Joseph Haydn, String Quartet Op. 33 #2

The Norton Anthology contains only the last movement of this quartet (Example 103), but the first three movements are equally characteristic of Haydn and equally worth knowing. The first movement in E-flat, is a broad 4/4 marked “moderato cantabile.” The second movement, also in E-flat is a minuet, unusual in that it comes before the slow movement rather than after it, and is labeled “scherzo,” i.e. “a joke.” All the triple meter movements in the Opus 33 quartets are “scherzos.” The third movement marked “largo sostenuto” is in 3/4 meter and in Bb major. The fourth movement, the one in the anthology, is a 6/8 “presto” in E-flat.

Each of the movements has a different formal plan. The first movement is a sonata-allegro; the second is a minuet and trio; the third (largo) alternates a simple melody in Bb with contrasting material in other keys; the fourth is a rondo, as described in NAWM. The movements also have noticeably different textures from one another. The first is dominated by the first violin, which plays the melody much of the time and has a good deal of virtuose passagework. The minuet is canonic (typical in Haydn); the trio imitates a village dance (also typical). In third movement pairs of instruments alternate with one another – beginning with viola and cello – then the contrasting material is scored for the full ensemble in homophony. In the last movement violin 1 takes over again. This kind of variety in formal plans and in textures was common in operas and in symphonies before Haydn, but it was unusual in chamber music.

The development in the first movement – i.e. the passage from the double bar to the return of the first theme in Eb in measure 63 – is impressive. What had been a first-violin-dominated texture is replaced in m. 33 by a texture in which all instruments participate equally, exchanging scraps of melodic material from the themes of the exposition. A couple of modulations lead back to the first theme in Eb (40), but Haydn is only beginning. A rising chromatic sequence (mm.45-49) leads to c minor (m.54) and an outburst of virtuosity in the first violin (m.56). In m.59 the first theme returns – but in c minor. Oops . . . wrong key. The first violin repeats the head-motif, over and over (mm.60-62), but upside down, and stretched to a tritone instead of a fourth. Mercifully the viola slides down a half step from Cb to Bb (m.62, beat 3), and voila, a dominant 7^th chord on Bb, and Haydn can recapitulate in Eb (m.63). Haydn often complicates what starts out as a straightforward allegro movement with an ambitious, chromatic, tricky development: compare the first movement of the Oxford Symphony (NAWM 104).

And don’t miss the scherzo. The performers on this recording seem to have visited a tavern between the minuet and the trio. The last movement is famously witty and well described in NAWM.