One of Haydn’s biographers Georg August Griesinger relates how the composer first tried his hand at writing string quartets in the early 1750s. The future “father” of the string quartet was then teaching music lessons to the children of Baron Carl Joseph Fürnberg in Vienna. According to Griesinger, the baron “had an estate in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna; from time to time he invited his parish priest, his estate manager, and Albrechtsberger [a brother of the well-known contrapuntist] in order to have a little music. Fürnberg asked Haydn to compose something that could be played by these four friends of the arts. Haydn, who was then 18, accepted the proposal, and so originated his first quartet, which, immediately upon its appearance, received such uncommon applause as to encourage him to continue in this genre.”
The 68 quartets that Haydn went on to compose over the next half-century offer a capsule overview of his artistic development. The earliest quartets, like the one that beguiled Baron Fürnberg and his guests, were closely related to the string sonatas, sinfonias, and lightweight divertimentos that were popular with European audiences in the Rococo period. In these works, the cello was still largely confined to continuo-style harmonic accompaniment. In Haydn’s hands, however, both the bassline and the quartet’s two inner voices became increasingly independent. By the time he wrote the six Op. 20 quartets in 1772, he was working out a style in which all four instruments were more or less equal partners, thereby laying the foundation for the quartets of Mozart and Beethoven.
Although the E-flat–Major Quartet is less conspicuously innovative than its five companions, there is plenty of evidence that Haydn was determined to loosen the bonds of convention. In the opening Allegro moderato, for instance, the cello quickly sheds its traditional supporting role: Listen for its rambunctious dialogue with the first violin in the movement’s minor-key midsection, as the two instruments volley ricocheting 16th-note figures back and forth against a static backdrop of slowly shifting harmonies. The Minuetto’s jovial bounciness contrasts with the suave, hymnlike solemnity of the slow movement (marked “with feeling and sustained”), though both movements are in lilting triple meters. The zesty Finale is notable for its light, transparent texture; the music’s rhythmic buoyancy is accentuated by chains of syncopations that pit the two violins against the lower strings.
Compared to Haydn’s 68 string quartets and Mozart’s 23, Beethoven’s total output of 16 was modest. Moreover, his attention to the genre was sporadic, usually being prompted by commissions from various aristocratic friends. The six Op. 18 quartets and the “Harp” Quartet, Op. 74, were dedicated to Prince Joseph von Lobkowitz, Vienna’s foremost patron of the arts in the early 1800s, while the three Op. 59 quartets were commissioned by Count Andrey Razumovsky, Russia’s ambassador to the Viennese court and an enthusiastic amateur violinist. Toward the end of his life, after a hiatus of more than a decade, Beethoven accepted a commission for “one, two, or three new quartets” from Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, a cello-playing Russian nobleman, which resulted in the great opp. 127, 130, and 132 quartets.
From the moment he arrived in Vienna in late 1792, just before his 22nd birthday, Beethoven set out to prove that he was a force to be reckoned with. Probably hoping to curry favor with his well-heeled patrons, he chose three mild-mannered piano trios as his first published works. Meanwhile, he copied out several of Haydn’s and Mozart’s string quartets, studying their methods of composition and biding his time until he felt prepared to enter the field. He began sketching the Op. 18 set in 1798 and presented the manuscript to Prince Lobkowitz two years later, telling a friend that he had “only just learned to write quartets properly.”
From the outset, the G-Major Quartet’s classical formality is enlivened by rambunctious high spirits. The Allegro’s delicate opening theme, with its melodic curlicues and mincing double-dotted rhythms, comes neatly wrapped in an eight-bar package. But Beethoven soon bursts the bonds of convention, imaginatively varying phrase lengths and rhythmic patterns, juxtaposing passages of sharply contrasting character, and generally infusing the poise of the Classical style with an impetuous dynamism that is peculiarly his own. Even the languorous Adagio cantabile has an impish side: The warm, broadly lyrical violin solo is unexpectedly interrupted by a skittish allegro, and the four instruments play a rollicking game of musical tag until decorum is finally restored. The ensuing Scherzo derives much of its humor from the way Beethoven alternates the whimsically lopsided principal theme with passages of straitlaced metronomic regularity. The Allegro molto, quasi presto begins tentatively with a little teasing tune in the cello, which the other players answer. After a second, more confident statement of the theme, the finale takes off on a helter-skelter course full of stops and starts, rhythmic surprises, and delightful harmonic diversions.
—Harry Haskell
My quartets composed between 1997 and 2005 were conceived as an interconnected, self-contained cycle of works ranging from the, in my opinion, quasi-revolutionary Quartet No. 1 to the Quartet No. 5 entitled Versuch über die Fuge (Attempt at a Fugue). The Quartet No. 6—Study on Beethoven, composed 14 years after No. 5—should be conceived as a new approach and the commencement of a new quartet cycle with an unknown ending. All that can be said is that the subsequent quartets will be devoted to an intense study of the unique and consummate artistry of Beethoven’s quartet composition. Despite a reverence for Beethoven from a very early stage, my own compositions have steered well clear of this unapproachable cosmos, with the exception of my concert overture Con brio.
Perhaps this work’s only link with the five quartets of the first cycle is the single-movement structure of the 30-minute Quartet No. 6. The fundamental coordinates have otherwise been reset to zero; this is therefore also a study in a literal sense. In the Quartet No. 6, I set out with a state of tonality displaying significant extensions whose centrifugal forces are barely containable. My focus is the detection of the inherent gravitation of tonality, including phenomena such as tension/relaxation, suspension/resolution, and fixation/deviation. Formally, the work is too experimental and unsentimental for explorations in a nostalgic, romantic sense. On the contrary, tonality—or at least its fundamental assumptions—is initially set down in the sense of a study or test to permit subsequent experimentation, variation, and the formulation of exceptions, stemming from the firm conviction that it is possible to express something innovative and never previously heard with this seemingly exhausted fundamental material. I have been repeatedly astonished by the unfolding progression of this piece, which has taken me to unknown locations, especially formally. I am fascinated to see the forms to which the subsequent quartets in this “Beethoven study” cycle will lead me.
The Quartet No. 6 has been created in close artistic and friendly cooperation with Anne-Sophie Mutter and she is the dedicatee of this work.
—Jörg Widmann
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