three-bar units of the A minor minuet into a gypsy dance laced with hemiolas;⁸⁹ this is further transformed into a carefree waltz for the second group (bb. 45ff.). Such topoi would seem unthinkable in the C minor. Formally, the A minor finale is closer to a sonata-rondo, with the added twist that both dance themes return at pitch before the onset of the developmental passage (bb. 162ff.). Such a ‘blocky’ structure not only reflects the nature of the principal idea, but also masks the movement’s eventual outcome (whereas the mounting agitation of the C minor’s second theme telegraphs the nature of the ending well in advance). Yet the second appearance of the waltz (bb. 144ff.) seems illusory, and the third (in the tonic major, b. 238) truly passé. The coda resorts to Schumannesque rêverie to forestall the inevitable, but ultimately the furies have their way.

Conventional wisdom has it that in 1875, having successfully challenged Beethoven in the genres of both quartet and symphony, Brahms indulged in ‘unbuttoned style’ and ‘naive eccentricity’ in the B major Quartet⁹⁰ – a work ‘full of cheerful unorthodoxies’ and ‘as carefree and capriciously inventive as the Op. 51 Quartets had been severely logical and serious-minded’, as MacDonald puts it.⁹¹ Its opening 6/8 Vivace combines gigue and hunting topics in a manner dear to Mozart (‘Hunt’ Quartet in B, K. 458, String Quintet in E, K. 614), and its outer movements are ‘Classical’, even Haydnesque.⁹² All true up to a point, and yet – the sophistication beneath the surface is uncanny. Whereas Op. 51 responds chiefly to middle-period Beethoven, the ‘classicism’ of Op. 67 is refracted through the lens of Beethoven’s late quartets; the opening movements of Opp. 130 and 135 are the ancestors of Brahms’ ‘cheerful unorthodoxies’.

Moreover, Brahms here produces his first overtly cyclical work in conjunction with his first variation-set finale (likely a nod to Mozart): the seventh variation suddenly conjures forth the quartet’s opening, revealing a carefully wrought linkage between the two movements that is pursued to the end of the work. Thus ‘Classical’ variation and ‘New German’ cyclicism are united in distinctly Brahmsian manner. And because all of the first movement’s material is derived from the first group, its connection to the finale becomes retrospectively tighter. Yet despite such motivic coherence, the opening sonata form is unusually disjunctive. Its dancing first group proceeds by call-and-response, while the second is bipartite – first dominant major and florid (b. 31), then minor and condensed (b. 50), yet ever derived from the first. What seems to be closing material in 2/4 – a ‘prim little polka’⁹³ – expands inordinately to forty-odd bars, reaching the double bar with a shrug. The four-part development is framed by an undevelopmental version of the first group’s arch contour, weirdly sotto voce in parallel octaves and thirds; its inner segments (bb. 127, 149ff.) rehearse the first and closing ideas inconclusively.

Brahms’ D minor Agitato ‘scherzo’ is, once again, no joke, but rather a curiously transformed waltz chiefly for solo viola. Perhaps somewhat ironically, he once characterised it as ‘the most amorous, affectionate thing’ that he had written.⁹⁴ That description better fits the cantabile main theme of the Andante, which is related to the slow movement of Op. 51 no. 2 in its overall ternary shape and two-fold outburst of gypsy anguish in the B section. Here in Op. 67, however, the disruption results in lyrical, seemingly improvisatory musings leading to a muted crisis (bb. 51ff.). Then follows a single off-tonic reprise in which the first eight bars of the initial melody are coolly liquidated, somewhat in the manner that Brahms will treat the finale’s theme in its sixth variation.

Although he would write an additional thirteen works of chamber music, Brahms, like Schumann, ceased quartet composition after completing three. (Nor did he compose more than three pieces in any other form of chamber music.) Possibly his recognition of Dvoák’s success in the genre influenced him to leave it in younger hands,⁹⁵ although it is difficult to imagine Brahms’ abandoning the quartet only for that reason; one senses the need to move beyond preoccupation with the past. In any case, so great was his influence that by 1922 Leichtentritt could justifiably claim ‘from about 1880 all chamber music in Germany is in some way indebted to Brahms’.⁹⁶ Zemlinsky, Reger, and Schoenberg were all among his devotees, and the latter two became leading quartet composers in the early years of the twentieth century. Nevertheless by 1889, well before Brahms’ death, a current of modernism far-reaching in its impact is apparent in the first enduring works of two post-Wagnerians, Strauss and Mahler (neither of whom wrote chamber music beyond their student years).⁹⁷

Deploying the Brahmsian techniques Schoenberg later coined ‘Grundgestalt’ and ‘developing variation’, Schoenberg and Reger pursued the tendency to make every voice thematically significant at all times,⁹⁸ while simultaneously stretching and weakening the central organising force of tonality. In the opening Allegro agitato of Reger’s G minor Quartet, Op. 54 no. 1 (1900), for example, ‘one has the impression of a man gesticulating wildly, trying to make his intentions plain in a language over which even he has lost control’, as Griffiths observes.⁹⁹ If the inner movements are somewhat more conventional, the fugal procedures of the finale only just manage to contain its digressive forces. Reger’s Third Quartet in D minor, Op. 74, expands the form to the dimensions of the late-century symphony: it lasts over fifty minutes. Dahlhaus would have it that in the first movement, ‘categories such as first and second theme, thematic contrast and manipulation, and exposition and development can still be viable even when the tonality is weak’.¹⁰⁰ Yet whereas the modern orchestra provides Strauss and Mahler a vast arsenal of sonic techniques with which to project such categories in their gigantic movements – which only occasionally approach Reger’s tonal ambivalence – the palette of the string quartet is notably more limited.

Schoenberg would achieve a better balance of monumentality and miniaturism in his First Quartet in D minor, Op. 7, a four-movements-in-one work (like Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy, D. 760) completed in 1905. Yet as Daverio argues, Schoenberg’s Op. 7 may be understood to embody both a guiding aesthetic claim of late-century modernism and, simultaneously, a critique of it.¹⁰¹ In his Second Quartet, Op. 10 of 1908, Schoenberg would take fewer cues from modernist symphonic and operatic music. Believing the time had come for ‘air from another planet’, he took the bold steps of making chamber music the carrier genre for a new style that moves beyond the limitations of tonality. Thus, in one sense, Reger, Schoenberg, and a host of others were undoubtedly Brahms’ heirs. Yet the mutually reinforcing interaction of tonality, form, and motivic work that had been central to quartet writing since Haydn was becoming passé. In that respect, the tradition of the Austro-Germanic string quartet was already drawing to a close with Brahms.