String Quartet in B minor op.33 no.1
String Quartet in E flat op.33 no.2 ‘The Joke’
String Quartet in C op.33 no.3 ‘The Bird’
String Quartet in B flat op.33 no.4
String Quartet in G op.33 no.5 ‘How do you do?’
String Quartet in D op.33 no.6

For most of his lifetime, the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was quite a celebrity; he was well known by his thirties, by his fifties was the most famous composer of the day and for the last 20 years of his life was a celebrated musical hero throughout the whole of Europe. Together with Mozart and Beethoven, he is recognised as one of the three great Viennese Classical composers, responsible for shaping and influencing the direction of Classical music.



Unusually for many composers, Haydn excelled in writing in every musical genre. Although his vocal music was as well known as his instrumental music during the first part of his career, after his death his reputation rested largely on his instrumental works – in particular the symphony and string quartet. Indeed, during Haydn’s lifetime the string quartet came to represent the Classical style in its purest form, thanks largely to his development of the quartet’s style and structure through his own 68 works in the form.



Born in a rural village to a family of artisans and tradespeople (his father and grandfather were both wheelwrights), the young Haydn’s musical talents were obvious from an early age. At the age of seven, he became a choirboy at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, where he sang in numerous church services, and received violin, harpsichord and theory lessons. After ten years, however, his voice finally broke and he had to leave the choir, and instead ‘was forced to eke out a wretched existence by teaching young people’, as he put it.



However, it wasn’t long before he found himself a job, in 1761, as vice-kapellmeister to Prince Esterházy, head of the richest and most influential family of the time – becoming promoted to kapellmeister a few years later. Haydn continued to work for the Esterházy family for over 30 years and was in charge of the musical activities of the palace, writing much music including operas, church and theatre music. Surprisingly, perhaps, there is little documentation of string quartet performances at the Esterházy court; it has been suggested that Haydn composed these works for wealthy Viennese patrons instead.



By the early 1780s, Haydn was composing increasing amounts of instrumental music, and his reputation as a composer of string quartets began to grow, largely thanks to a burst of activity 4069_Haydn_RussianQuartets_BL v4.qxd 6/1/11 14:10 Page 4 p5 within the Austrian music publishing industry. Haydn began publishing music with the newly formed Artaria printers – and among the first pieces they bought were the six op.33 quartets, written throughout the summer and autumn of 1781.



Despite the sale, Haydn sneakily tried to earn a bit on the side by offering the manuscripts to rich music-lovers and patrons as well, as seen in a letter he wrote to a private collector just a few months after the works’ completion. ‘Since I know … there are many gentlemen amateurs and great connoisseurs and patrons of music, I cannot conceal from you the fact that I am issuing a work consisting of six Quartets for two violins, viola and violoncello concertante, by subscription for the price of six ducats; they are of a new and entirely special kind, for I haven’t written any for ten years … Subscribers who live abroad will receive them before I issue the works here …’. A few weeks later, however, his publishers announced the Quartets for sale at about a quarter of the price, and Haydn was furious: ‘It was with astonishment that I read … that you intend to publish my quartets in four weeks … Such a proceeding places me in a most dishonourable position and is very damaging; it is a most extortionate step on your part … this step must cause the cessation of further transactions between us.’ However, the row soon blew over and Artaria continued publishing his music for many more years.



As the composer himself recognised, the op.33 quartets represent a new stage in Haydn’s development as a composer, and the works are very different in style from his op.20 quartets, written ten years earlier. Whereas the earlier quartets are more flamboyant, with a bigger emotional range and generally larger dimensions, the op.33 pieces have a more intimate quality and a greater subtlety of instrumentation and expression. Throughout the set, Haydn was experimenting with new and different ways of expressing form and melody, and the result is music of great sophistication – as well as music that finally synthesised all the elements of the Classical quartet style. Indeed, Mozart was so inspired by this set of quartets that he started writing a set of his own, in 1785, and dedicated them to Haydn. The works were later nicknamed the ‘Russian’ quartets, thanks to a dedication on a later edition to Grand Duke Paul of Russia (later Tsar Paul I), as many were premiered in the Duke’s apartment on Christmas Day, 1781.

© Carenza Hugh-Jones, 2011