Haydn Op. 76 vs Beethoven Op. 18??

[Gurn Blanston]

The only problem is it's false. There's plenty of innovation in the op 67

Gosh, Herman, if you're going to start confusing the debate with facts, we'll never get a satisfactory result...

[Josquin des Prez]

The only problem is it's false. There's plenty of innovation in the op 67

Such as? Are you sure you are not confusing innovation for originality? And even then, there's nothing in the opus 76 that is as radical as some of the stuff Beethoven got away with in the opus 18 (or didn't, depending on your point of view), so your point is not made.

[Gurn Blanston]

Such as? Are you sure you are not confusing innovation for originality? And even then, there's nothing in the opus 76 that is as radical as some of the stuff Beethoven got away with in the opus 18 (or didn't, depending on your point of view), so your point is not made.

I am curious what new ground Beethoven was breaking in Op 18? They are rather standard, Classical Era string quartets precisely in the mold of Haydn and Mozart. Which is precisely what he intended them to be. Nothing "radical" about them. "La Malinconia" is about the only bit that differs from previous models, with the exception of Boccherini who was writing heavily dramatic, representational things into his music when Beethoven was still in swaddling clothes.



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Listening to:
Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique / Gardiner - Bia 544 Op 92 Symphony #7 in A 2nd mvmt - Allegretto

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Are you sure you are not confusing innovation for originality?

?

Who says you can't have both?

[Jo498]

This is an old thread, but I think op.76 is one of the most "innovative" quartet sets. So is op.18, but it is uneven, especially the c minor and I actually think the Haydn is in this case at least as innovative and original as the young Beethoven.

Some amazing features:

- the finali of op.76/1 and 76/3: Both start in the minor mode (very rare for a classical piece in the major, the only famous other example that comes to mind is Mozart's alla turca in K 331) and are arguably the wildest and most dramatic movements of the respective pieces. Especially in the G major the turn to the major in the coda has a very romantic, "Schubertian" mood.
- the "Menuetto" of the G major may be the first real "scherzo" movement (I know there are so-called scherzi in op.33, but this one feels much more "modern" and anticipates Beethoven)
- The d minor quartet has one of the most concentrated first sonata movements ever, the main motives are as pervasive throughout the piece as in Beethoven's fifth symphony.
- Of course this one has another great menuetto with the canonic main part and the stomping trio
- The "sunrise" is also an extremely original piece with its "sunrise" beginning and a free inversion of the same motive as subsidiary theme, a sublime slow movement and a unique finale that somehow spins away into thin air.
- Now #5 and #6 have even more surprises. Both have one-of-a-kind first movements that start out as some kind of variations, but develop into a fugue in #6 and into free flowing figurations in #5. The slow movements of these surpass IMO anything Beethoven wrote for strings before maybe op.59/1 adagio. Also the one in #4 (I once put two minutes from this one as a riddle and some people thought it was late Beethoven...)

As great and original as some things in op.18 (like the slow movement from #1 and the finale of #6) are, quite a bit of it could be described as following the "standard rules" (albeit with Beethoven's specific twists and a lot of vigor) compared to the imagination of Haydn in op.76.

[amw]

Bit of an odd comparison in some respects. Haydn was a great sponge. He soaked up everything of quality in the music of his time and incorporated it into his music. Op. 76 comes at the end of a long career full of soaking up all the best bits of Stamitz, Emanuel Bach, Mozart et al and distilling them into Haydn. In fact the sharp chords and almost crude, tonic-and-dominant themes of Op. 76/3/iv remind one of nothing so much as the finale to Beethoven's Op. 1/3 in the same key, which Haydn had previously advised Beethoven not to publish as his Op. 1... perhaps he had second thoughts and decided it wasn't so bad after all. Op. 76 reflects the influence of Beethoven as well as Mozart, tempered by Haydn's long experience. If Haydn's muse had not fallen silent in the first decade of the 19th century he may well have written a few symphonies under the influence of Beethoven's Eroica or sonatas inspired by the Appassionata.

Beethoven on the other hand was almost impervious to influences—he settled on his favourite composers (Bach, Handel, Mozart, Clementi) quite early and never deviated. The work of his contemporaries held no interest for him; he seems not to have absorbed anything at all from the nascent romanticism of e.g. Rossini, Field, Weber or Spohr and on the few occasions his opinions are recorded they are unfailingly negative. His late works are essentially reactionary in style, compared to those of e.g. Schubert. Like many of his early works, Op. 18 is uneven—a few of the quartets are obviously indebted to his great model, Mozart's six "Haydn" quartets, but he often branches out on his own, often resulting in a jerky, nervous manner (e.g. Op. 18/4) but sometimes yielding extremely compelling results (e.g. Op. 18/1, which as a single work surpasses any of Haydn's Op. 76 except the second for coherence, originality and sustained power).

I voted for the adagio of Op. 76/5, but it's not a fair comparison really.

One of my favourite musical hypotheticals is to change around Beethoven and Mozart's life dates: Beethoven 1770-1806, Mozart 1756-1813. Mozart, like Haydn, was a sponge, receptive to all sorts of influences; but he metabolised these much faster than Haydn did, often simply through hearing or playing a work once. Beethoven would have had the opportunity to study with Mozart—though due to his aforementioned imperviousness, I doubt this would have changed the resulting music very significantly. By the time of his death he would have completed the Eroica, the longest symphony ever written by far, whose funeral march must have then seemed a presentiment of his own demise; as well as the Appassionata and Waldstein (expanding the piano sonata well beyond anything Mozart, Haydn or Clementi had yet attempted) and four piano concertos, and left incomplete/in manuscript would be the "Razumovsky" quartets, the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, the Violin Concerto etc. Perhaps Mozart would have had a crack at completing some of these works. (what would a Mozart completion of Beethoven's Fifth sound like?) He almost certainly would have been influenced by the younger composer, but how significantly? (Mozart's music has some presentiments of Beethoven already, e.g. the third and fourth string quintets which are on a scale unsurpassed in chamber music until Beethoven's Op. 59) How would the Romantic era be different without Beethoven's Ninth, but perhaps with Mozart's 60th? Ok, it's fascinating for me at least.

[Gurn Blanston]

Bit of an odd comparison in some respects. Haydn was a great sponge. He soaked up everything of quality in the music of his time and incorporated it into his music. Op. 76 comes at the end of a long career full of soaking up all the best bits of Stamitz, Emanuel Bach, Mozart et al and distilling them into Haydn.

Tell you what. You find one single credible musicologist who agrees with this opinion (which is more than 'a bit odd') and I won't say another word about it. Post a citation here so we can look it up. Otherwise, I'm going to call bullshit right here and now. With the exception of CPE Bach, every composer you named there, INCLUDING Beethoven, modeled their work on Haydn, not the other way around. This is such a stunning opinion I hardly have an answer for it, since you must be the first person in the world to ever express it!! 

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Tell you what. You find one single credible musicologist who agrees with this opinion (which is more than 'a bit odd') and I won't say another word about it. Post a citation here so we can look it up. Otherwise, I'm going to call bullshit right here and now. With the exception of CPE Bach, every composer you named there, INCLUDING Beethoven, modeled their work on Haydn, not the other way around. This is such a stunning opinion I hardly have an answer for it, since you must be the first person in the world to ever express it!! 

Well...

One of the nice things about the gigantic size of his oeuvre is that you can listen around and it may be months before you hear the same piece again, and meantime you've heard so much memorable music that it got pushed out of your head. I'm sure the Bachians experience something similar, although the music is not at that same level.

...find me one credible musicologist who agrees with you that Bach's music is inferior to Haydn's. (Joking, Gurn. Lighten up )

[Wakefield]

Tell you what. You find one single credible musicologist who agrees with this opinion (which is more than 'a bit odd') and I won't say another word about it. Post a citation here so we can look it up. Otherwise, I'm going to call bullshit right here and now. With the exception of CPE Bach, every composer you named there, INCLUDING Beethoven, modeled their work on Haydn, not the other way around. This is such a stunning opinion I hardly have an answer for it, since you must be the first person in the world to ever express it!! 

Do you want a quotation? I have this R.W. Emerson:

Haydn, too, like every great man, consumed his own times. What is a great man but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food? He can spare nothing; he can dispose of every thing. What is not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. Hence his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism. But the inventor only knows how to borrow; and society is glad to forget the innumerable laborers who ministered to this architect, and reserves all its gratitude for him. When we are praising Haydn, it seems we are praising quotations from Stamitz, C.P.E. Bach and Mozart. Be it so. Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. And this grasping inventor puts all nations under contribution.

[Izzy Black]

I prefer the majestic, beguiling, and outright haunting second movement of Beethoven's Op. 18 no. 1 in F major ('Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato') to any of Haydn's stringed music. Haydn's quartets are beautiful and undeniably great, but even the early Beethoven quartets are imbued with the man's indelible larger than life romantic spirit, they're exploding with inspiration and ideas, even if they are ultimately uneven and less polished works.

[amw]

Tell you what. You find one single credible musicologist who agrees with this opinion (which is more than 'a bit odd') and I won't say another word about it. Post a citation here so we can look it up. Otherwise, I'm going to call bullshit right here and now. With the exception of CPE Bach, every composer you named there, INCLUDING Beethoven, modeled their work on Haydn, not the other way around. This is such a stunning opinion I hardly have an answer for it, since you must be the first person in the world to ever express it!! 

(It's unlikely Stamitz was modeling his work on Haydn as he died in 1757... similar applies to many of the other Mannheim or Vienna composers of the period for that matter)

With respect to Mozart and Beethoven the influence undeniably flowed both ways—though the influence of Haydn on Beethoven is significantly less than one might have thought. Haydn's early works are of course closely related to music being produced in other Austrian & South German centers (Mannheim, etc) around the same time, along with a bit of North German by way of CPE. During his relative isolation in Esterháza he developed these into an individual style which emerged fully around the late 1770s/early 1780s. Mozart's first mature works, from around this same period, could not have been written without acquaintance with Haydn; but after Mozart's set of six quartets the influence seems to have started flowing the other direction as well. I submit that this is not a matter of subjectivity, and Haydn's late works from about 1786 onwards display as much influence of Mozart as Mozart's works from 1774 to 1791 displayed the influence of Haydn.

Similarly, in the Op. 76 quartets (written 1796-7) I can hear clear echoes of Beethoven's Op. 1 and 2 (written 1792-4, while Beethoven was studying under Haydn)—and the unfinished Op. 103 quartet, in matters of scoring and technique, is closely related to Beethoven's Op. 18. On the other hand, there is very little Beethoven's music seems to owe to Haydn that he didn't get through Mozart already. I'm not sure if one could name any "Haydnesque" pieces of Beethoven's, though certain stylistic traits crop up occasionally (Op. 18/5, modeled after Mozart's K464, sounds much closer to Haydn than Mozart for instance). That's just the way those two composers worked. Haydn's art is encyclopedic, drawing together and surpassing all the musical resources of its time—it is Classicism. Beethoven's art is personal, egotistical and reactionary—a monument to classicism that destroyed what it was trying to preserve.

[Jo498]

But the special features of op.76 seem to be far away from Haydn's (earlier) contemporaries. E.g. the first movements of #5 and #6 seem rather far from most earlier Haydn as well. Do you have an example of a contemporary composer who wrote similar things? Or slow movements in far removed keys? Or minor mode finales of pieces in the major (except such things as Mozart's alla turca for exotic effects)? I have heard a dozen or so of Boccherini's quartets (as well as some quintets), also a disc of Kraus, one of Dittersdorf and they are quite different from Haydn, IMO.

[Florestan]

http://qq.themefinder.org/

Well?... 

[Florestan]

I think this is as relevant as it gets for the current discussion.

The Opening Salvo

A talk and performance of Beethoven's String Quartet in F major, Op. 18 No.1

By Professor Christopher Hogwood and the Wilhelm Quartet


https://www.youtube.com/v/znciEO6stDk

EDIT: There's a whole lot of equally interesting Hogwood lectures here.

[Gurn Blanston]

(It's unlikely Stamitz was modeling his work on Haydn as he died in 1757... similar applies to many of the other Mannheim or Vienna composers of the period for that matter)

With respect to Mozart and Beethoven the influence undeniably flowed both ways—though the influence of Haydn on Beethoven is significantly less than one might have thought. Haydn's early works are of course closely related to music being produced in other Austrian & South German centers (Mannheim, etc) around the same time, along with a bit of North German by way of CPE. During his relative isolation in Esterháza he developed these into an individual style which emerged fully around the late 1770s/early 1780s. Mozart's first mature works, from around this same period, could not have been written without acquaintance with Haydn; but after Mozart's set of six quartets the influence seems to have started flowing the other direction as well. I submit that this is not a matter of subjectivity, and Haydn's late works from about 1786 onwards display as much influence of Mozart as Mozart's works from 1774 to 1791 displayed the influence of Haydn.

Similarly, in the Op. 76 quartets (written 1796-7) I can hear clear echoes of Beethoven's Op. 1 and 2 (written 1792-4, while Beethoven was studying under Haydn)—and the unfinished Op. 103 quartet, in matters of scoring and technique, is closely related to Beethoven's Op. 18. On the other hand, there is very little Beethoven's music seems to owe to Haydn that he didn't get through Mozart already. I'm not sure if one could name any "Haydnesque" pieces of Beethoven's, though certain stylistic traits crop up occasionally (Op. 18/5, modeled after Mozart's K464, sounds much closer to Haydn than Mozart for instance). That's just the way those two composers worked. Haydn's art is encyclopedic, drawing together and surpassing all the musical resources of its time—it is Classicism. Beethoven's art is personal, egotistical and reactionary—a monument to classicism that destroyed what it was trying to preserve.

I'm at work, can't write now. A couple of thoughts though:

When one is speaking of the Op 76 quartets and mentions 'Stamitz', one's readership doesn't think about the long dead father, but of the contemporary Carl or his brother.

I would never argue that Haydn was sui generis nor either would he have. But your method of phrasing your original statement was much more leading one to believe that you could find anywhere in Haydn something he borrowed outright from someone else. You can't and won't. He may very well have used fugue basically the way Fux did, but he didn't use Fux's fugues. And he made them each individual, they weren't modularly moved around from work to work.

And not just Haydn, I might add. Mozart really was influenced by many other composers. As he wrote to his father "I can write in any style", and he did so. But even he put his own unique stamp on things. It isn't borrowing a tool which makes or breaks originality, it's what one makes with it. As Handel said 'yes, I borrowed that theme from so-and-so, but I used it much better'. As far as instrumental music goes, Haydn didn't borrow much from anyone. If, in order to grant him his due, you have to say 'yes, but he used the same language', well, then, I don't know what that leaves us.

As far as Beethoven 'borrowing' from Haydn, I'll burn some time tonight and make a list...

[Karl Henning]

Nor should any Beethoven fan object to the fact that he borrowed from so exemplary a teacher.  Just sayin'.

[Madiel]

Haydn borrowing from Mozart?

Maybe occasionally, but given that Haydn was busy carving out a prestigious career in the 1760s and 1770s when Mozart wasn't yet mature, it seems a bit odd to label Haydn as the imitator.

And the proposition that Beethoven got stuff from Mozart more than Haydn, and that not much of Beethoven sounds like Haydn... sorry??? Don't agree at all. I certainly know that the pianist Andras Schiff doesn't agree, because his lecture recital on Beethoven's piano sonatas includes him commenting, more than once I think, about the characteristics that Haydn and Beethoven share in common which are different from Mozart. And this from a pianist who spends a lot of time in the Viennese Classical repertoire.

Right, I'll just shuffle off and actually the poll question, now... Op.76 overall for me, though I do thoroughly enjoy both.

[Karl Henning]

Haydn borrowing from Mozart?

Not (as you observe) in the '60s or '70s, no

[Madiel]

Also, the bit about Beethoven's model for op.18 being Mozart's 6 'Haydn' quartets rather spectacularly ignores the fact that issuing pieces in sets of 6 had been standard practice for a very, very long time indeed, and had for example been done quite a few times by some bloke called Franz Joseph.

[Jo498]

"borrowing" is probably too strong. But look at/listen to the first movements of the E flat major K 428 and op.64/6. And then to the finale of op.64/6 and the one of the quintet K 614 (this is probably the most "haydenesque" piece Mozart wrote, the first movement may also be a nod to the E flat quartet from op.50). It is almost like passing balls to each other. There is certainly more (and of course more subtle stuff than almost quoting motives). In Rosen's "The classical style" there is a section or chapter "Haydn after Mozart's death" where some more influences are mentioned.