Sunrise quartet
The Sunrise Quartet ( Hob. III: 78) is a string quartet by Joseph Haydn . It is in B flat major and has the opus number 76 No. 4.
The sunrise quartet is one of the string quartets that Joseph Haydn composed in 1797 at the age of 65 after his return from London and dedicated to Count Erdődy . They were published in 1799. The fourth of these quartets was given the nickname “Sunrise Quartet” because its first movement begins with a melody of the first violin that soars out of a sound surface in several attempts and increases to fortissimo, corresponding to a rising sun. In the time after Richard Wagner it was also called the “ Tannhauser Quartet”, as it was believed to find the melody in “We welcome the noble hall”.
Sentence names
- 1. Allegro con spirito
- 2. Adagio
- 3rd minuet. Allegro
- 4th finale. Allegro ma non troppo
music
The beginning of the first movement, which increases in several attempts with a sweeping violin melody rising from sound surfaces to a large B flat major fortsimo, has earned the work the nickname “Sunrise Quartet”, and this very nickname led to this beginning was understood as a “romantic” sound experience or “light crescendo” analogous to the famous passage at the beginning of “Creation” (on which Haydn worked in 1797). But the tempo is allegro con spirito , lingering with feelings and associations is not permitted; and the sense of the indeed astonishing and completely unconventional idea, which one would hardly want to call a theme, is that of a calm, sonically dynamic gesture, which is set in contrast to lively, moving tutti sections throughout the movement. From this tension between calm and moving sound, stronger than from thematic processes, the movement derives its very peculiar dynamics and its unmistakable tone. It appears spread out in the exposition, which begins again after the fortissimo climax with the sounds and lines of the beginning, in the development, which shortens the course of the exposition and repeats it slightly changed, and in the recapitulation, which rather than sharpens the contrasts mediated; it is almost epigrammatically pointed in the coda.
The Adagio (3/4, E flat major) is very close to the Adagio Fantasia of the E flat major quartet op. 76 No. 6, and is also formally hardly a slow movement in the sense of tradition, but rather a meditative fantasy the theme initially developed in tentative approaches (analogous to the beginning of the first movement), then carried out with the most extraordinary harmonic complications and reserved dissonances. Here Haydn has approached the emotional world of the 19th century far more clearly than in the first movement.
The minuet leads back into more familiar areas, but also bridges the gap to the "sound direction" of the first movement, most clearly and originally in the attacca transition to the trio (which is in the basic key) with a fundamental note marked by sforzato (a mean of Connection of sentences that Schumann and Mendelssohn should be fond of); The trio melody, which sounds like an intangible folk music, unfolds above this note.
The finale ( alla breve ) begins - Allegro ma non troppo - as a deliberate, almost comfortable rondo that hardly strikes a more serious note in the B minor episode either. The repetition of the ritornello, however, breaks off in an abrupt cadence at the point at which it begins to expand into execution; the subsequent stretta - più allegro , then più presto - starts again with the execution motifs and finally dissolves all thematic contours in its ever wilder vortex. A recapitulation is missing; the movement has the amazing, only tonally closed form ritornello - episode - ritornello - development / Stretta .
See also
Web links
- String Quartets Op. 76 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Notes in the Mutopia project
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Renner : Reclam's chamber music guide . With the collaboration of Wilhelm Zentner, Anton Würz, Siegfried Greis. 1st edition. Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1955, DNB 452303133 , p. 228 : “The theme of this Allegro con spirito anticipates expressions from the“ Tannhauser March ”unpathetically. From undefined undulating twilight, the events unfold in a continuous increase to clear, luminous colors. An enigmatic change in style! It shows Haydn at the gates of romantic music. "