This is Haydn stretching the classical style to the point where he enters a new sound-world and leases you awestruck. The intensity of the 2nd movement of Op. 76 No.6 shows how powerful the string quartet became in the hands of this master. Did gis contemporaries really grasp the greatness of this man? Beethoven in his late quartets achieved a similar intensity of expression but no more or no less than Haydn had done before him.
I first heard this on vinyl some 30 years ago. I just rediscovered it today. Extraordinary does not begin to describe this music. Thank you for the tears Herr Haydn. ❤
@@targetfootball7807 You need to follow with a score to understand properly this extraordinary movement; for starters, whilst being essentially in B major, it appears to be notated in C major; in fact, it has no key signature because of the astonishing modulations which would have rendered the parts almost indecipherable due to the necessity of double accidentals and so forth. To put Opus 76 into context, these quartets of 1796/97 were written *before* Beethoven’s first set (Opus 18) in 1800. This second movement is headed Fantasia (correctly pronounced ‘fan-ta-*szee*-a’ (forget Disney), and is an astonishingly original movement that both looks back into the Baroque past, but also forward to late-Beethoven. By any standards, Opus 76 by the now 65 year old Haydn, is one of the greatest sets of string quartets ever written.
Hurbii Yes he did; there is quite a lot of evidence for this, not only quartets but the London symphonies, late masses and the oratorios for example, were all well known to him and were being performed regularly all over Vienna (and everywhere else. Additionally, Beethoven spent a considerable time at the Eszterhazy’s Vienna palace at Eisenstadt during the summer/autumn of 1793 whilst Haydn was also there in the year between his two London trips. Haydn was working mainly on the Opus 71/74 set of quartets, and Symphonies 99, 100, and 101 during this time, and it is inconceivable that the two composers did not discuss the music in some depth; Beethoven was there mainly as a keyboard virtuoso. The two composers knew more about each other than Beethoven sometimes cared to admit.
Beethoven's late style is derived from many sources, Haydn being one of the most important, but so are Bach, Mozart, Handel, and even some comic elements from Rossini, whose operas caused a sensation in Vienna. But ultimately, it was Beethoven's own incredible genius that fused all the elements together which resulted in some of the greatest music ever written.
Remo Mazzetti yes and none of what you just wrote refutes in any way what I have said in the original comment. We are in the comments section of HAYDN’S quartets, not Rossini’s operas, and not Bach’s fugues. Haydn was an important source of inspiration for the entire Beethoven’s output. So next time please focus and don’t leave superfluous verbosity.
I love this comment section. I must add that the breathtakingly bare scale rises in the Fantasia return in the Trio (I suppose here it is called "Alternativo" interestingly). It appears elsewhere as well. The unaccompanied scale might be deemed the uniting motif or concept of the work.
Every movement of this masterpiece is in just reciprocity with the Romanticism. The Romanctic movement forgot Haydn and here Haydn ignores the entire musical stile of mid-XIX century and looks to the XX century directly.
There is nothing comparable in the Classical period (c.1750 - 1800), this unique movement is as astonishing as it is extraordinary. It does eventually settle into B major, but the wandering tonalities have rather more in common with late-Beethoven - or even the 20th century - than they do with his own times.
06:35 It's as if Haydn wasn't satisfied with 76.4.2 (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wRNpEVLvzJI.html) and, two quartets later, decided to remold it into one of the most beautiful second movements in the classical repertoire 🥲 What I find so uniquely wonderful about this Fantasia is that unlike the aforementioned 76.4.2, as well as the also gorgeous 76.3.2 ('Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser', ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qoWdtGUe5fc.html), the interest is purely harmonic. There is no memorable melody as in 76.3.2 or rhythmic/articulative variation as with 76.4.2; it's sheer harmony, the ingenious modulations from B and E and G all the way to Bb and Ab and back home that wrenches your heart, blinding you from the fact that, _frick, same ol' tonic, leading tone, tonic "melody" has been repeated for the millionth time!_ Without any eye-catching melody or flashy techniques, Haydn conceived the perfect note in each voice, on every beat, for each of 112 measures. The result? An ageless wonderwork. It's as if he had a personal telephone wire to heaven... (familiar? well, Beethoven 7 says hello :))
Joon Park Haydn’s rhythmic ingenuity and deliberately defying expectations is one of the features that most obviously separates him from Mozart; it is one of the reasons many listeners feel that his music does not have the elegance, balance and poise of his great friend - that’s because it often doesn’t and it is entirely deliberate. ‘Hard to find the beat’ is not uncommon in Haydn, and it is something Beethoven took up big time too.
In the same vein as Daniel A's comment: although the theme itself has a completely different character, I find fragments of the first movement to be evocative of Eroica's finale (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dTbesxdLwo8.html): compare 1:32 and 5:11 here with 36:55 and 38:43 there, 1:49 here with 41:00 there, etc.
I just noticed that John Field's Nocturne in D minor, in the middle section (52:21 from this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-U-fS3mR9KDA.html&ab_channel=AmphoraRope), is SO similar to 18:15 from this movement by Haydn! I wonder whether Field did a naughty bit of copycatting here, just slowing it down and taking it down a semitone...
