String Quartets, Op. 20 (Haydn)

While the palace itself was one of the most splendid in Austria, and was dubbed the "Hungarian Versailles",[9] it was built over a large swamp; it was humid throughout the year, with a "vexatious, penetrating north wind"[10] from which Haydn and the other musicians in the court suffered.

"The designation affettuoso found twice in the directions for the tempo of slow movements can be applied to the whole opus", writes Geiringer.

Poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller espoused the new Sturm und Drang movement, that "exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism".

For example, the minuet movement of the D major quartet (number 4) is replaced by a frenetic gypsy air titled "alla zingarese", full of offbeat rhythms.

He notes a change in string quartet writing towards the end of the 1760s, featuring characteristics which are to day thought of as essential to the genre - scoring for two violins, viola and cello, solo passages, and absence of actual or potential basso continuo accompaniment.

"Al rovescio" he writes at one point in the last movement of quartet number two, where the fugal melody is played in inversion.

The fugal finales are not mere formalism, however; Haydn clothes them in a dramatic structure suitable for the Sturm und Drang.

All three movements start out sotto voce; as the fugue develops formally, the tension mounts, but Haydn does not increase the volume, until a sudden, startling burst of forte.

"Haydn has, in the quartets of opus 20, a hint of the emotional and dramatic impulse which became so volcanic in Beethoven's fugues", writes Donald Tovey.

The opening of the second quartet is essentially contrapuntal, with the viola and the second violins playing countersubjects to the cello's principal melodic line.

Haydn also uses more obscure techniques; in the adagio movement of the fifth quartet, for example, he writes at one point "per figuram retardationis", meaning that the melodic line in the first violin lags behind the harmonic changes in the accompaniment.

"Besides achieving in themselves the violent reconquest of the ancient kingdom of polyphony for the string quartet, they effectively establish fugue texture from henceforth as a normal resource of sonata style".

Obviously it solves the problem of equality in quartet-writing by a drastic return to Nature, and puts the four instruments where the voices were when all harmony was counterpoint.

[27] In the fourth quartet, in D major, for example, Haydn sneaks into the recapitulation of the first movement, treating it dramatically as though it is a continuation of the development.

Haydn also experiments with cyclical structure: the reuse of thematic and rhythmic materials in different movements, to give an overall unity to the piece.

An example of this is the G minor quartet, where Haydn defies the standard practice of ending each movement with a cadence played forte.

The minuet of the second quartet in C major is built of tied suspensions in the first violin, viola and cello, so that the listener loses all sense of downbeat.

While the first movement is in straightforward sonata-allegro form, Haydn nonetheless breaks with the standard quartet model of the period.

The third movement is marked "Affettuoso e sostenuto", written in A♭ major as an aria, with the first violin carrying the melody throughout.

In the course of the movement every instrument gets to play the solo – even the viola, who, "besides having a vote in the parliament of four... for once [is heard by Haydn] as he hears the cantabile of the 'cello", writes Tovey.

It is an emotionally charged movement, with dramatic shifts from pianissimo to forte, mixed with cantabile passages with a sextuplet accompaniment in the viola.

The texture gradually thins so that only two voices are playing at once, when suddenly the fugue bursts into forte and cascades of sixteenth notes lead to the close of the quartet.

The trio ends with a plagal cadence to G major, for a Baroque-like Picardy third conclusion; but then the minuet recapitulates in G minor.

The move from G major back to G minor is so jolting that Drabkin speculates that the trio might possibly have been borrowed from another piece.

The third movement, marked Poco Adagio, is a long cantabile aria in G major, dominated by the first violin and the cello.

"The poignant second movement Adagio moves the string quartet even farther from the concept of courtly entertainment", writes Miller.

In the third movement, the Allegretto alla zingarese, the upper and lower voices play complex, interlocking cross-rhythms, confusing all sense of downbeat.

"Haydn, we might imagine, set out to test the limits of what the minor mode could express in this newly serious instrumental combination", writes Roger Parker.

The texture thins and the tension descends, until a second burst of fortissimo, with first violin and cello playing the fugal subject in canon, leading to the dramatic finale.

Professor David Wyn Jones at the Cardiff University School of Music states that "in Salzburg, if not throughout his life, Mozart was writing in a lingua franca and many of the features of that language are to be found in Michael Haydn too".