On the first of July, 1773, Mozart arrived in Vienna. He remained there three months, and during this time wrote six quartets (K. 168-173, inclusive), the first four probably in August, the last two in September. The fact of his writing six quartets in such haste might suggest that he had received a commission from some nobleman or rich amateur. There is no document, however, mentioning such a circumstance; and it may well be that Mozart composed them, as he had composed quartets in Italy, at once to occupy spare moments and to satisfy that craving for expression which seems ever to have seized him when he came in contact with any active and special musical surroundings. Vienna was full of quartets and of amateurs and artists who played them often together. Haydn was brilliantly famous, his quartets were constantly performed. Dr. Burney heard some of them exquisitely played at the house of the English emissary, Lord Stormont, in this very September. Michael Kelly, in his ‘Memoirs,’ mentions an evening when, to fill up an hour or two, a band of musicians played quartets; and among these musicians Mozart himself was one. Therefore, being so surrounded by quartets, Mozart probably could not, so to speak, keep his hands off the form.
Naturally enough, he wrote as nearly as he could in the Viennese style which now, just on the eve of the style galant, still breathed of Emanuel Bach and the seriousness of musical learning. Haydn’s Sonnen Quartette, those in which he replied to the charges of hostile critics by an exhibition of excellent contrapuntal skill, were probably already composed, though they were not printed until the following year. Very likely Mozart had become familiar with some if not all of them. Gassmann, too, had composed a series of quartets in 1772, each of which had four movements, two of them fugues. But probably the fugues which Mozart wrote as finales to the first and sixth of these quartets owe their place to the influence of Haydn.
Indeed, the entire series shows Mozart in a process of assimilating a serious style of music to which he had hitherto, through force of circumstances, remained indifferent. Without question the recent quartets of Haydn stirred in him a fever of emulation. That the six quartets were written in the space of a month, or very little more, is evidence of his impatience to make Haydn’s style his own. Other influences than Haydn’s are present, but less obvious; such as the influence of Gluck, at least in spirit, in one or two of the slow movements. Consequently the series as a whole is not satisfying. It does not reveal Mozart at ease. He has abandoned for the moment the pure grace of the Italian style, of which he was consummate master, in an effort, too sudden and hasty for success, to make his music all German. He is consistently neither one thing nor the other, neither graceful nor expressive. The last, in D minor, is naturally the best. The first movement and the final fugue are proof that he had already accomplished what he set out to do.
These first Viennese quartets stand alone between Mozart’s Italian quartets and the great quartets written ten years and more later, which were dedicated to Joseph Haydn, as the tribute of a son to a father. Here Mozart has fully expressed his genius. There are six in all, written at various times; the first three between December, 1782, and the summer of 1783, the last three in the winter of 1784-85. Haydn heard them before they were published, and praised them highly. It was perhaps this warm appreciation which led Mozart to dedicate the series to his old friend and teacher when he published it in the autumn of 1785. The dedication is hearty, long, and naïve. In Köchel’s Index the quartets are listed as Nos. 387, 421, 428, 458, 464, and 465.
IV
These quartets are much more broadly planned than earlier works by Mozart in the same form. Not only are the separate movements generally longer; the middle section of the first movements is intricate and extended, and the minuets are not less seriously treated than the other movements. The treatment of the separate instrumental parts is, of course, distinguished and fine.
It would be difficult to characterize each one distinctly. The first, in G major (K. 387), is marked by a certain decisive clearness throughout. The two themes of the first movement are especially clearly differentiated. The development section is long and rather severe. It will be noticed that the minuet takes the second place in the cycle, as in many of Haydn’s quartets. The final movement is in fugal style and not unrelated in spirit to the final movement of the great Jupiter symphony.
The second quartet, in D minor (K. 421), takes both from its tonality and from the nature of its themes a thin veil of melancholy. The opening theme is poignantly expressive, but the fire of it is often covered. The characteristic width of its intervals is used throughout the entire movement, with a strange effect of yearning, now resigned, now passionately outspoken. The andante, in F major, is tinged with the same melancholy. The trio of the minuet is one of the few places where Mozart made use of pizzicato effects. The last movement is a series of variations on a melancholy little theme cast in the rhythm of the Siciliana, one of the Italian rhythms already made use of by Handel and Gluck, among others.
The third quartet, in E-flat major (K. 428), is on the whole reserved and classical in spirit. The opening theme, given in unison, has a gentle dignity which marks the whole first movement. The measures following the second theme are especially smooth and lovely in their slowly falling harmonies. In the second movement, andante con moto, there is a constant shifting of harmonies, and a somewhat restless interchange of parts among the instruments. The trio of the minuet, in C minor, is subtly woven over a drone bass. The final movement is a lively rondo.
The fourth, in B-flat major (K. 458), is, in the first movement, very like Haydn, light-hearted and wholly gay. The following minuet, adagio, and rondo need hardly be specially mentioned. The A major quartet (K. 464), the next in the series, is in a similar vein. The slow movement, again the third in the cycle, is in the form of variations; and the last is full of imitations and other contrapuntal devices.