The individual quartets: a synopsis

Abstract

The following account is intended to provide an overview, guiding the reader through each of the six ‘Haydn’ quartets. It concentrates principally on describing the forms of individual movements, defining the main moments of structural articulation, principal themes, keys, textures and other salient features. This is not intended as a comprehensive account; inevitably, some movements are treated at rather greater length than others. No musical examples are given; access to a score is assumed throughout. Two issues require consideration at the outset: thematic terminology in sonata form, and octave registers within recapitulations. The arguably anachronistic terms ‘first subject’ and ‘second subject’ are applied in the following discussions of sonata-form movements. Whether conceptually ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, these terms have undoubtedly attained ‘conventional’ status and are widely understood. Of course, such terminology only developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and would not have formed part of Mozart's technical vocabulary, for all that it has pervaded much subsequent writing on his music. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the eighteenth-century theoretical alternatives (which actually confuse more than they clarify). Provided that they are not understood too literally, the terms ‘first subject’ and ‘second subject’ do not unduly confuse or falsify Mozart's sonata structures. Radical departures from the familiar ‘textbook’ procedures in any case receive special note in the synopsis. The octave register within which the second-subject group is recapitulated is by no means standard in the quartets, nor was any prescription for deciding upon a ‘correct’ octave register given in contemporary theoretical literature.