III. THE STRING QUARTET.
It was not until the time of Haydn that the string quartet[31] came into being; a fact for which we may easily account by examining the instrumental parts of orchestral compositions before Haydn's time. We shall find the 'cello, for example, playing for the most part merely the bass notes that support the superstructure of the orchestra, and consequently entirely unaccustomed to individual parts of any difficulty. Another obstacle in the path of the string quartet was the slow development of the viola, which only gradually emerged from the older and more cumbersome types, such as the viola d'amour and viola da braccio. Haydn began by writing little quartets of the simplest possible kind—the first movement of the first quartet contains only twenty-four measures—but by constant practice throughout his long life he attained a complete mastery of the form. In his early quartets he usually wrote five movements, two of them minuets, but he soon settled on the regular four movement form which has remained ever since as the usually accepted model.
EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 15.
Haydn: Adagio in E-flat major from the String Quartet[32] in G-major, op. 77, No. 1.
This Adagio is thoroughly characteristic of Haydn's best style of writing. It is without the elaborate and somewhat diffuse treatment we observed in the trio of his "Andante with Variations" (See Chapter VII), nor does it depend for its effect on the much more artistic use of ornament employed by Mozart in the Andante quoted in Figure XLI. Almost everything in this composition germinates from the two motives given out in measures 1-2 and 3-4, and it should be noted that each of these motives is sufficiently pronounced in character to serve the purposes of generation, and that the theme, as a whole, is not by any means a perfect lyric melody such as will be found in our second example for analysis.
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FIGURE XLIII.
The first of these motives (see Figure XLIII, measures 1-2) is easily traced throughout the whole composition, since the changes that are made in it are largely changes in key, but the second motive (measures 3-4) almost immediately evolves into something new. This may be observed in measure 11, where the rhythm of the passage at measure 3 is changed, the melody being given to the left hand. The second part (or stanza) of the melody, beginning at measure 13, uses chiefly the phrase from measure 2, which will be found again in the dominant—to which key this section tends—at measures 21-22. Even the passage at 23 is an elaboration of that at 11, and this same original motive is lengthened into a delightful bit of by-play at measures 35-37. The close in C-major at 42, with its accents transferred to the fourth beat of the measure, should be noted, while the sudden change of key after the pause was, at that time, almost a revolutionary modulation, and sounds more like Beethoven than Haydn (see, for example, the sudden and complete change of key in the coda of the first movement of the "Eroica" Symphony). The use of the motive from measure 2 at 45-54 and the gradual elimination of its melodic quality until only its rhythm remains (53-54) is an interesting example of a familiar process in music (see Chapter VIII). This gradual dying away and ceasing of motion is also a familiar process at this point in a movement, providing as it does a sense of expectancy and preparation for the re-entrance of the main theme. The restatement begins at measure 55 and as is customary retains the original key instead of modulating to the dominant as did the first section. The coda begins at 82 and, according to Haydn's usual plan, presents a kind of reminiscence of the main subject, as if in tender farewell.