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HAYDN The complete string quartets played on period instruments LÁSZLÓ SOMFAI
Opus 9: Haydn’s first genuine String Quartets The aged Haydn is supposed to have told Artaria, his Viennese publisher, when he was about to publish the collected string quartets, that the series should only include the quartets from no. 19 onwards. By that time, in fact, there had already been a kind of a collected edition in parts printed by Pleyel in Paris, in which three early sets of six works each (known today as ‘opus 1’, ‘opus 2’ and ‘opus 3’) were followed by no. 19, the first quartet of the set ‘opus 9’. This statement from Haydn is of utmost importance. Although the 70-year-old composer’s memory was failing rapidly and he was sometimes unable to tell whether a particular work from his early days was written by himself or not, the exclusion of the first 18 quartets in the Paris edition should have served as a warning to posterity. Unfortunately it was not taken seriously. Only the new complete critical edition (Joseph Haydns Werke) have restored order to matters of authenticity concerning the ‘83 string quartets’ traditionally accepted. It has been established that ‘opus 3’ was not composed by Haydn. Furthermore, only nine of the twelve pieces known as ‘opus 1’ and ‘opus 2’ are real quartets, two of the others having been originally sextets and one a symphony. These nine and a tenth quartet in E-flat major – all of them five-movement pieces, presumably written in Haydn’s early years in Vienna – are now collected in the volume Ten Early Divertimenti for String Quartets. Why in fact did Haydn wish to start the retrospective edition of his genuine string quartets with those of Op. 9? What is the dividing line between the early, five-movement works, with two minuets, and these four-movement ones? The titles of the pieces, the performing body, the quality of the composition, or merely the number and arrangement of the movements?
The title could hardly have been the decisive factor. The ten early pieces in the contemporary sources were called Cassatio à 4tro, Divertimento a quatro, or simply a 4tro; the first genuine string quartet sets (opp. 9, 17, 20) were also titled Divertimento. Nor has there been any change in the performing apparatus. Though musicologists have argued about whether the lowest part, marked Basso in the early quartet divertimenti, was played by a double-bass (or by a cello and a double-bass together), and whether soloists or several musicians played each part, it is now generally accepted that the composer wrote for two violins, one viola and one cello. Of course they may, occasionally, have been played by a chamber orchestra, and, depending on the local traditions, strange performances were common. In the case of op. 9, already an undeniable string quartet set, one printed edition (published in 1771 in Amsterdam without Haydn’s consent) shows a figured bass, on the assumption that a keyboard instrument also took part in the performance. If it was neither the title nor the apparatus, it might only have been the quality or format of the composition that was decisive in Haydn’s eyes. The period of about ten years that separates the early five-movement pieces from op. 9, the first quartets in four movements, obviously written as a cycle, was the time when Haydn developed a much more individual style in instrumental genres. In its originality and its concept of this new chamber music genre, op. 9 is a worthy companion-piece to his best symphonies and keyboard sonatas of around 1770. Surprisingly, nothing is known for certain about why and for whom Haydn wrote these new-type quartets. Since the autograph manuscript of the score is lost, even the year of the composition is uncertain. Georg Feder, editor of op. 9 in the Henle complete critical edition, considers 1770 the most likely date. As to the occasion, it