Haydn Quartets (Mozart)

The two composers admired each other, and in singer Michael Kelly's spurious account, Haydn once led a quartet session with Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf on second violin, Mozart on viola, and Johann Baptist Wanhal playing cello.

After hearing them all, Haydn remarked to Mozart's father Leopold: "Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.

[5]: 236 Before he finished composing them, Mozart pitched Jean-Georges Sieber on publishing his six quartets, requesting 50 Louis d'or as a fee.

They are, it is true, the fruit of a long and laborious endeavor, yet the hope inspired in me by several Friends that it may be at least partly compensated encourages me, and I flatter myself that this offspring will serve to afford me solace one day.

Mozart had urged his father to seek out Pleyel's Opus 1 Quartets, most likely because they followed Leopold's advice of composing simple, marketable music.

They feature rich cantabile melodic writing with thematic multiplicity and embellishment that displays a departure from the Haydnesque mode.

[12][5]: 349 Giuseppe Sarti wrote an attack on the "Dissonance" quartet (K. 465), describing sections as "barbarous", "execrable", and "miserable" in its use of whole-tone clusters and chromatic extremes.

[14][15] By 1799, an anecdote published in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (AmZ) claimed that when Artaria sent the quartets to Italy for publication, they were returned because "the engraving is full of mistakes".

[16][17] Heinrich Christoph Koch felt the works were praiseworthy for "their mixture of strict and free styles and the treatment of harmony".

[19] They are considered "established keystones" of the chamber music repertoire and are heard frequently in concerts, radio broadcasts, and recordings.