Mozart: String Quartet in G major, K.387 (1782)
Allegro vivace assai
Menuetto:- Allegro
Andante cantabile
Molto Allegro
In May 1781 Mozart took up lodgings with the Weber family in Vienna, having been unceremoniously dismissed from his employment with the Archbishop of Salzburg. He soon fell in love with the second daughter of the house, Constanze, and plans were made for them to be married the following year. There were the usual parental problems: Mozart’s father Leopold expressed strong disapproval, and his future mother-in-law, who was more than mildly addicted to the bottle, wished them to remain with her as lodgers – presumably because the extra income seemed a highly attractive proposition. Despite financial difficulties they managed to exist together fairly happily, although this marriage was hardly on the same level as that of the Schumanns, forty years later; as Eric Blom wrote, “Mozart…can never have known a love that was commensurate with his infinite capacity for it”. Yet the next four years must surely constitute one of the most astonishing bursts of prolonged creativity by one person in the history of music; after Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1782 there followed a torrent of masterpieces, including fourteen of the greatest piano concertos (Nos.11 – 24), three of the horn concertos, two symphonies, the C minor Mass, seven string quartets (including the six dedicated to Haydn – K.387 being the first of them) and various other chamber works, culminating in Le nozze di Figaro. Reaction inevitably set in; no more symphonies or concertos appeared for over a year, and illness also took its toll. But at least Mozart could sit back and enjoy the enormous popular success of Figaro, particularly in Prague, where he found in January 1787 that “here they talk of nothing but Figaro; scrape, blow, sing, and whistle nothing but Figaro; visit no opera but Figaro, and eternally Figaro”.
Five years before this huge success, Joseph Haydn had published a set of six quartets which he claimed to have been composed in “an entirely new and special way”. These Op.33 quartets made a very deep impression on Mozart and immediately inspired him to return to the medium after a gap of nine years (Haydn’s Op.33 were likewise separated from their predecessors by nine years!). In February 1785 a party was held at the Mozarts’ home, during which two of his six new works were played – the ensemble consisted of Haydn and Dittersdorf as violinists, Mozart himself on the viola, and the cellist Vanhal. Afterwards, Haydn said to Leopold Mozart, “I tell you before God, as an honest man, that your son is the greatest composer I know, either personally or by name: he has taste, and moreover the greatest science in composition”. Mozart’s own letter to Haydn, humbly requesting permission to dedicate the quartets to him, is no less touching in its affection and respect.
Knowing of his confession that these six quartets had been “the fruits of long and laborious labour” – evidence of which can sometimes be found in the autographs, with their uncharacteristic degree of alterations and crossings out – we might be surprised that nearly all of this music comes across with hardly less fluency and assuredness than we have become accustomed to with this prodigious composer. However, it might be that at times the G major quartet also reveals a certain nitty-grittiness – moments where the working out of material is more to the fore than usual, not least in the first movement, where some commentators find the balance between head and heart has tilted towards the former. Yet any such traces have vanished by the time we reach the gloriously songful Andante cantabile, and if he blows our minds with the sheer brilliance of his contrapuntal ingenuity in the finale (based on a four-note motif which strikingly foreshadows even more ingenuities in the “Jupiter” Symphony), we cannot fail to be swept along by its sheer arrogant exuberance!
© Alan George
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