Why Mozart?

There is a world-famous string quartet celebrating its 45th anniversary in 2002 which has played almost all of the incomparably abundant pieces of music literature written for string quartets. This quartet has come to the conclusion that the phenomenon of Mozart could well be the basis of all beliefs in God...

The way he lit up the sky like a comet, bequeathing us the bright trail of his priceless treasures, then left us after 35 years cannot have been accidental, nor repeatable. We must fall on our knees in devout thankfulness and rapture, and approach his unsurpassable works in the same way.

We feel that fortune cannot give us a greater gift than to be given the opportunity to record the unfathomable – with all the experience of several hundred concert hall performances behind us – and to communicate to the audience the pure joy that these works have given us and give us still, in the firm belief that this striving for perfection may one day have to be abandoned, but it can never be finished!

Péter Komlós

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Spring, Hunt, Dissonance

The six quartets by Mozart dedicated to Joseph Haydn are one of the most significant series that make up the extensive repertoire of the string quartet genre. Three of the six can be heard on this album, planned to appear on the occasion of the 45th jubilee of the Bartók String Quartet. Three quartets which have generally become known in the music world under distinctive appelations, though the “Spring” association of the G major piece is emphasized only in the English-speaking countries (probably because of the pastoral character of the key and the spacious, airy opening gesture). The use of the sobriquet Hunt (Jagd) however is clearly justified if we consider the opening, six-eight sextuple theme of the B major quartet, reminiscent of a bugle-call, while in the case of the C major quartet it was the unusually slow prelude that incited the publisher to draw the expert musicians’ attention to the daring dissonances (Dissonance). Of the six quartets, three are thus differentiated even in their titles by posterity, which in the case of a quartet series indicates exceptionally great popularity.


The dedication

For two hundred years, string quartets were the symbols of the composers’ creative self-conceit. Today, the custom of regarding the composition of quartets as a touchstone, the criterion for becoming a composer no longer prevails, but until a few decades ago young composers accepted this judgement unquestioningly. It is a custom that can be dated back to the quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn. In Mozart’s age, a composer who decided to dedicate an opus to another composer instead of to an aristocrat was acting on his own initiative. For an XVIIIth century musician, this decision was on the one hand impractical – since at the time a dedication was profitable – on the other dangerous, for it provided publicity for the other composer. Mozart could not have cared less about the latter, he knew he had nothing to fear on that account. And as for the financial loss, he demanded such an exorbitant sum for the six quartets from the publisher that it more than compensated him for the missed bonus. With this gesture, Mozart was also criticizing society: the message of the dedication to Haydn was that a genius is equal in rank with those on the highest rungs of the social ladder. Taking into account that he renounced a place at court for the freedom of the sovereign creative artist shortly before composing the quartets, Mozart’s decision is not at all surprising, and it is in keeping with the enlightened mentality of early Josephinism.


The masterpiece

The six quartets were published in 1785 by the Viennese Artaria Publishing House in an extremely elegant format. (For once, Mozart paid scrupulous attention to the lay-out). In the dedication, cordial in tone and written in Italian, he explains that the quartets are the fruit of long years of hard work, and that he commends his intellectual offspring to the attention and goodwill of the master he holds in great esteem. The publication was preceded by a chamber concert where Mozart, Leopold Mozart and two aristocrats played movements from the series in the presence of Haydn. Haydn listened to the performance with wonderment and assured Leopold Mozart that his son was the greatest living composer. This statement naturally meant that he accepted the dedication.

This act of courtesy is an indication of the prestige Haydn had earned by the middle of the 1780s, especially in the field of the composition of quartets, which he was the first to cultivate and raise to the top of the hierarchy of classical musical genres, preceding all the great masters of the history of music. Mozart had composed quartets before the six dedicated to Haydn. The first series were written in Milan during his third trip to Italy in the autumn of 1772, while he was composing and preparing the premiere of the opera Lucio Silla – and were written out of boredom, he is reputed to have said, to fill in his spare time. The next six string quartets however were composed in Vienna in 1773, inspired by Haydn’s Sun quartets (op. 20.). At this time, the two composers had not yet met. For some years thereafter neither Haydn nor Mozart composed string quartets. Haydn did not come out with his epoch-making op. 33 series until 1781. The op. 33 series contained so many new, daring musical ideas and solutions that even Mozart must have found it fascinating. The flawless unity of the opening movements, fashioned out of a single theme, the poetry of the slow movements, the sparkle and ingenuity of the rondo finales, and the new feature of the series, the scherzos that succeed the minuet movement (on the strength of which the op. 33 is sometimes referred to as “gli scherzi”) all lend added interest and particular significance to the opus, not only in the string quartet genre but in classical music generally. We do not know exactly when the op.33 series inspired Mozart to write quartets of his own. It is a fact that the first quartet was written shortly after the experience of op.33, while he was still under its influence, in a state of rapture as it were, which is not at all unusual in the case of Mozart. What is unusual is that the six quartets were written within the space of three years, between 1782 and 1785. This counts as an exceptionally long time for Mozart, and the fact that he persevered with the genre of the string quartet is also unusual. These pieces are exceptional in that they were not written to order upon someone’s request, for immediate use, like the majority of Mozart’s compositions, but were developed, refined under a kind of inner compulsion. Mozart wanted to show what he was capable of to the colleague twenty-five years his senior and in his view the greatest living composer. He passed the composers’ test and wrote the quartets without being called upon to do so, with almost three hundred compositions already behind him, among them such unsurpassable masterpieces as the opera seria Idomeneo, the opera Seraglio, the piano concerto “Jeunehomme” and the Gran Partita written for thirteen wind instruments.


A rare friendship between artists: Haydn and Mozart

The relationship of Haydn and Mozart is special because it is an instance of that rare occurence when two geniuses of the same profession publicly recognize each other’s merit as artists and find each other sympathetic on a personal level as well. There would have been no rational reason for professional jealousy in any case. Haydn and Mozart moved in different circles, and Haydn was not in competition with Mozart. Their make-up as artists, their personalities, upbringing and careers differed greatly. Their friendship deepened after 1781, when Mozart settled in Vienna. In the winter months, Haydn often accompanied Prince Michael on his trips from the Esterházy residence to Vienna. During these short trips they had occasion to meet in various Viennese salons, at Baron van Swieten’s for example. It is a fact that Mozart gave a concert with Haydn, Dittersdorf and Vanhal at Stephen Storace’s, whose sister Nancy sang the part of Susanna at the world premiere of The Marriage of Figaro. Their friendship became even closer after the publication of the quartets. Haydn became a member of one of the Viennese Masonic lodges in 1785 on Mozart’s advice, and in January 1790 Haydn was among the select few invited to the first rehearsal of Cosi fan tutte (these being, besides Haydn, the members of the Lodge and Michael Puchberg, Mozart’s sponsor).


Encounter with the past

Polyphony, that is music in which there are two or more parts, each having independent melodic lines which are nonetheless made to harmonize according to hard-and-fast rules, differed greatly from the characteristic features of Viennese Classical music. Though composers studied this method of arranging sounds – a method they mastered primarily by composing fugues – their own music was built on totally different bases It is nevertheless obvious that the genre of the quartet had given place to fugues in Haydn’s earlier works, and the fact that Mozart engrossed himself most intensely with fugues at the time he was composing the quartets dedicated to Haydn is very revealing.

In a letter written to his father in 1782 he relates that he has a standing invitation to the residence of the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, where every Sunday at midday there is a performance of the works of Bach and Handel. Mozart plays the piano from handwritten scores and gives instructions while the baron, Salieri and other musicians sing. When he gets home he plays the fugues from memory to his wife Constanze, who is passionately fond of these pieces. From the baron’s collection of hand-written scores Mozart chooses pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and his two musician sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Some of these he transcribes or transposes, adds to them a slow prelude movement of his own. This is the first instance in the history of music of an epoch-making genius making a close study of the musical style of a preceding age. Of course Mozart had previously come into contact with the polyphony of Baroque music, through the musical tradition of the Catholic Church, and also through Padre Martini, one of the greatest music historians and teachers of musical theory of the XVIIIth century, under whom he studied in Bologna. But in Swieten’s salon he had the opportunity to familiarize himself with the greatest works of the two geniuses of the Baroque age. He learned that the music of bygone days was live music notwithstanding; he experienced the immortality of music. This inspired him to write music that made demands on the listener, music that was “difficult” for the consumers of the age. Increasingly, he composed for a limited public capable of appreciating the niceties of style. There is a famous anecdote characteristic of the age, according to which Emperor Joseph II is reputed to have said that there were “too many notes” in the opera entitled Seraglio in comparison with the requirements of the Singspiel form, to which Mozart assertively replied that it contained exactly as many as were necessary. Both of them were right: the emperor from the point of view of the contemporary audience, Mozart from the point of view of posterity.


Too spicy?

The quartets created a stir in professional circles. The names of Mozart and Haydn appearing on the same title sheet was impressive and achieved the desired effect. Two years after their publication in 1787, an article discussing the pieces appeared in one of the music magazines (the Magazin der Musik edited by Karl Friedrich Cramer), in which the critic stated that he found Mozart’s music “too spicy” (“zu stark gewürtzt”) at times. He was right, the six pieces could serve as the encyclopedia of classical instrumental music: they are all-inclusive and every passage, every moment is perfect. The inspiration and variety of the themes, the shaping of the musical material, the amazing diversity of the moods and characters and the unity that creates a harmonic entity, the fabric and distribution of the parts and instruments, the method of creating dialogues between the instruments, the way they are made to adapt and assimilate with each other while preserving their individual character – all this and more affords enough beauty, delight and edification to last for a life-time. It is no accident that famous string quartets have always looked upon these pieces as the bible of quartet-playing, and do so to this day. During the course of its long and successful career, the Bartók Quartet has also read and reread these scores. There is no final solution: Mozart’s music is infinite.


Characters and differences

The six quartets were naturally written in six different keys, according to the custom of the age, and the keys, as always in Mozart’s case, all comprise different worlds, defining and at the same time differentiating the aura of each piece. But this is not the only secret of their character. The basic character of each piece is determined by the first few notes. The short, four-part theme of the G major quartet, where the parts imitate and reflect each other, is the heart of a movement full of various combinations of parts. The airy, serenade-like opening theme of the B major quartet promises that in this movement the melody will hold the leading part throughout, with the instruments playing the melody in relays. The C major quartet is the most famous piece of the series, first and foremost because it begins with a slow prelude, which is fairly rare in quartet literature. It is much more common in symphonies, but even there the repertoire contains a far greater number of pieces not prefaced with a slow prelude. (On the other hand, almost all the symphonies beginning with a prelude have become famous.) The C major quartet was named after its slow prelude (Dissonance). In classical harmony this expression refers to the uncommonly frequent occurence of sharply conflicting chords qualified as dissonant. For the attentive listener however it will soon become clear that the prelude is not so diabolical after all; what it does is to draw a regular and logical arc between the opening deep c-notes of the cello and the C major key of the fast part of the movement, the unequivocal appearance of which counterbalances the digressions and unexpected harmonies of the prelude. As a rule, in Mozart’s classical style everything is counterbalanced. The question is given an answer, the question mark is followed by a full stop. The complicated, difficult parts are resolved by simple, clear passages, the path always straightens after you leave the labyrinth, polyphony and homophony alternate with each other. One of the best examples of this is the final movement of the G major quartet which starts like a fugue and has been regarded from time immemorial as the antecedent of the final movement of the Jupiter symphony in Mozart literature; where, within the confines of the sonata form, the fugue construction and the principle of the classic period form a perfect unit. This movement is one of the most virtuoso composer’s bravuras of the Mozart oeuvre. The other two final movements, that of the B major and C major quartets, are more “Haydnish” as regards their themes, what is more, uncharacteristically, Mozart uses musical punchlines as a mark of respect for Haydn, the great master of musical humour. The minuets were also composed with great care, appearing, interestingly, either as the second or as the third movement of the cycle. By the time Mozart had completed these quartet-minuets, he had written several hundred variations of the most popular dance of the XVIIIth century, the dance origins of which – as in the case of these quartets – often fades, so strongly does the refined, elaborate stylization affect the original character. With its constantly changing volume signatures, varying note by note, with its chromatic progressions and avant-garde proportions, the minuet of the G major quartet must have afforded breath-taking pleasure to any contemporary of Mozart’s well-versed in classical music. The asperity of the C major is an answer to the scherzos of Haydn’s op. 33 series, and the shorter B major catches our attention with its unusual emphases. The central parts of the minuets, the trios, are contrasting descriptions of atmosphere and mood: miniature character pieces in the spirit of former divertimentos, but put in inverted commas as it were, like pearls hidden in the depths of the cycle. As for the discovery of hidden treasures, it is the slow movements that hold the most wonderful surprises in store. Mozart takes us into the empire of his fantasy as if he were transporting us into a fairy-tale forest. If it were possible to make time stand still, we would have to stop and linger over every chord, motif, tessitura and tone-colour. But this is a pleasure granted only to the performers of the pieces in the course of decades of rehearsals, and it is at once their reward and consolation: the pleasure of playing quartets.
The mirage of the golden age of XVIIIth century music.

András Batta
translated by Eszter Molnár

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The Bartók Quartet was founded in the autumn of 1957, at the instigation of its conductor Péter Komlós. The quartet took the name of Béla Bartók in 1963. The quartet is the artistic heir of the outstanding Hungarian string quartets of the last century, not only as regards the Central-European conception of interpretation but also as regards the great traditions of the Budapest Academy of Music.

The Bartók Quartet is one of the best quartets in the world. This statement is not only true because it was made by the music critic of the New York Times, but also because the quartet gave 3800 concerts in forty-five years as regular guest performers of the greatest European, American and Asian concert halls and the most noteworthy international festivals (Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, Edinburgh, London, Firenze, Spoleto, Aix-en-Provence, Luzern, New York, Tangelwood, Peking, Hong Kong). Its repertoire includes the complete classical and romantic string quartet literature as well as the masterpieces of the most significant XXth century masters of the genre (first and foremost Béla Bartók; the group has played his six string quartets in a cycle times out of number, always in renewed interpretation, each time exciting marked interest).

The quartet’s sound, spirit and open attitude has inspired several contemporary composers. The Bartók Quartet has been twice awarded the most prestigious Hungarian artistic prize (Kossuth Prize, 1970, 1997), has received the Eminent Artist prize (1981) as well as the UNESCO (1981) and the Bartók-Pásztory Prize (1986). The quartet has recorded the complete collection of the Beethoven and Bartók string quartets, the complete collection of Brahms chamber pieces beginning with the string quartets, and the works of Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák, Debussy, Ravel and many contemporary composers.