The Jasper Quartet, Part 1 – Here's Haydn

Franz Josef Haydn (c.1770)

The Jasper Quartet, winner of the prestigious career-starting Cleveland Quartet Award in 2012, have gone on to be acclaimed as one of the leading quartets of the century, and they return to Harrisburg Sunday afternoon at Temple Ohev Sholom with a program that looks varied on the surface – Haydn (Germanic/18th Century), Prokofiev (Soviet/20th Century), and two 21st Century composers, Gabriella Smith (American) and Jungyoon Wie (Korean) – but is more deeply unified by the inspiration of folk music that is both playful and rustic. 

 The concert begins “standard” enough with Haydn and concludes with what many of our audience might recall had once been called “contemporary,” written in 1941. (You can read the second installment about the works not by Haydn, here.)

In this case, the Haydn quartet is one of those usually considered an “early” quartet and not as familiar to the general audience as the more famous later ones. They’re generally underrated and as a result often deemed “less important.” Also, it seems odd to refer to these Op. 20 String Quartets as “Early Haydn” since he was 40 when he wrote them and, after all, at that age Mozart would’ve been dead five years…

However, we’re concerned only about one of them on this program, the fourth of the set which is in D Major. Here’s a complete performance with score from a recording by the Doric Quartet (who’ve also appeared in past MSC seasons). The slow second movement, marked un poco adagio affetuoso, begins at 11:15; the scherzo – I’m sorry, minuet – at 21:02; and the light-hearted finale, what one would expect from Papa Haydn, the Presto scherzando (there it is, out in the open!), at 22:43. Incidentally, the Doric players interpolate a few embellishments of their own as performers would’ve been used to in the hey-day of the Baroque era, but it’s pure Haydn coming down to the finish line when – uhmm – the final cadence just sort of vanishes. Nothing “faster and louder” (or expected!) about this ending!

(Seriously, if you’re hearing this music for the first time, did you not smile a little at that ending?)

“Early,” in this case, refers not to the composer’s age but to the age of the String Quartet itself. While Haydn is often mentioned as “The Father of the Symphony,” he was also paternally involved in the development of the string quartet. There is no journal where Haydn jotted down his day’s achievements by writing “And today I created the string quartet.” In fact, when he entered the six quartets of Op.20 into his “Complete Works Catalogue,” he wasn’t even sure what they were, listing them as “6 Divertimenti.” Only later when they appeared in print were they identified as “Quartets.” Yes, they were works written for four string instruments, but the idea of a more serious “form” (genre would be more appropriate) called a String Quartet didn’t come about until later. 

His first set, published as Op. 1 when he was maybe 23 or so (now, that’s early), dates from the mid-1750s and were received so favorably by his employer, Count Fürnberg, he wrote some more, and, as a result, Fürnberg recommended him to Count Morzin who was looking for music director for his palace. After Morzin experienced financial difficulties in 1761 and had to make serious cuts to his musical staff, Haydn was offered a job as assistant to the old and established (read “cantankerous”) Kapellmeister of Prince Esterházy, the family who then employed him for the rest of his career.

Haydn did not immediately begin writing more quartets – in fact, he produced his first forty symphonies instead. But in 1769 he wrote six quartets published as Op. 9, and then, two years later, another set of six, Op. 17.

But things were changing in the wider world of Classical Music. The old-fashioned Baroque Style Haydn had grown up with had basically become passé by the time Bach died in 1750 (Handel died three years after Mozart was born), and the New Style (which we call Classical) was still trying to figure out what it was. For one thing, it needed to be more than the opposite of the past: yes, simplicity and a more accessible approach to the general public which the Germans called liebhaber (the equivalent of “amateur”) those who “have love” of music, as opposed to the kenner or those who have “knowledge” of music.

Rather than counterpoint and dry stuff like fugues, they said, let’s have a beautiful melody with a simple accompaniment. And let’s have more contrasting moods – music can be emotional (if the sewing machine hadn’t been invented yet, it couldn’t describe the way many people probably played the old stuff).

Around the late-1760s, there evolved an almost extreme form of “emotionalism” the Germans called Sturm und Drang (basically, “storm and stress”) and suddenly the “accessible” style where everything should be “pleasant” (imagine these as “air-quotes”) was suddenly assaulted by turbulent textures in (horror) minor keys. And Haydn complied: he started writing minor-key symphonies like the famous “Farewell” Symphony which is best known for its famous joke at the end but which otherwise, in the dark key of F-sharp Minor, is a classic example (pun intended) of a Sturm und Drang symphony at its best. He wrote it in 1772.

Now, the whole point of the “farewell” in this piece was, at the conclusion of this tempestuous finale, a “second” finale began as the musicians packed up and left the stage, one by one or in pairs, until, variation after variation, only two violinists were left. The joke had been, since his musicians were complaining about being kept too long at the Prince’s summer estate at Esterháza and kept away from their wives and families living in the palace at Eisenstadt, it was time for the Prince to likewise pack up and return home. Though only some 30 miles away, it was not considered an easy commute when you’re always playing Haydn symphonies for your boss. (And, seriously, is Wikipedia making that up when it says the current palace in Eisenstadt was built by "Prince Paul I, the 1st Prince Esterházy of Bum Bum"???)

That same year, Haydn composed his set of quartets, Op. 20.

Everyone says they are a milestone in the development of the String Quartet (even though he still labeled them divertimenti in his big book) – but was there some reason, some non-musical impetus behind their inspiration? What if – and again, this is only conjecture because we have nothing in writing from Haydn or anyone else saying this is what happened – because he needed music to entertain the Prince, he started to supply him with something requiring only four players as opposed to twenty to thirty in the orchestra? And, this is a key point considering the change in musical style, if the Prince enjoyed the meatier substance of a symphony, perhaps Haydn should be supplying chamber music with more fiber to it as a replacement, rather than the empty calories of something meant purely to delight? Something, shall we say, for the kenner?

And what did Haydn do in these quartets that’s so different? First of all, it’s impossible to go back to 1772 – Mozart was only 16, Beethoven not yet 2 – and pretend we’ve never heard everything that came afterward (and not just Mozart and Beethoven or even “late-Haydn”). What this must've sounded like to a guest of Prince Nikolaus' visiting Esterháza, we'll never know. We don’t hear anything new and startling in these Op.20 quartets because they essentially set the standard as Haydn proceeded to produce more and more advanced quartets: the fact that it was four players, not just one playing to an accompaniment of three others; the fact the elements of contrast and emotion could be more of a focus; even the fact that – liebhaber beware! – he wrote fugues for three of the six finales!

Mozart’s first serious quartets (at 17, we can hardly call them “mature”) were written in Vienna in 1773. While he’d’ve had access to the Op.9 and Op. 17 quartets, and considering the Op.20 set weren’t published until 1774, did they influence Mozart then? Anyone who’s ever been confused about the Mozart Haydn Quartets (what, a collaboration?) knows the role Haydn’s quartets played in the development of Mozart’s writing for the string quartet, but those date from 1782, the year after Mozart arrived in Vienna as a free-lancer.

Keep in mind, Haydn – born of the lower classes and from the age of 6 spending his life geared for the service of the aristocracy – had become the Leading Composer in Europe by that time. But considering his job as the Prince’s Kapellmeister (basically, “music director”), everything he wrote belonged to the Prince. It was only in 1779 that Haydn negotiated a new contract with the Prince where he could now accept commissions from outside the palace and sell his music to publishers, both Austrian and foreign. It was something of a paradox that he was not only a successful “free-lance” composer, now, something Mozart longed to be, but he was still an employee of the Esterházy family and still required to supply music for his employer (if Downton Abbey had an orchestra, Haydn would still be taking his meals downstairs with Carson and Mrs. Hughes).

The Prince had built his country estate, Esterháza (separate from the palace in Eisenstadt), in what was basically a Hungarian swamp. The Esterházy family was ethnically Hungarian and Hungary was then part of the Austrian Empire. They’d also owned an estate in Galanta now in Slovakia not far from the Hungarian border (Kodály fans should know this Hungarian composer spent many summers there as a child, and incorporated some of the folk dances he’d heard there in his famous Dances of Galanta). So perhaps taking up some Hungarian rhythms in a more typical Gypsy sound (hence the zingarese in the so-called minuet’s title, a scherzo in everything but name) was a way of paying homage to his employer's roots? It’s almost as if two of the players can’t quite get in step with the others, perhaps the equivalent of an old “Mosquito-slapping Dance.” (Try tapping your foot to that!)

There are many examples of “new ideas” in these six quartets, not necessarily evident in all of them: two of them are in minor keys which was even less common in chamber music than symphonies especially among works meant purely for entertainment (like divertimentos). As I mentioned, three of them end with fugues. Words like affetuoso, a term of expression beyond what one might find in old-fashioned Baroque music, appear twice. The slow movements are much more lyrical and emotional than typical of the new style, especially the incredible Adagio of No. 5 (note especially the prolonged cadence at the end, beginning at 4:48).  

While there are movements that are certainly “violin solos” with simple accompaniments, other movements contain passages where ideas are thrown around between the different instrumental voices, something we’re quite familiar with from later-Haydn and especially Beethoven, but compare the 5th’s Adagio to the opening of No. 1 with its pairings and, eventually (say, 4:38), imitation of fragments in different parts.

By the way, the whole set is often referred to collectively as “The Sun” Quartets, though none of them have any individual nicknames (certainly none supplied by the composer) – and they’re not to be confused with the “Sunrise” Quartet of 1797, Op. 76 No. 4. Op. 20’s moniker can be traced to the 1779 edition of the Amsterdam-based publisher Johann Julius Hummel (not to be confused with the London-based publisher, Adolphe Hummel; and probably not related to the famous pianist and composer of the day, Johann Nepomuck Hummel). It seems Mr. Hummel, for whatever reasons, adorned his cover page with the image of a sunburst and as a result, commentators have forever after suggested it was because these quartets represented a new birth for a new art form, the String Quartet. Well… sure, why not?

By the way, if you want to find out more about the Op.20 quartets, check out Dave Hurwitz and his “Ultimate Classical Music Guide.” 

Of course, I could write a lot more about the importance of these quartets – listening to Op. 20/4’s Minuet, can you not hear, say, seeds for the scherzo from Beethoven’s last published quartet, Op. 135? – so I will continue with Part II, covering music written between 1941 and 2019, which you can read here.

– Dick Strawser