8 The origins of the quartet
In the months that followed the death of Joseph Haydn in May 1809 the Leipzig journal Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung published a biography of the composer in eight instalments. Written by Georg August Griesinger and subsequently published as a single volume, it had been prepared in Vienna over a period of some ten years during which Griesinger had won the confidence of the composer. Its factual content and its tone were to play a significant part in determining the posthumous image of the composer. Both Griesinger and Haydn were conscious of the international esteem in which the composer was held and the biography sought to explore, through an attractive mixture of direct quotation, anecdote and reverential comment, how he had achieved this pre-eminence. Since the genre of the quartet was central to this fame Griesinger attempted to shed light on how Haydn had first come to compose such works:
the following purely chance circumstance had led him to try his luck at the composition of quartets. A Baron Fürnberg had a place in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna [about fifty miles], and he invited from time to time his pastor, his manager, Haydn, and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the celebrated contrapuntist, who played the violoncello) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg requested Haydn to compose something that could be performed by these four amateurs. Haydn, then eighteen years old, took up this proposal, and so originated his first quartet [quotation of opening of Op. 1 no. 1], which, immediately it appeared, received such general approval that Haydn took courage to work further in this form.1
Between them Griesinger and Haydn managed to emphasise the chance nature of these early quartets, encouraging the view that this acknowledged master of the genre had stumbled, in the emerging tradition of the questing creative genius, on a new medium; this interpretation was cleverly supported by the quotation of the opening of the work published as the first quartet in the notable complete edition of Haydn’s quartets issued by Pleyel in 1801. In fact it is not known which was Haydn’s ‘first’ quartet; it could be any one of ten. Even the aside about Haydn’s age at the time, ‘then eighteen years old’, conveniently, if innocently, exaggerates the composer’s youthful originality; the quartets were not amongst his first works after being dismissed from the choir school of St Stephen’s Cathedral but were composed several years later when the composer was in his late twenties, between c. 1757 and 1762. Clearly, historical accuracy was not a prime concern of Griesinger and Haydn, as both willingly played their part in the evolving mythology of the composer and his music. Aside from querying the details, modern scholarship would dearly like to have asked the composer whether he felt he was doing something new in these works. Were they as epochal as the author and the composer imply?
Music for four solo string instruments can be traced back to Italian composers of the Renaissance and early Baroque such as Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652), Adriano Banchieri (1568–1634), Andrea Gabrieli (1533–85) and Florentio Maschera (c. 1540 – c. 1584), all of whom wrote such music; and although two twentieth-century ensembles, the Allegri Quartet (founded in 1953) and the Gabrieli Quartet (founded in 1966), were named after two of these composers, it is a mistaken act of homage for there is no continuity of tradition between this period and that of Haydn. Works in four parts composed in England for consorts of viols by John Jenkins (1592–1678), Henry Purcell (1659–95) and Christopher Simpson (c. 1605–69) can also claim to be quartets but this repertoire is even more circumscribed in period and influence.
From the late seventeenth century through to the middle decades of the eighteenth, the most commonly encountered instrumental ensemble was the trio sonata, two melodic instruments supported by continuo (normally, but not always, a keyboard and an appropriate bass instrument). Although a theoretical outlook that seeks to transform the Baroque trio sonata into the Classical quartet through the addition of a viola and the omission of a keyboard has some historical justification, it is the least important aspect of the pre-history of the quartet. More fundamentally, the familiar (and psychologically comforting) historical quest for one composer who made a decisive discovery breakthrough is misguided, owing more to nineteenth-century notions of creativity than to those prevalent in the eighteenth century. Varying aspects of performance practice in a range of instrumental and orchestral music in the first half of the century provide a more compelling and pervasive background from which the quartet emerged.
Alongside the trio sonata, works for three melodic instruments and continuo are numerous in the first part of the century. The received view of performance practice is that the continuo would consist of a keyboard and a bass instrument, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the continuo line could be played with or without a keyboard instrument.2 Thus when Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) wrote a set of six works with the title ‘Sonata à Quattro per Due Violini, Violetta [viola] e Violoncello senza Cembalo’,3 effectively six quartets, he was merely making explicit a practice that was reasonably common.
Another widespread practice that could yield a work for two violins, viola and cello was performing four-part orchestral music with one player per part rather than multiple players. In the middle of the eighteenth century, for instance, the English musician Charles Avison (1709–70) offered advice on how to ensure that the distinction between ritornello and solo sections in concertos was maintained in performances with minimum forces:
When Concertos are performed with three or four Instruments only it may not be amiss to play the solo parts Mezzo Piano; and to know more accurately where to find them, the first and last note of every Chorus [ritornello] should be distinguished thus (
) and to prevent all Mistakes of pointing the Forte at a wrong Place that also ought to have the same Mark: By this Means the performer will be directed to give the first Note of every Chorus and Forte its proper Emphasis and not suffer the latter to hang upon the Ear, which is extremely disagreeable.4
In Avison’s own musical heritage, therefore, works by Handel and Geminiani as well as his own that were normally heard orchestrally could emerge as quartets. In France Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705–70) published his instrumental music in eighteen collections in Paris between 1734 and 1762. His Op. 7, which appeared in 1740, was specifically written for minimum forces, reflected in the title: ‘Six concertinos à quatre parties’. As in the case of Scarlatti sonatas without keyboard in Italy, Guillemain’s concertos for two violins, viola and continuo were not followed by further similar works that might have established a beginning of a quartet tradition in France.
Producing de facto quartets from works that were normally performed with multiple performers was a natural part also of the rich Italian tradition of concerto writing from Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) and Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709) to Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) and Giovanni Sammartini (1700/01–75). This repertoire is often divided into two types, concerto grosso and solo concerto, but a third type, orchestral concertos (or ripieno concertos) – that is works for three- or four-part strings with no soloists – is important in the process that made the composition of true quartets inevitable.5 Vivaldi alone composed over thirty such works. This notable tradition merged imperceptibly with that of the early symphony, and works, whether concertos or symphonies, by Sammartini from the 1730s through to the 1760s that were scored for four-part string orchestras could easily become quartets in performance. When Griesinger suggested to Haydn that Sammartini was the true instigator of the quartet, Haydn was very dismissive, calling the Italian a ‘Schmierer’ (‘a scribbler’); almost certainly the real reason for Haydn’s comment was that he recognised that performance tradition was more important than one single composer, particularly one he did not admire.
Probably the first set of works in this rich Italian tradition of string music that was conceived as quartet music was that by Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805), composed in 1761 and subsequently published in 1767 in Paris as his Op. 1 (G. 159–164). These quartets were widely distributed throughout Europe and instigated a continuing commitment to the genre by the composer that was to produce over ninety quartets over the next five decades. There is nothing in them that shows that Boccherini was familiar with Haydn’s earliest quartets or with others from the Austrian tradition discussed below. Like most of Sammartini’s concertos and symphonies, they are in three movements (fast–slow–fast); the slow movements of nos. 1 and 2 feature extended cello solos, and the finale of no. 2 is a spirited fugue.
While extant sources and inventories in Austrian libraries show that Italian repertoire did feature in musical life in the Austrian territories in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, primacy of influence over locally produced music cannot be claimed. In particular, Austria had its own tradition in the early symphony, principally works by Georg Mathias Monn (1717–50) and Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715–77). Both composers wrote symphonies for four-part strings alone and it may well be the case that some of these were first conceived as works for four solo players rather than for an orchestral ensemble, particularly when it is remembered that so-called orchestras might in certain circumstances, such as the smaller palaces and churches, consist of one player per part. Significantly there was no prevailing tradition in contemporary libraries of dividing instrumental music into orchestral and chamber music. It was all Kammermusik. Monn, for instance, is credited with fifteen works for four-part string orchestra, called ‘sinfonia a quattro’ and ‘quartetto’ in extant Viennese sources and probably composed in the 1740s in the years immediately before his death.6 While they reveal stylistic features that are conservative alongside progressive ones familiar from the early music of Haydn (and others), at the same time they have an attractive coherence as individual works. Six of them were gathered together at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the Viennese publisher Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie, who issued them unequivocally as a set of quartets, to be performed alongside the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and others. There is a preference for cycles of three movements rather than four, and a clear distinction between substantial first movements in sonata form and much shorter finale movements in 2/4 or 3/8. The sonata forms often contain a deflection to the dominant minor in the second subject area; slow movements are harmonically open-ended, moving into the following fast movements; and there are some fugal movements. The one in a symphony in A is built on two rhythmically distinct themes. The polyphonic texture is maintained throughout and when played by a quartet invites comparison with another fugal movement in A major, the finale of Haydn’s Op. 20 no. 6 (1772).
A uniquely distinguishing feature of instrumental music in Austrian territories in the middle decades of the eighteenth century was the use of the word divertimento to cover a range of instrumental genres. In essence, the term signalled a piece of instrumental music for one or more solo players, covering genres that were later to acquire more differentiated names such as sonata, violin sonata, string trio, piano trio, wind sextets and so on. As well as signalling solo performance per designated part, the divertimento was notable for the absence of a continuo instrument.7 Thus the sixty or more divertimentos that Franz Asplmayr (1728–86) wrote in the 1740s and 1750s for two violins and bass constitute a clearly delineated genre, and are not trio sonatas without keyboard or solo versions of three-part orchestral music. Within this tradition works for solo keyboard and for string trio are the most numerous, but it was inevitable that divertimentos for two violins, viola and cello, the solo equivalent of a standard four-part orchestral disposition, would be composed; indeed, Asplmayr himself composed a set of quartets towards the end of the 1760s, his Op. 2.
Apart from Haydn, two other composers reared in the Austrian divertimento tradition wrote quartets early in the independent history of the genre: Ignaz Holzbauer (1711–83) and Franz Xaver Richter (1709–89). Their works may pre-date Haydn’s Opp. 1 and 2, but specific evidence is not forthcoming. What, however, is true is that neither of these composers proceeded to compose further works in the medium.
Holzbauer was born in Vienna in 1711 and lived there for the first part of his life; in 1751 he moved first to Stuttgart and then Mannheim, where he remained until his death. Four extant quartets are attributed to him.8 Apart from an appealing melodic style they have very little in common, which suggests that they were composed separately over a number of years. A quartet in B
has four movements – Allegro, Andante, Minuet and Presto – and has a good deal of unison writing for the first and second violin, which might indicate an orchestral origin. More individual in its scoring and its movement layout is a work in E. The opening Andantino con moto leads into an Allegro, whose fifty bars make a decisive move to C minor rather than the expected dominant of B, before gradually re-focusing on the tonic. By finishing on the fifth of a rising tonic triad the Allegro, in turn, leads into the next movement. Although it carries only the tempo heading of Andante grazioso this is clearly a minuet with two trios, the first composed for two violins and cello, the second for two violins and viola.
Born in Moravia in 1709, Richter received his early music education in Vienna before moving in 1736 to Stuttgart, then successively Kempten, Mannheim and Strasbourg, where he died in 1789. Richter’s music enjoyed something of a vogue in London in the 1760s and in November 1768 a set of six quartets was published by Longman and Co. as his Op. 5. Extant manuscript parts for five of these works, originally owned by the Cistercian monastery of Osek in Bohemia, suggest that they were composed several years before this.9 Even more tantalising is the following passage in Dittersdorf’s autobiography: ‘We set to work at the six new quartets by Richter, which Schweitzer had got hold of. He played the cello, I the first violin, my elder brother the second and my younger brother the viola. In between, we drank rare good coffee, and smoked the finest tobacco. How jolly it was!’10 This account can be dated to 1757, when Dittersdorf was living in Hildburghausen, but whether these ‘six new quartets’ are the same as the ones subsequently published as Op. 5 or works that have not survived cannot be established.
All the quartets from Op. 5 are in three movements – fast, slow and fast – though some reverse the position of the slow movement and first fast movement. Most of the fast movements begin with a double announcement of the main theme, by each violinist in turn, a technique particularly associated with the old trio sonata but which is found in Haydn’s early quartets and symphonies too. In all six works there is a determined attempt to give solo passages in fast and slow music to the viola and cello. Although Richter’s differentiated textures, dynamics and articulation markings make the music constantly appealing to players and listeners, it is not supported by that fragmentation and reformulation of musical thought that is characteristic of Haydn’s writing for the medium, even in his earliest quartets. The presto fugue that concludes the C major quartet has the heading Rincontro (that is a musical ‘encounter’) and although it readily reveals its indebtedness to species counterpoint in its two- and three-part lines it manages to transcend pedagogy, particularly when it discovers new rhythmic patterns later in the movement. The concluding fugue of the quartet in B is based on a lengthy single subject; as the music moves towards the dominant in the first half of the binary structure it becomes more homophonic in an attempt to create a stronger sense of polarity between tonic and dominant. The finale of the A major quartet is a minuet and trio; in the minuet itself the theme is played in octaves by the first and second violin, a scoring particularly associated with Haydn’s minuets.
Like those of Richter and Holzbauer, Haydn’s first quartets were the natural product of a broad performance practice that yielded music for two violins, viola and cello, particularly stimulated by the extensive Austrian tradition of divertimento writing. The opus numbers 1 and 2 originated in the 1760s when they were applied by two publishers, La Chevardière (Paris) and Hummel (Amsterdam and Berlin), anxious to issue works in the standard set of six; the numbers were perpetuated by Pleyel in his complete edition of the quartets published in 1801. The work familiarly known as Op. 1 no. 5 was not an original quartet but another example of converting a symphony into a quartet, in this case by simply omitting the parts for oboes and horns; likewise Op. 2 no. 3 and Op. 2 no. 5 were originally composed by Haydn as divertimentos for quartet plus two horns. In the 1930s a lost quartet by Haydn was discovered, a work in E that was subsequently dubbed ‘Opus 0’. In total, therefore, there are ten early genuine quartets by Haydn.
Written across a number of years, five or more, these ten early quartets are all in five movements, mainly a symmetrical formation of two presto movements enclosing two minuets that, in turn, surround a central slow movement. Haydn never used this neat pattern again, preferring the strongly differentiated sequence of movements that emerge in the standard four-movement patterns of fast, minuet, slow and fast or fast, slow, minuet and fast. Determining the character of the genre with a particular movement order is a feature of Haydn’s music in general in the 1750s and 1760s and if this suggests an attitude that already sought to probe the particular potential of the medium then it is certainly borne out when the quartets are compared with works in other genres in the period. Following Asplmayr, Wagenseil and others, Haydn was a prolific composer of divertimentos for two violins and bass, at least twenty-one works, perhaps as many as thirty-six, composed from the early 1750s through to the mid 1760s. But it is a surprising fact that almost nowhere in the string trios does the scoring show the variety and, more particularly, variety as an active proponent of syntactical invention that is such a striking feature of fast movements and minuets in the early quartets. Haydn’s divertimentos for larger forces, such as the two divertimentos for flute, oboe, two violins, cello and double bass (Hob.I:1 and 11), more frequently demonstrate these qualities and provide a more revealing background to the quartets than do the string trios.
Along with thematic economy and a very brisk tempo, unpredictability of phrase rhythms is a particular source of invention in the outer movements. In the opening Presto of Op. 2 no. 4 in F, standard four-bar phrases intermingle with three-bar phrases and six-bar phrases in a constantly vacillating relationship; also apparent is the supporting role of virtuosity, unexpected pauses and switches of tonal direction. Between them the two minuets in Op. 2 no. 4 reveal a heightened degree of linguistic craftsmanship: variety of phrase rhythms, contradiction of obvious patterns through imitation and a range of sonority, including, in the second minuet, octave scoring.
It is in the fast movements and minuets of the early quartets that Haydn’s later supreme mastery of the medium is most consistently foreshadowed. Most of the central slow movements, on the other hand, have a concertante texture familiar from slow movements of Baroque concertos: a lyrical solo line for first violin spun out over a repetitive accompaniment. The Adagio of Op. 2 no. 4 is unusual in that it is the only movement in the minor key in the ten early quartets, though several trio sections turn, momentarily, to the minor. While for Haydn’s players and listeners such slow movements provided a ready, and attractive, point of contact with the tradition of playing orchestral music with one player per part, for Haydn the inquisitive composer they came to be regarded as unsatisfactory as he sought to apply the kind of symphonic thinking shown in fast movement and minuets to slow music too.
Griesinger’s comments on Haydn’s earliest quartets contain one other misleading remark. He conveniently implies that once the early quartets had been written – by which the readers would have understood Opp. 1 and 2 – Haydn embarked without interruption on a continuing career of quartet writing. In fact, at least seven years were to elapse before the composer returned to the medium, with the completion of the Op. 9 quartets in 1769. In this period a number of other Austrian composers had written divertimentos for two violins, viola and cello, including Johann Albrechtsberger (1736–1809), Franz Asplmayr (1728–86), F. X. Dussek (1731–99), Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729–74), Leopold Hofmann (1738–93) and Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739–1813). Once again precise dates and circumstances of composition are not known, but it is clear that by c. 1770 the quartet had established itself as a favoured instrumental medium in the Austrian territories. Within a few years it acquired the same status elsewhere in Europe.