Early Haydn

In late 1779, Haydn’s contract with the Esterházy family expired, allowing him to publish his work elsewhere. This meant that he could promote his Opus 33 string quartets as “new and special” compositions. The second quartet in this series, known as “The Joke”, concludes with a series of confusing musical fragments. Similarly, Alban Berg’s string quartet could also be considered “new and special”, as it was one of the first atonal quartets. However, despite its atonal nature, the twenty-six-year-old composer relied heavily on the late Romantic style, with the influences of Wagner and Mahler never far away.

Does coincidence exist? The young composer and violinist Joseph Haydn – not yet “Papa”, but rather “puppy” Haydn – played with three random other string players for the Viennese Count Von Fürnberg. The accidental harmony was so pleasing that the count asked Haydn for more repertoire for this combination. In the works that followed, Haydn laid the foundation for the string quartet, the medium that has given us so much beautiful music. In the concert series Early Haydn, the classical beauty of Haydn’s Opus 33 is in the hands of a different quartet every morning.