Reprintable only with permission from the author.

Haydn Quartet opus 50 no. 5

There are many reasons for Joseph Haydn’s place among the greatest composers. Some point to his fostering of iconic genres such as the symphony or string quartet, and his incredible prolificity in those genres. Some speak of his endless creativity and economy in how he develops his material; others point to his capacity for surprise, witty gestures and comedic timing. These truths are beyond question. But behind all of it one senses the larger reason that Haydn remains beloved: his music describes us. Like a novel by Austen or Trollope, his music sees into human souls, and seems to observe us in our social behavior, individual strivings, hopes and anxieties as we interact with one another. He laughs at our gaffes, celebrates our victories, sympathizes with our failings. In his recounting, we recognize our world, even when it is reflected back to us more beautiful, more clever, more elevated than we know it to be.

His Quartet opus 50 no. 5 is as good an example of this art as anything he wrote. The opening movement is sunny and genial enough, but embedded in the main theme is a “stutter” moment…did two speakers try to start talking at once? Are two people hesitating at an open door to figure out who will go through first? It is a moment of slight social awkwardness, with its capacity for humor and interest, which recurs throughout the movement and which Haydn solves in many ways. The more unexpected solutions, with their change of key, almost resemble punchlines to a joke. And the final time it comes in the movement, the stuttering persists for an almost implausible length of time, so that the onlookers can’t imagine how it will be resolved; but a resolution is always found, often in the form of swift triplet runs that are full of brilliance and joy. Haydn laughs at his novel’s characters, but ultimately embraces them and celebrates them as well.

The second movement contains the “dream” music that inspired the quartet’s nickname. Perhaps “daydream” or “reverie” would be a more apt title: the nobility and tenderness of the narrative suggest that its teller is calmly awake and intent. The music moves overwhelmingly in patient stepwise intervals, rather than leaps, which imbues it with a gliding, mesmerizing quality, and its harmonies often travel along painful chromatic paths that intensify the emotional import of what is being said. In its ubiquitous, graceful triplet passages, this movement recalls, and may be a subtle homage to, the slow movement of Mozart’s earlier G Major Quartet, which Haydn heard and admired.

Despite its quite unassuming opening, the Menuet movement turns out to be full of quirks and structural cleverness. The main idea is a cheerful, stout statement that stands squarely on its quarter-note legs and lasts a perfectly regular 8 bars. But later, as the music progresses, the idea gradually darkens into minor; as things escalate and seem to get serious, Haydn sneaks a return to the opening material right into the middle of a sequence, so that we only recognize the moment in retrospect. The main idea plays leapfrog with itself, and finally ends the section in a series of hiccuping, cross-metric chords.

Most startling of all, the contrasting Trio section carries on using the same melodic idea — not usual practice — now in the minor key. “Unusual, but still methodical and orderly,” you might say; only the very first thing that happens is a plunge into a different key, a moment of comic relief just when we were expecting the main idea dressed up in somber, minor-key clothes. Not until near the end of the whole section is the true minor key formally acknowledged, a feat of harmonic procrastination that keeps the narrative ball in the air.

The finale is, at least partly, based on silliness. The opening purports to be a graceful dance with its lilting rhythms, except that the quartet seems to be stuck on the same repeating bit of music, until the first violin breaks away and floats goofily up one string on an arpeggio. Then it answers itself in a much lower register, like a comedian doing different voices. And that is virtually the material for the entire movement. So that the poor players can salvage a little dignity, Haydn festoons the proceedings with frequent 16th-note brilliance, and also employs his favorite technique of interrupting the music’s progress with abrupt pauses, keeping the listener on his toes. The central development section puts us through a ferment of different modulations, before culminating at a moment of reckoning over a fateful held E-natural in the cello. Again the moment turns out to be comical, the first violin hurtling off, stamping mad but unable to really break out of the repeated 8th-note rhythm he is stuck on. A pause, and then we are back to the silliness of the opening. Towards the end, Haydn can’t resist returning for one more go-around of the opening melody, this time decorated by an equally silly, equally stuck figure in the second violin. We are buffoons, the music seems to say, but when life is this fun, who cares?

Note by Misha Amory