A Reader's Guide to Haydn's Early String Quartets (review)

A Reader's Guide to Haydn's Early String Quartets. By William Drabkin. (Reader's Guides to Musical Genres, 1.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. [x, 186 p. ISBN 0-313-30173-5. $69.50.]

Despite their undeniable importance in the history of the genre, Joseph Haydn's early string quartets remain little known and rarely performed. For this reason, the decision to open the new series Reader's Guides to Musical Genres with a study of these works is particularly appropriate. Yet the title's promise of a "reader's guide" is to some extent misleading, since over half of William Drabkin's book focuses specifically on the six quartets of Haydn's opus 20, which the author regards as "the culmination of an intensive period of quartet composition between 1769 and 1772" (p. vii).

Drabkin includes an analysis of music examples selected from the twenty-two string quartets preceding opus 20 in a broader discussion in chapter 2, "The Anatomy of the Quartet." Here, in his attempt to build a general theory of the quartet as an autonomous genre, he identifies some of its typical textural procedures, tracing the most significant influences of the symphony and the trio sonata on its evolution. Nevertheless, by emphasizing only the textural aspect of this influence, important as it is, the author risks oversimplification, especially in view of the complex problems related to the origins of the new genre.

In spite of the author's claim that "all great works must be studied in context" (p. vii), the reader will not find here a historical framework for these pieces. The context to which Drabkin refers is essentially limited to analysis of Haydn's own output, with few examples from later composers. Concentrating his efforts on an analytical approach, Drabkin deliberately takes for granted not only the biographical and historical circumstances surrounding Haydn's early production, but also the definition of the specific stylistic and structural traits of the quartet's ancestors. Nonetheless, his investigation of the textural devices provides many insights. Drabkin considers "antiphonal textures," the rhetorical use of "unison writing," the differentiation of "registral space," the increasing independence of the cello part, and even some string techniques like pizzicato or the use of open strings, in order "to outline a theory of quartet texture" and "provide a basis for analyzing quartets as quartets" (p. 10). He appropriately underlines how the idiomatic writing for the four instruments emerges as a crucial element in the definition of the genre.

Drabkin turns his attention to opus 20 in the second half of the book. In six independent chapters, each devoted to one of the quartets, he develops an accurate (but never arid) movement-by-movement analysis of the structure and most remarkable features of these works, considering thematic, harmonic, and above all, textural facets, with constant reference to the score. He follows the critical edition of the Joseph Haydn-Institut Köln (Haydn, Werke, ser. 12 [Munich: Henle, 1958-]) in ordering the pieces, placing the three "fugal" quartets (nos. 5, 6, and 2) first, but he also refers to the "more affordable and accessible" Eulenburg scores (p. ix), underlining when necessary their errors and inaccuracies. Particularly insightful are the pages he devotes to numbers 4 and 2; he considers it "one of the great puzzles of chamber music reception" (p. 91) that these works have traditionally been excluded from the ranks of Haydn's greatest achievements. A separate chapter addresses the most characteristic feature of the set, the fugal finales. Drabkin examines Haydn's solutions to the intrinsic contradiction between the fugue, which "guarantees all the instruments an equal share in the thematic argument" (p. [51]), and the notion of dialogue between the instruments that is characteristic of the quartet.

The many music examples and the short tables that provide structural outlines help the reader follow the details of the analytical commentary. Completing the volume is a selected bibliography, which surprisingly omits some contributions closely related to...