from String Quartet in F, Op. 3, No. 5)
[*As I put it in the amended title I assigned when I rejiggered the Internet Archive page for this clip (which we've heard before -- just don't ask me when, unless you really want to know): "Haydn's authorship of the six Op. 3 quartets is much disputed, but the alternate attribution to the monk Romanus Hofstetter is no slam dunk either."]
by Ken
MONDAY UPDATE: I mentioned in the original version of this post that I had originally it was going to begin with a course of chatter having to do with how I happened on this subject. This has actually now happened -- see the "ON SECOND THOUGHT" Monday update down below, in the section "NOW, WE WANT TO HEAR THE WHOLE QUARTET, NO?"
All the same, the basic plan remains just to listen, with the proviso that this music -- actually, the entire set of six quartets that came to be known as Haydn's Op. 3 -- probably isn't by Haydn. Or then again, just possibly it is. And then still again, just to complicate things further, for reasons much too arcane to try to go into, it has been plausibly argued that the handy alternative attribution to the monk Romanus Hofstetter is just as unlikely. As far as I know, there the matter stands, and barring some startling document discovery (never out of the question!), we're never going to know any better than we do now!
But for us gathered here today, no matter! This seemingly simple, but in reality extraordinarily tricky, movement from Op. 3, No. 5, the movement that has always commandeered attention directed to the set, and it should already be obvious why: In the whole realm of music I've never heard anything like it. Maybe it's just one violin singing away at its infinitely expanding (and sometimes contracting) little song -- singing all the way through, note, with its mute in place, while the other violin, the viola, and the cello, pluck their fingers away in accompaniment -- is, well, pure magic. It would of course be ridiculously unscholarly to venture that it's too wonderful not to be by Haydn, but of course that argument doesn't have a leg to stand on.
(By the way, as long as we're thinking about that mute the violinist slaps on his instrument, we might note that the composer has done something interesting here. The quartet began in F major, and by using the utterly common device of pitching the second movement in the dominant key it winds up in C major, a pretty happy key tonally -- it practically radiates sunshine, and an especially happy key for string players. Except that the composer has gone and muted his singing violin and taken his playmates' bows away altogether. Really simple, right?)
BUT WAIT, THERE'S STILL MORE TO BE HEARD
I've gathered some other recordings of the "Serenade" (as it's come to be known), and I think you'll notice something distinctly different about them. Don't be fooled, by the way, by the long timings of the Varsovia and Kodály versions, which pile up the minutes by observing the marked repeats of the movement's two sections, notwithstanding the considerable amount of repetition already built into them.
HAYDN (attrib.): Serenade (ii. Andante cantabile from String Quartet, Op. 3, No. 5)
Virtuoso String Quartet (Marjorie Hayward and Edwin Virgo, violins; Raymond Jeremy, viola; Cedric Sharpe, cello). HMV, recorded in London, 1928
Pro Arte Quartet (Alphonse Onnou and Laurent Halleux, violins; Germain Prévost, viola; Robert Maas, cello). HMV, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 3, London, Dec. 11, 1933
Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet (Anton Kamper and Karl Maria Titze, violins; Erich Weiss, viola; Franz Kvarda, cello). From ORF (Austrian Radio) archives, recorded in the 1950s
Varsovia Quartet (Boguslaw Bruczowski and Marek Bojarski, violins; Artur Paciorkiewicz, viola; Wojciech Walasek, cello). Seon-Pro Arte, recorded c1980
Kodály Quartet (Attila Falvay and Tamás Szabó, violins; János Fejérvári, viola; György Éder, cello). Naxos, recorded in Phoenix Studio, Budapest, June 26-29, 2000
LET'S LISTEN AGAIN TO THE JANÁČEK QUARTET VERSION
Violinists Jiří Trávníček and Adolf Sýkora, cellist Karel Krafka, and
violist Jiří Kratochvíl-- of course in our clip only Jiří wields a bow!)
violist Jiří Kratochvíl-- of course in our clip only Jiří wields a bow!)
Janáček Quartet. Decca, recorded May 1963 (see earlier complete listing)
You may have wondered, in the other performances, whether the pace we hear, especially in the 78-rpm versions, really qualified as Andante cantabile -- i.e., a "singing andante." Well, the wrinkle here is that the composer, whoever he was, designated the meter not as "C," "common" time, or 4/4, but as "C" with a vertical slash through it, meaning alla breve, or 2/2, two beats to a bar -- in theory a considerably quicker gait.
The Janáček players go with their gut, and the andante that Jiří Trávníček sings with his fiddle comes out of, and takes us to, a different place. As significantly, his colleagues' steadfast string-plucking is lifted out of the realm of pleasant guitar (or maybe banjo in the case of the Virtuoso Quartet performance) strumming to something, I don't know, verging on the ethereal?
NOW, WE WANT TO HEAR THE WHOLE QUARTET, NO?
(UPDATE: Right after I share a little background story)
This really is all I wanted to share for now. Still, having plucked the "Serenade" out of Op. 3, No. 5, we really should hear it in context, shouldn't we? We can do that! Of course the best way to do it would be via the Janáček Quartet recording. What we're going to hear, though, is the Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet broadcast performance.
ON SECOND THOUGHT (Monday update): I think this is maybe a place to share how I came to be thinking about the Haydn "Serenade," which has to do with the fact that lately I've been listening to more LPs, mostly as things occur to me which I only have on LP -- for example, 1970s Decca traversal by Britain's Aeolian Quartet of the complete Haydn string quartets. At the time when individual sets were being released in the U.K. as they were recorded, but with no immediate prospect of U.S. release, I took to ordering the boxes from the U.K. as they came out.
All, that is, except the eighth and final volume, which I'd somehow been unaware of. Vol. 8 was effectively an appendix, containing the dubious Op. 3 quartets and, a quite different case, Haydn's string-quartet arrangement of his originally orchestral Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, the thinking here being that, in the view of Reginald Barrett-Ayres. co-editor (with the great Haydn authority H. C. Robbins Landon) of the then-new critical edition of the Haydn quartets which formed the basis of the Aeolian series, the seven Adagios that make up the bulk of The Seven Last Words were never meant to be heard in straight musical sequence and simply shouldn't be performed one after another after another. (In the Aeolian Quartet's Vol. 8, each Word is paired with a spoken text -- spoken by no less than Peter Pears! -- that relates to the "word.")
I didn't discover Vol. 8 until much later when London Records, then the US. arm of British Decca, released the series on the budget London Treasury label, at which time I bought a copy of the bargain U.S. box. But I don't think I'd ever actually listened to it, or even looked closely at its innards, and now there it was, sitting on its side on top of the seven shelved British Decca volumes.
What I didn't mention is that Professor Barrett-Ayres, the author of the 1974 book Joseph Haydn and the String Quartet, was a consultant to the Aeolian-Decca recording project and provided the booklet notes for it. In Vol. 8, for example, before turning to the actual music of the Op. 3 quartets, he provided an enormously helpful pair of lists: first "the case for Haydn's authorship of these quartets," then "the evidence against Haydn's authenticity" ("all circumstantial," he notes).
I thought it might be fun and useful, as we listen to the whole of Op. 3, No. 5, to have Professor Barrett-Ayres's commentary at hand.
HAYDN (attrib.): String Quartet in F, Op. 3, No. 5 ("Serenade"):
i. Presto
[at 2:52] ii. Andante cantabile ("Serenade")
[at 6:21] iii. Menuetto
[at 9:40]iv. Scherzando
Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet (Anton Kamper and Karl Maria Titze, violins; Erich Weiss, viola; Franz Kvarda, cello). From ORF (Austrian Radio) archives, recorded in the 1950s
String Quartet in F major, Opus 3, No. 5
Notes by Reginald Barrett-Ayres
"Of all the quartets of Opus 3, this is probably the one which is most often played, mainly because of the popularity of the slow movement, andante cantabile, the so-called Serenade. The other movements, however, in some measure overshadowed as a result, are nonetheless extremely attractive."
1st movement: Presto (F major, 3/8)
This first movement is abounding in tunes of an extremely popular nature. Although the music is couched in sonata form, the emphasis is placed on tunefulness rather than on the overall pattern and design. It is interesting to notice that many of these tunes are made up of small and well balanced phrases. This technique was used by Haydn in the early quartets [i.e., Opp. 1 and 2 -- Ed.] and also in the quartets from Opus 9 onwards. There is also a great deal of antiphonal writing between one instrument and the other three, or between two and two; this is also a Haydn fingerprint.
2nd movement: Andante cantabile (C major, 4/4)
[Note that Professor Barrett-Ayres lists this as 4/4 rather than 2/2 as I've written above, based on the score I consulted. -- Ed.]
In this Serenade, the muted violin sings a song while the other three instruments accompany pizzicato. The form is binary, but such considerations need not concern the listener in any way; sit back and enjoy this beautiful simple sound.
3rd movement: Menuetto (F major -- Trio, B flat, 3/4)
In this highly predictable menuetto, the octave doublings between viola and cello are again typical of Haydn's early writing: not so, on the other hand, the syncopations in the second violin part, nor the overlaps between the middle parts. The trio is a real trio, for there is no viola part. The first violin plays a tune, the cello forms the bass, pizzicato, and the second violin plays an Alberti accompaniment in quavers. After the fully scored menuetto which is played forte, this quiet trio makes an extremely fine contrast.
4th movement: Scherzando (F major, 2/4)
Some of the finales in Haydn's early quartets are so quickly over that the listener has hardly time to grasp his musical ideas, which fill the air for seconds, it seems, and are gone forever. So it is with this playful movement; a passing fancy, a hurried, good-natured wave from a friend, the merest wisp of a song -- named "scherzando."
*
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