Three String Quartets Op. 44 (review)

Three years ago, a new series of editions, The Early String Quartet, was inaugurated with a volume devoted to Giovanni Battista Viotti's Op. 1 string quartets. As stated in the preface, the purpose of the series is to make available 'critical editions of selected quartets composed during the second half of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth' (p. vi of the volume under review). The quality of that volume, edited by Cliff Eisen, who is the general editor of the series, established a lofty benchmark, making the series a welcome addition to the growing number of critical readings of the music of this period. Three further volumes have appeared: Luigi Boccherini's Op. 32 (ed. Mark Knoll), Ignaz Pleyel's Op. 1 (ed. Simon P. Keefe), and Adalbert Gyrowetz's Op. 44, reviewed here.

As with the other volumes, W. Dean Sutcliffe's edition of Gyrowetz's three string quartets in G, B flat, and A flat, published by Artaria in Vienna as his Op. 44 in 1804, are made available in a full score with performance parts. Prepared with care for historical accuracy, the edition is thus designed to serve the needs of performers as well as scholars. Both score and parts are intended to 'reflect not only modern concerns for historical awareness but also the obligation on players to create individual interpretations, whether historically informed or not' (p. vi).

Adalbert Gyrowetz (Vojtfch Jírovec), born Gerowetz in Ceske Budfjovice (Budweis), Bohemia in 1763, is one of the many significant composers whose music has been relegated to the shadowy periphery of the spotlight cast on this period by its acknowledged masters, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He lived for eighty-seven years, during which the social, political, economic, and cultural structure of Europe underwent enormous change. Adaptations in musical taste during this time were especially dramatic. Haydn had only just begun his long-standing tenure with the Esterházy family in the year of Gyrowetz's birth, and, by the time of his death in 1850, the musical world already had experienced the music of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, and Verdi.

Students of the musical culture of this period are especially fortunate to have Gyrowetz's own account of his career in an autobiography published in Vienna in 1848. Not surprisingly, this source is often cited in writings about the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin owns a handwritten biographical sketch signed by the composer and dated 1845, a full three years before the published version. William E. Hettrick, who has made a careful comparison of these documents ('The Autobiography of Adalbert Gyrowetz (1763–1850)', Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, 40 (1991), 41–74), has concluded that the printed version includes extensive passages that do not appear in the Berlin manuscript. This fact, coupled with Hettrick's identification of several discrepancies in factual information as well as in prose style, has cast some doubt on the extent of Gyrowetz's actual involvement in the published account. In an informative and well-written preface to his edition, Sutcliffe reviews in detail the situation with regard to these documents.

Whether or not one accepts that Gyrowetz is recalling the events of his long life with accuracy and without too much dramatic embroidery, the account is fascinating and makes for lively reading. Indeed, Gyrowetz's life is the sort of succession of opportunities and adventures that might well send a Hollywood script writer rushing to his computer to recast it for the big screen. Born the son of a small-town choir master, Gyrowetz left home early and travelled widely, spending—like his countryman Myslivecek—much time in Italy. His life intersected with many of the most prominent personalities of his day, including Goethe, the Prince of Wales (the future King George IV), and Napoleon, who even offered him a commission in his army. In Vienna in the 1780s, he was befriended...