About the Music. At a Glance
The Program
The centerpiece of today’s program is a freshly minted string quartet by Saad Haddad, a young Arab American composer known for his imaginative hybridizing of Western and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Haddad’s String Quartet No. 2 is sandwiched between two masterpieces of the socalled First Viennese School: the first of Haydn’s six Op. 20 Quartets, which bedazzled audiences in the 1770s with their prodigal display of formal and melodic invention, and Beethoven’s Third “Razumovsky” Quartet of 1806.
JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)
Known as the “father” of the string quartet, Haydn occupied a pivotal place in music history. In 1732, the year of his birth, the Baroque masters Bach and Vivaldi were still in their primes. By the time he died, 77 years later, his erstwhile pupil Beethoven was ushering in the Romantic era. Haydn’s music reflects the “classical” virtues of equilibrium, clarity, and seriousness of purpose, tempered with a playfulness and often earthy humor that have delighted audiences ever since. Beethoven’s Romanticism posed greater challenges for his contemporaries. The three great quartets that he composed for the Russian count Andreas Razumovsky marked a turning point in his stylistic development. From its somberly mysterious choral introduction to its sparkling fugal finale, the C-Major Quartet holds listeners on the edges of their seats.
Caramoor
String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, No. 1 About the Composer One of Haydn’s early biographers, Georg August Griesinger, relates how the composer first tried his hand at writing string quartets in the early 1750s. The future “father” of the string quartet was then teaching music lessons to the children of Baron Carl Joseph Fürnberg in Vienna. According to Griesinger, the baron “had an estate in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna; from time to time he invited his parish priest, his estate manager, and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the well-known contrapuntist) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg asked Haydn to compose something that could be played by these four friends of the art. Haydn, who was then 18, accepted the proposal, and so originated his first quartet, which, immediately upon its appearance, received such uncommon applause as to encourage him to continue in this genre. About the Work The 68 quartets that Haydn went on to compose over the next halfcentury offer a capsule overview of his artistic development. The earliest quartets, such as the one that beguiled Baron Fürnberg and his guests, were closely related to the string sonatas, sinfonias, and lightweight divertimenti that were popular with European Summer 2021
