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Continuing our exploration of Sonata cycle,
let's move now to the string quartet. You may remember that the string quartet
is not only a genre, it's an ensemble, so that can be a little bit confusing.
String quartets play string quartets.
What my students sometimes think is that it there are four string players in an
orchestra then that's a string quartet.
That's not the case! Get more than four players on the stage, it's no longer a
quartet.
So our string quartet - four people sitting there. We know that the string players
have a very homogeneous sort of sound so we have
a timbre that doesn't change much from the bottom to the top of the instruments,
which means that the composer of a string quartet really focuses on
the melody, harmony, texture, all of those elements,
to create the interest in the piece because changing timbres is not going to
be the way that that's achieved in a string quartet.
The composer who really developed the string quartet
was Joseph Haydn and he's so associated with that that we call him the father of
the string quartet.
So he wrote lots of them. He tended to write them in sets of six so he would
write like six string quartets in a bunch
and so when you see the titles of them it will often say "string quartet opus
such-and-such number one, number five, number four, whatever; so
you'll just know that's because he tended to write them in bunches. So
the string quartet is...
can be kind of an acquired taste because it doesn't have the dramatic variety of
sounds that we're used to hearing with different kinds of ensembles that have
less homogeneous instruments. So
you really have to focus on the music itself. So the piece that we're going to
listen to
is Haydn's String Quartet in C Major, Opus 53,
Number 3. So opus 53 tells us that this is a sort of a middle work for
Haydn,
and that this is the third of the set of string quartets in this particular
opus.
This one has a nickname. Lots of Haydn's music does. Even Haydn has a nickname.
He's known as Papa Haydn. He lived to be pretty old and was sort of the
father figure for a lot of younger composers. So we've often referred
to him as Papa Haydn.
But his works often have nicknames as well. He has his
Surprise Symphony where he has a piece, a movement that goes along
and it's all very
sort of peaceful and all of sudden he goes BOOM and there's this note that surprises you.
So he was a kind of a jokester. He had a good sense of humor and his pieces often
reflect that.
So this one's called The Bird. So
as you listen to it, you might try to figure out why he called this The Bird. What's
the musical element of this
that sounds bird-like to us? We've heard birds before, right? We heard Vivaldi's
Four Seasons. We heard the spring and the birds
twittering so we have a general idea about what birds might sound like in
music and you can listen for that as you listen to this piece.
So it's in four movements. It fits the sonata cycle in that respect
but he kind of messes up with the order
on this. So we have our opening movement, our Allegro Moderato, which would be our
standard sonata
allegro form. So what's the next movement supposed to be?
It's supposed to be something slow, right? That's what we expect with the second movement.
He switches things up. Instead of having the third movement be the minuet
and trio movement,
he puts that movement in the second slot. So we have our fast movement and then we
have our triple meter movement.
You'll notice that it's not called a minuet and trio in the piece.
It's called a scherzo. We've already seen that with Beethoven,
that he had taken that minuet and trio,
picked up the tempo on it and made it faster, more lively. Scherzo is another word for
joke,
so that sort of fits right in with Haydn's style anyway.
Let's put a scherzo in the second movement, not where we expect it to be.
So... but the form is going to be a minuet and trio form so you can recognize that
going back to the beginning,
the change of key in the middle, so it's a good chance to practice that.
So he puts his slow movement in the third slot
and then at the ending for the finale he's going to have another nice Rondo for
you, so
this is a good chance to practice listening for the Rondo,
your minuet and trio format in that second movement and for your sonata cycle,
sonata allegro in the first movement. So enjoy
this string quartet by Haydn and
get another chance to practice all things you know about Sonata cycle.