The String Quartets of Joseph Haydn

This fresh, wide-ranging assessment of Haydn's quartets explores the circumstances of their creation, reveals the conventions and novelties that govern their design, and examines the wealth of textures, stylistic allusions, and rhetorical strategies that underlie their stature as a cornerstone of the chamber music repertory.

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A monumental accomplishment of the classical music era, the string quartets of Joseph Haydn hold a prominent place not only in his oeuvre, but also in our modern conception of late 18th-century instrumental form, style, and expression. Here, well-known music historians Floyd and Margaret Grave present a comprehensive survey of the works from a fresh perspective.

This thorough and unique analysis offers new insights into the creation of the quartets, the wealth of musical customs and conventions on which they draw, the scope of their innovations, and their significance as reflections of Haydn's artistic personality. Each set of quartets is characterized in terms of its particular mix of structural conventions and novelties, stylistic allusions, and its special points of connection with other opus groups in the series. Attention is drawn throughout to the boundless supply of compositional strategies by which Haydn appears to be continually rethinking, reevaluating, and refining the quartet's potentials. The authors also lucidly describe Haydn's famous penchant for wit, humor, and compositional artifice, illuminating the unexpected connections he draws between seemingly unrelated ideas, his irony, and his lightning bolts of surprise and thwarted expectation. Approaching the quartets from a variety of vantage points, the authors correct many prevailing assumptions about convention, innovation, and developing compositional technique in the music of Haydn and his contemporaries.

Going beyond traditional modes of study, The String Quartets of Joseph Haydn blends historical analysis and factual information with critical appraisal in a way that will benefit all Haydn enthusiasts.