Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:40:57.741Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - The string quartet

from PART III - MUSIC FOR THE SALON AND CONCERT ROOM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Cliff Eisen
Edited by
Simon P. Keefe
Simon P. Keefe
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Get access

Summary

By the end of the eighteenth century, the string quartet had achieved a status beyond that of most other instrumental genres, a status that made it appealing as a hook on which to hang historical reputations. And this, in turn, sometimes meant creating convenient histories – or, by the early decades of the nineteenth century, asserting the importance of ‘great men’, their originality and independence of mind, their historical leadership, in whatever field:

The following purely chance circumstance had led [Haydn] to try his luck at the composition of quartets. A Baron Fürnberg had a place in Weinzierl. . . and from time to time he invited his pastor, his manager, Haydn and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the celebrated contrapuntist, who played the violoncello) to have a little music. Fürnberg requested Haydn to compose something that could be performed by these four amateurs. Haydn, then eighteen years old, took up this proposal and so originated his first quartet which, as soon as it appeared, gained such general approval that Haydn was encouraged to work further in this form.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music , pp. 648 - 660
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

,Association française pour le patrimoine musical (ed.). Le quatuor à cordes en France de 1750 à nos jours. Paris, 1995
Bonds, Mark Evan. ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery? Mozart’s “Haydn” Quartets and the Question of Influence’. Studi musicali, 22 (1993) –409Google Scholar
Bonds, Mark Evan ‘Replacing Haydn: Mozart’s “Pleyel” Quartets’. Music & Letters, 88 (2007) –25CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, A. Peter. ‘The Chamber Music with Strings of Carlos d’Ordoñez: A Bibliographic and Stylistic Study’. Analecta musicologica, 46 (1974) –72Google Scholar
Brown, A. Peter ‘Haydn and Mozart’s 1773 Stay in Vienna: Weeding a Musicological Garden’. Journal of Musicology, 10 (1992) –230CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnham, Scott. ‘Beethoven, Ludwig van. §13. Music of the Early Vienna Period’, Oxford Music Online (www.oxfordmusiconline.com) (accessed 8 September 2008)Google Scholar
Drabkin, William. A Reader’s Guide to Haydn’s Early String Quartets. Westport, CT, 2000Google Scholar
Finscher, Ludwig. Studien zur Geschichte des Streichquartetts, i: Die Entstehung des klassischen Streichquartetts: von den Vorformen zur Grundlegung durch Joseph Haydn. Kassel, 1974Google Scholar
Fischer, Kurt. ‘G. B. Viotti und das Streichquartett des späten 18. Jahrhunderts’. In Bianconi, Lorenzo et al. (eds.), Atti del XIV congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia, Bologna, 1987: Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale. Kassel, 1990, 3 vols., vol. 3 –67Google Scholar
Geiringer, Karl. ‘The Rise of Chamber Music’. In Wellescz, Egon and Sternfield, Frederick (eds.), New Oxford History of Music, vol. VII: The Age of Enlightenment, 1745–1790. Oxford, 1973 –73Google Scholar
Gotwals, Vernon (ed.). Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits. Madison, WI, 1968Google Scholar
Griffiths, Paul. The String Quartet. London and New York, 1983Google Scholar
Hickman, Roger ‘Leopold Kozeluch and the Viennese “quatuor concertant”’. College Music Symposium, 26 (1986) –52Google Scholar
Hickman, Roger ‘The Flowering of the Viennese String Quartet in the Late Eighteenth-Century’. Music Review, 50 (1989) –80Google Scholar
Hickman, Roger. ‘The Nascent Viennese String Quartet’. Musical Quarterly, 67 (1981) –212Google Scholar
Irving, John. Mozart: The ‘Haydn’ Quartets. Cambridge, 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, David Wyn ‘The Origins of the Quartet’. In Stowell, Robin (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet. Cambridge, 2003 –84Google Scholar
Keefe, Simon P.Mozart’s Viennese Instrumental Music: A Study of Stylistic Re-Invention. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2007Google Scholar
Kerman, Joseph. The Beethoven Quartets. London, 1967Google Scholar
Kirkendale, Warren. Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music. Trans. Kirkendale, and Bent, Margaret, Durham, NC, 1979Google Scholar
Konold, Wulf. Das Streichquartett, von den Anfängen bis Franz Schubert. Wilhelmshaven, 1980Google Scholar
Lehmann-Gugolz, Ursula. Deutsches und italienisches Wesen in der Vorgeschichte des klassischen Streichquartetts. Würzburg, 1939Google Scholar
McFarlane, Meredith, and McVeigh, Simon. ‘The String Quartet in London Concert Life, 1769–1799’. In Wollenberg, Susan and McVeigh, (eds.), Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot, 2004 –96Google Scholar
McVeigh, Simon. Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn. Cambridge, 1993Google Scholar
Moe, Orin. ‘The Significance of Haydn’s Op. 33’. In Larsen, Jens Peter, Serwer, Howard and Webster, James (eds.), Haydn-Studies: Washington, DC 1975. New York, 1981 –50Google Scholar
Oboussier, Philippe. ‘The French String Quartet, 1770–1800’. In Boyd, Malcolm (ed.), Music and the French Revolution. Cambridge, 1992 –92Google Scholar
Parker, Mara. ‘Friedrich Wilhelm II and the Classical String Quartet’. Music Review, 54 (1993) –82Google Scholar
Pincherle, Marc. ‘On the Origins of the String Quartet’. Musical Quarterly, 15 (1929) –87Google Scholar
Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style. New York, 1971Google Scholar
Speck, Christian and Sadie, Stanley. ‘Boccherini’ in Oxford Music Online (www.oxfordmusiconline.com) (accessed 8 September 2008)Google Scholar
Speck, Christian. Boccherinis Streichquartette: Studien zur Kompositionsweise und zur gattungsgeschichtlichen Stellung. Munich, 1987Google Scholar
Sutcliffe, W. Dean, Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 50. Cambridge, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutcliffe, W. Dean ‘Haydn, Mozart and their Contemporaries’. In Stowell, Robin (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet. Cambridge, 2003 –209Google Scholar
Walter, Horst. ‘Zum Wiener Streichquartett der Jahre 1780 bis 1800’. Haydn-Studien, 7 (1998) –314Google Scholar
Webster, James. ‘Towards a History of Viennese Chamber Music in the Early Classical Period’. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 27 (1974) –47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yudkin, Jeremy. ‘Beethoven’s “Mozart” Quartet’. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 45 (1992) –74CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • The string quartet
  • Edited by Simon P. Keefe, University of Sheffield
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music
  • Online publication: 28 March 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521663199.024
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • The string quartet
  • Edited by Simon P. Keefe, University of Sheffield
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music
  • Online publication: 28 March 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521663199.024
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The string quartet
  • Edited by Simon P. Keefe, University of Sheffield
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Music
  • Online publication: 28 March 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521663199.024
Available formats
×