Sydney Undergraduate Journal of Musicology

Vol. 1, December 2011

Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String

Quartets: The String Quartet Takes Flight
JONATHAN MUI

At the conclusion of the finale—titled Fuga a 4tro soggetti—in Joseph

Haydn’s String Quartet in C major Op. 20 No. 2, the Latin
inscription “Laus omnip. Deo / Sic fugit amicus amicum” can be
found at the bottom of the last stave. Of special interest here is the
second half of the inscription, “Thus does friend flee [from]
friend,” which Daniel Heartz interprets on three levels:1 firstly, it
refers to the word “fugue” itself, derived from the Latin words
fugere (to flee) and fugare (to chase)2—a theme is announced by one
instrument and the others seem to chase after it; secondly, it can
represent the act of playing chamber music itself; and finally, in the
broader historical context, Heartz believes that in the Op. 20
quartets, noting particularly the extraordinary fugues, Haydn has
progressed further than any of his contemporaries, and that it
would take none other than Mozart to “catch up.”3
The Op. 20 string quartets have been described as being
characterized by “extremes.”4 Perhaps in part due to these
“extremes”—that is, the widely contrasting material, its dramatic
scope and use of unusual forms—widely contrasting material, the
Op. 20 quartets have attracted their fair share of criticism. Charles
Rosen, in his renowned volume The Classical Style, articulates a
commonly expressed view of Haydn’s work in the 1770s—in one
word, “awkward.”5 Much attention is drawn to the passages in
which “thematic logic remains isolated,” that is, dramatic effects are

1
Daniel Heartz, Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School 1740–1780 (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 344.
2
Paul M. Walker, “Fugue,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/51678
(accessed 07/05/11).
3
Heartz, 344.
4
Ludwig Finscher, Joseph Haydn Und Seine Zeit (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2000),
404.
5
Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Expanded ed.
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 149.
46 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

simply effects that “arrive unsupported by the rhythmic and

harmonic conceptions.”6 Special criticism is reserved for Symphony
No. 43 in E flat major and Quartet Op. 20 No. 4 in D major (see
Fig. 1). Their opening passages are singled out for their seemingly
aimless meandering around tonic and dominant, and as a result the
esteemed composer seems to be struggling to “enforce a sense of
growing energy.”7 (How different is this from Heartz’s praise of the
same quartet as the “crowning jewel of the set”!8)
Figure 1 Haydn, Op. 20 No. 4, 1st movement, bars 1–20 (Henle Verlag
HN 9208, 2009)

However, it appears that, in Haydn’s Op. 20, we find not only

the local “discontinuities” described by Rosen, but also quite
startling global ones too. On one hand, the F minor quartet (No. 5)
is a turbulent work that even seems to anticipate Beethoven in its

6
Ibid. Rosen is mainly discussing the so-called Sturm und Drang symphonies,
but these works are pertinent in this essay, as they overlap chronologically with
Op. 20.
7
Rosen, 150.
8
Heartz, 341.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 47

“dark passion.”9 The two-themed fugal finale uses two archetypal

Baroque subjects (Fig. 2), and the contrapuntal working is carried
out strictly according to the traditions of the learned style. On the
other hand, the optimistic A major quartet (No. 6) inhabits a galant
world: the first movement is in 6/8 time, and marked Allegro di
molto e scherzando, the beautiful Adagio is virtually a coloratura aria
for the first violin (it even contains a short cadenza), and the three-
themed fugal finale is full of energetic syncopations and wide
octave leaps. I will now focus on the quartets with fugal finales —
those that seemingly demonstrate incompatibility between the galant
and the learned contrapuntal styles—and argue that there is in fact
substantial evidence to suggest otherwise, and that these works
already demonstrate a solution to the integration of these two styles
into a coherent new manner of expression. In doing so, I hope to
express a somewhat more optimistic outlook on these quartets,
recognising them not as a “crisis” (a commonly-used term)10 but
rather the beginning of a remarkable development. However,
before we begin, we would do well to consider precisely what fugue
was doing in a work of chamber music.
Figure 2 Haydn, Op. 20 No. 5, 4th movement, bars 1–6

As a matter of fact, the use of fugal movements in chamber

music would not have been as striking or unusual in Haydn’s time

9
Warren Kirkendale, Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music,
trans. Warren Kirkendale and Margaret Bent, 2nd ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 1979), 143.
10
This is discussed at length in Karl Geiringer, Haydn: A Creative Life in Music,
3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 252–78.
48 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

as they may appear in hindsight. It seems that they appear this way
now due to a somewhat misleading genealogy linking J. S. Bach
with later works of Mozart. A longstanding view has been that
apart from Haydn’s “isolated experiments” in Op. 20, the
cultivation of counterpoint in instrumental ensemble music was
“completely abandoned between [J.S.] Bach’s death and Mozart’s
consequential encounter with the music [of the older German]
master in 1782–83,” but Warren Kirkendale is quick to refute this
claim.11 In Vienna especially—and we should note particularly the
influence of the venerable Johann Joseph Fux—fugue was
prominent in the works of Georg C. Wagenseil (a pupil of Fux),
Ignaz Holzbauer, Georg M. Monn, and in particular, Johann G.
Albrechtsberger.12 Furthermore, Kirkendale notes that, although
there was a general shift in the early half of the eighteenth century
from the older contrapuntal styles associated with the church to the
(generally) homophonic galant or chamber styles as a result of rising
middle-class patronage in musical life, the distinctions between old
and new, church and chamber, in reality were quite ambiguous at
times.13 As an example, Kirkendale reports that chamber sonatas
and concerti were performed during church services, and the
famous theorist Johann Mattheson even wrote that the “joyful . . .
and pleasing music” of the theatrical style “should not be excluded
from church, but rather have a proper and particular place there.”14
More relevant to our discussion, however, is Mattheson’s view of
fugal writing in the chamber style: “no one should fancy that such
artistic feats are the sole prerogative of the church choir and organ.
One can apply them fittingly also to many other things of a galant
and worldly nature.”15
Having now considered the use of the church style in
contemporaneous chamber works, we can establish that the fugue
should not be considered an anomaly in the Op. 20 quartets. To be
sure, Haydn had already employed fugal finales in his Symphonies

11
Kirkendale, xxiii.
12
For outlines of the life and work of these composers, see Kirkendale, 3–14.
13
Quoted in Kirkendale, 33–36.
14
Kirkendale, 35.
15
Kirkendale, 33.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 49

No. 3 in G and No. 13 in D,16 which probably date from 1757–60,

more than a decade before Op. 20.17 As previously mentioned, this
present study on Haydn’s Op. 20 has the aim of demonstrating
how elements of the baroque fugue and the galant style are in fact
skillfully integrated into a coherent work in each of the fugal
quartets. I will use two important types of evidence: firstly, I will
show that James Webster’s ideas on through composition and
cyclic integration in the Farewell Symphony, expounded thoroughly
in his monumental work Haydn’s Farewell Symphony and the Idea of
Classical Style, can be extended and further applied to the fugal
quartets in the Op. 20; and secondly, that James Grier’s recent
work on invertible counterpoint18 provides a convincing
explanation of the ways in which Haydn fuses fugal techniques into
the texture and style of eighteenth-century chamber music. As the
backbone of this paper is formed by the synthesis of these two
ideas, it is worth briefly outlining the significant contributions from
the above-mentioned authors.
The chief purpose of viewing these quartets under the lens of
through-composition is to show the subtle connections between
movements, but most importantly to show that the materials in the
fugue are in fact related to the rest of the work. Such material
includes distinctive harmonies and modulations, and motivic
similarities, which according to Webster operates not only within

16
Reginald Barrett-Ayres, Joseph Haydn and the String Quartet (London: Barrie &
Jenkins Ltd., 1974), 127–28.
17
The article on Haydn in Grove Music Online has a detailed discussion of the
chronology of his works: James Webster and Georg Feder, “Haydn, Joseph,”
Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/44593p
g2 (accessed 07/05/11).
18
James Grier, “The Reinstatement of Polyphony in Musical Construction:
Fugal Finales in Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets,” The Journal of Musicology 27,
no. 1 (2010): 57.
50 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

single movements but across entire works as well.19 Hence, it would

be beneficial to consider the fugues in the quartets Op. 20 No. 5,
No. 6 and No. 2 as “culminations” (to use Webster’s term) of their
respective works, and not merely as archaic endings.20 As Grier
writes, the rationale behind a fugal finale “emerges not only from
historical precedent but also from Haydn’s changing conceptions
of the relative weight each movement bears within the quartet as a
whole.” Whereas in the earlier quartets, Opp. 9 and 17, the minuet
and finale are characterised as lighter movements, the others being
the “more serious” movements (the opening sonata-allegro and the
slow movement), in Op. 20 this dichotomy is no longer so obvious;
in fact, in the fugal quartets, the emphasis seems to be on the first
and last movements.21
While Webster’s thesis on cyclic integration explores unity on
the largest scale (the entire work), Grier stresses the ways in which
invertible counterpoint creates unity on a smaller scale—that of
phrases, periods and sections within movements. This difficult
contrapuntal device creates a “continuous overlapping texture that
generate[s] considerable forward rhythmic motion,”22 and speaking
of counterpoint in more general terms, this “rhythmic continuity,
achieved through independent contrapuntal part writing, balances
harmonic discontinuity.”23 The manifold implications for Haydn’s
compositional style are significant. A contrapuntal texture enables
the composer to write longer passages without the need for
frequent articulation points (cadences), the “invertibility” of each
fugue subject allows motivic material to be shared amongst all
instruments equally, since each subject must be designed rigorously
to function perfectly as a bass line, middle voice and melody;
importantly, a fugue is “self-propagating,” so to speak, in that the
movement unfolds from the developments of a small number of
short motifs, and in these quartets, Grier maintains that there is in

19
See James Webster, Haydn's “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 13–16 and 20–29 for some
general ideas.
20
Webster, “Farewell” Symphony, 294–300.
21
Ibid.
22
Grier, 75.
23
Ibid.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 51

fact one principal subject accompanied by up to three

subordinates.24 The emphasis on the principal subject already
points forward to techniques used in Haydn’s later works, in which
a single theme may be the basis of an entire sonata-form
movement. Hence, I will later briefly examine how invertible
counterpoint is a solution to the problem of “incompatible” styles
described above, but firstly, let us explore the features of cyclic
integration that are apparent in the F minor quartet.
The “Fuga a 2 soggetti,” as mentioned above (Fig. 2), is built on
two archetypal Baroque subjects—two other famous works which
use similar subjects (Fig. 3a and 3b) are Handel’s chorus number
“And with his stripes we are healed” from Messiah, and Mozart’s
“Kyrie” from the Requiem.25
Figure 3a Handel, opening of “And with His stripes” from The Messiah,
HWV 56

Figure 3b Mozart, “Kyrie” from Requiem, KV 626

24
Grier, 59.
25 Barrett-Ayres, 122–23.
52 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

I am inclined to believe that the popularity of the first subject in

Haydn’s F minor fugue is partly due to the distinctive falling
interval of the diminished seventh, and for extra potency, Haydn
also incorporates a falling perfect fifth. This creates a two-layered
voice-leading gesture that highlights an important semitonal
movement featuring prominently in the first movement as well as
the fugue:
Figure 4 Voice-leading model, Fugue Subject 1, Haydn Op. 20 No. 5

As well as creating a distinct melodic profile, the gesture shown

above also has harmonic implications that create a unified Affekt
spanning the two movements. For example, at important cadential
phrases in the first movement, semitonal movement in the bass (i.e.
cello part) is often brought to attention, highlighting the diminished
seventh leading-note chord, vii°7. Bars 10 to 13 (the end of the first
subject area) and bars 45 to 48 (the very end of the exposition with
first-time bar) are shown below.
Figure 5a Op. 20 No. 5, 1st movement, bars 10–13
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 53

Figure 5b Bars 45–48

Indeed, dissonance and chromaticism are responsible for much

of the drama and tension in this quartet, which, as we saw above,
lends itself to comparisons with Beethoven. Let us examine one
more crucial passage in the first movement, the extraordinary
modulations that occur in the coda. At the end of the
recapitulation, after a tonic pedal, the music launches unexpectedly
into D-flat major which incidentally is the key used to initiate the
development (hence it is certainly justified to treat the extended
coda as a little “second development”). The bass descends by
semitones, arriving at a V42–I6 cadence in G-flat major at bars 139–
40. Then, at bars 141–48, the following astonishing passage
appears.
Figure 6 Op. 20 No. 5, 1st movement, bars 141–48

The movement from G-flat minor to the dominant pedal C is

achieved by a clever re-interpretation of the bass note D-flat in bars
146–47. The D-flat major chord functions as a dominant to G-flat
54 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

in 146, but quickly becomes the root of Ger 65 of F minor in the

following bar, owing to the very crucial semitonal descent in the
second violin from D-flat to B-natural. This exploration of the flat
side of the circle of fifths is equally prominent in the fugal finale; in
bar 61, G-flat major is firmly established as both subjects receive
two statements each, and we find an expansion of the same
movement from G-flat to C driven by a very long ascending fifths
sequence beginning at 66, heading all the way to a clear subject
entry in the tonic at 89. From there onwards, there are no more
unusual excursions and the movement remains clearly in F minor.
Figure 7 Voice-leading reduction of F minor fugue, bars 66–84

While through-composition in the F minor quartet is projected

mainly in similarities in harmonic language between the first
movement and finale, similarity in melodic contour and character is
the unifying feature between the first movement and its
corresponding fugue in the Quartet in A major, Op. 20 No. 6.
Moreover, if one still believes the F minor quartet to be excessively
burdened with Baroque tropes (or indeed, “baroque” in its original
sense!), Haydn surely has a convincing rebuttal in the A major. The
marking Allegro di molto e scherzando in the first movement could
easily apply to the fugue, and there are many similarities in the
thematic material of both movements. In the fugue, the three
themes are all “clearly individual”26 and receive equal treatment: the
main subject features playful syncopated octave leaps, the second is
simply a syncopated descending A-major scale (traditional fourth
species), and the third is a very short motif reminiscent of the
second theme group of the first movement.

26
Finscher, 405.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 55

Figure 8a Op. 20 No.6, opening of fugue, showing first two themes

Figure 8b Third theme in fugue

Figure 8c Bars 22–23 in 1st movement

Perhaps it is also a testament to Haydn’s contrapuntal skill that

the fugue sounds as galant in character as the opening 6/8
movement—it is certainly a whole world away from the serious
“learnedness” of the F minor fugue. Yet while the “through-
composition” aspect is interesting, more important in this quartet
than in Op. 20 No. 5 is the refinement of a three-part texture built
on the principle of invertible counterpoint. In brief, the three
subjects are so designed that they may function in any
configuration—each of them work equally well as a bass line or a
middle voice, or indeed a top voice. The table below draws on part
of an elaborate table of subject entries appearing in James Grier’s
article.
56 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

Figure 9 Subject entries in the exposition, finale of Op. 20 No.6 (Grier,

65)

Subject 1 Subject 2 Subject 3

1 vn I (S) 1 vn II
5 vn II (A) 5 va 6 vn I
9 va (S) 9 vn I 10 vn II
13 vc (A) 13 vn II 14 va
17 vn I (S) 17 vc 18 va

Even in such a short space as a single exposition, it can be seen

that Subjects 1 and 2 appear at least once in every voice, and in
fact, Haydn comes very close to exploiting the full range of
possibilities. Subject 3 is announced in every other voice except the
cello, but it is used during the first episode as a bass line in bars 21–
24, and hence the invertibility of all subjects is demonstrated
without exception. This enables a lively exchange of themes
between all instruments, accounting for the playfulness of the fugue
as much as its contrapuntal sophistication. Perhaps the most
glorious passage in the entire work occurs in bars 61–68: starting
from C# minor at bar 57, canonic imitations built on the first and
third subjects are channelled through a descending fifths sequence,
arriving at the tonic at 61. However, Haydn has a surprise for us,
for when the first violin initiates a complete entry of Subject 1, the
second violin enters in canon a perfect fifth below before the viola
joins in with Subject 2. At 65, this texture is inverted, so that the
viola and cello form the canonic pair, the second violin receives
Subject 2, and finally the first violin enters with Subject 3 to
complete the quadruple counterpoint.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 57

Figure 10 Op. 20 No. 6, finale, bars 55–69

This kind of passage is not entirely a surprise in this quartet. In

the recapitulation of the first movement, a short canonic passage of
merely four bars (Fig. 11) replaces the transition area in the
exposition, linking the first and second themes in an elegant way.
The brevity of this passage, and the fact that it is derived from
material in the second theme area (Fig. 8c) highlights the
effectiveness of counterpoint in the galant movements, a crucial
point to which I will shortly return in the discussion of the C major
quartet below.
58 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

Figure 11 Op. 20 No. 6, 1st movement, bars 114–17

It seems that the achievements of both the F minor and A

major quartets are consolidated and celebrated in the Quartet in C
major, Op. 20 No. 2. It has even been suggested that, if all three
fugal quartets are taken as a cycle in themselves, the C major
quartet forms a culmination of the whole group!27 There is much
evidence in favour of this reading. Firstly, it displays actual
indicators of “through-composition”: the second movement, a
curious Capriccio set in C minor, ends on the dominant and segues
immediately into the Minuet; furthermore, the first movement ends
on a structurally weak cadence—the top voice ends on scale
degrees 4–3, rather than the strong 7–8 or 2–1, and it is played
pianissimo. This first movement ending is remarkably consistent with
the endings of the first movements of the F minor and A major
quartets. The former appears to head towards a strong conclusion,
but the final cadence, although following a 7–8 voice leading
pattern, arrives pianissimo unexpectedly; thus it is reasonable to
regard the strong V–I cadence at the conclusion of the fugue as a
“corrected” reiteration of the first movement’s weak cadence.
Similarly, the first movement of the A major merely trails off with a
tonic pedal, also at the pianissimo dynamic, but the work is
concluded with a powerful unison statement of Subject 1 (Fig. 8a)
and a perfect cadence with 7–8 in the top voice.
Secondly, a contrapuntal bias is revealed immediately from the
opening of the C major quartet: I imagine, at its first performance,
the audience must have been rather baffled when the main theme
was proudly announced in the tenor register of the cello, with the
typical bass-line figurations assigned to the viola in an almost
parodic fashion. At bar 6, the cello ascends by step, and the first

27
For further discussion of this idea, see: Webster, “Farewell” Symphony, 294–
300.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 59

violin takes over the theme, but a fifth higher, in the key of G (“Is
this not reminiscent of the fugue principle?”28).
Figure 12 Op. 20 No. 2, 1st movement, opening 12 bars

As the movement unfolds, we discover that the concerns of the

work are the “emancipation” of the cello from its former role of
being solely the bass part, and the even distribution of thematic
material across all members of the quartet to a much greater extent
than in the F minor and A major quartets. This manner of writing
can be found even in the “lighter” second and third movements

28
Barrett-Ayres, 134.
60 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

too: early on in the slow movement (bar 5), the cello once again
takes on the main theme, and likewise in the opening of the Trio in
the third movement, where it is the principal interest. But it is the
first movement where the principles of invertible counterpoint are
clearly applied to a galant movement, resulting in a composition
whose coherence is maintained in the constant exchange and
overlapping of motivic material. This kind of contrapuntal motivic
“connective tissue” (as I call it) from the A major quartet
(illustrated in Fig. 11) is used to a greater extent in the C major
quartet, and the following examples will demonstrate some aspects
of Haydn’s application of such contrapuntal devices in a sonata-
form movement.
Figure 13a Op. 20 No. 2, 1st movement, bars 21–22

Shown in Fig. 13a is the beginning of the second subject area,

which clearly continues from the contrapuntal textures heard at the
beginning of the movement (Fig. 12). Initially, the polyphony is
aborted after only two measures, but soon afterwards Haydn allows
this canonic imitation to expand further, as demonstrated below.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 61

Figure 13b Op. 20 No. 2, 1st movement, bars 33–36

The grouping of the instruments in pairs is incidentally a very

common arrangement in all three fugues studied in this paper.
Once again, contrapuntal treatment of a motif is used as connective
tissue, but in this case, the passage illustrated in Fig. 13b forms the
beginning of the closing area in the exposition, and so it also fulfils
an important formal role as it prepares for tonal closure in the
dominant. A similar passage in A minor appears at the end of the
development section (bars 72–3), and finally near the end of the
movement (bars 92–3) in the home key of C major. Considering
the high degree of through-composition in this quartet, it seems
that there could be no finer finale than the fugue to celebrate the
fruits of the composer’s labour.
As I wrote earlier, I have set out to provide a more optimistic
reading of Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets, questioning the commonly
held opinion that these works represent a struggle or “crisis” of
some sort, perhaps the problem of reconciling the contrapuntal
idioms of the Baroque with those of the galant. However, I hope
that it is clear, even with such brief analyses, that elements of cyclic
integration and the principles of invertible counterpoint are applied
with a high level of consistency in the fugal quartets. Consequently,
I am led to conclude that, looking at the whole opus, Haydn’s
solution to the “crisis”—if there was one at all—can already be
found. As James Webster observes, this notion of “crisis” seems to
have roots in the teleological narratives of music history —with
62 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

respect to Haydn, the traditional view is that he attained “maturity”

with the discovery (lo and behold!) of thematische Arbeit in the Op.
33 quartets, and as such, everything pre-dating those works is tacitly
or overtly labelled “immature.”29 This has serious implications for
how we define the “Classical” style. We seem to reserve a special
place for the era from 1780 to early 1800s, canonising the late
masterpieces of Haydn and Mozart and those of the emerging
genius of Beethoven. They are “given historiographical status, and
further legitimised, by being made to stand for one of the greatest
historical periods of Western music”30 to the point that, in everyday
discussion at least, it is almost impossible to discuss these works
without using the word “Classical” or separating them from their
status as “classics.” Of course, this can only make sense in
retrospect, as there was certainly no concept of a “Classical” body
of works in Haydn’s time. The fact that Op. 33, time and time
again, has been heralded as a watershed work, written in an entirely
“new and special way” to quote Haydn’s famed words, seems to
have clouded the significance of the Op. 20, which are truly
remarkable works in their own right—either that, or the unusual
features of the Op. 20 are simply and perhaps unjustly rationalised
as deficiencies in a still-developing, “immature” style. The
ingenious craftsmanship and the successful use of invertible
counterpoint in the fugal finales is testament to Haydn’s ability to
“make the most” from a minimum amount of motivic material,
which surely points forward to his highly distilled and economic
use of a single theme in his later sonata movements (Quartet Op.
33 No. 1 in B minor is a particularly good example). I would go as
far as to argue that the contrapuntal treatment of motifs in the first
movement of the C major quartet (Figs. 12 & 13) is prototypical of
the thematische Arbeit in Haydn’s later quartets. The Op. 20 quartets
are a reminder that music, like any other language, is in a constant
state of flux, and any attempt to draw clear stylistic boundaries
must necessarily be an approximation; the term “Classical,”
therefore, is only useful in this sense. In these works, the mixture of
old and new, Baroque and galant, can be seen clearly, but equally

29
Webster, “Farewell” Symphony, 335–36, 341–35.
30
Ibid., 351.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 63

clear is that these works also represent essays on the ways in which
two seemingly conflicting styles can in fact be fused into coherent
musical expression, and unfortunately (or fortunately?), it is for the
same reason that these works evade repeated attempts at
categorisation.
Where does this leave us in regard to the Op. 20 quartets? Are
they somehow inferior to Op. 33, because they lack “balance,”
“synthesis” and other such qualities deemed necessary to attain
classical “perfection”?31 It may be true that Op. 20 does not yet
present a fully developed Haydn, but throughout this study, I have
maintained that the stylistic problems these quartets present come
already with their solutions. Of the three quartets with fugal finales
in Op. 20, No. 5 in F minor is clearly the most reminiscent of the
Baroque period, but I have shown that this is supported by
common harmonic structures that pervade the outer movements.
In the A major quartet, it is clear that a scherzando character is
central to the work, and I have argued that invertible counterpoint
is one of the most significant devices used to infuse galant ideas into
a strict fugue, and fugal elements into a galant movement. Finally, in
the C major quartet, which consolidates techniques found in the
other two fugal quartets, there is no doubt that by now, all four
voices in the quartet have become autonomous – a feature that
would become the defining characteristic of the string quartet as a
genre – and the fusion of the contrapuntal and the galant is
complete. Thus the classical string quartet has already taken flight
with Haydn’s Op. 20.
 
APPENDIX
Below I have quoted James Webster’s highly entertaining
“retelling” (parody?) of the common, teleological or evolutionist
view of Haydn’s development as a composer:

31
For a good overview of the generally-accepted features of Haydn’s “mature
style,” see Geiringer, 279–80, 284–86.
64 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

Once upon a time there lived a talented young

composer named Joseph Haydn. He composed
cheerful string quartets, but they did not fully satisfy
him; he attempted to enrich them contrapuntally, but
only in minuets. Then one day, the ghost of Johann
Sebastian Bach appeared to him, and said, “Young
man: your mission is a higher one. Go and write
fugues, and incorporate them into your string
quartets.” Haydn rushed to follow this advice; alas!
his fugues did not go together with his cheerful tunes;
his new quartets were failures. Heavy of heart, he
wandered for ten long years in the wilderness of
symphonic experimentation, until at last he
discovered the secret of stylistic synthesis through
thematische Arbeit. Then he returned home and began
to compose Classical string quartets, and he
continued to compose Classical string quartets the
rest of his life. And everyone lived happily ever
after.32 [THE END]

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barrett-Ayres, Reginald. Joseph Haydn and the String Quartet. (London:
Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1974).
Finscher, Ludwig. Joseph Haydn Und Seine Zeit. (Laaber: Laaber-
Verlag, 2000).
Geiringer, Karl. Haydn: A Creative Life in Music. 3rd ed. (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1982).
Grave, Floyd, and Margaret Floyd. The String Quartets of Joseph
Haydn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Grier, James. “The Reinstatement of Polyphony in Musical
Construction: Fugal Finales in Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets.”
The Journal of Musicology 27, no. 1 (2010): 55–83.

32
Webster, "Farewell" Symphony, 343. It is suggested, for the sake of context,
that pages 335–47 are to be read as well.
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 65

Heartz, Daniel. Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School 1740–1780.

(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995).
Kirkendale, Warren. Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber
Music. Translated by Warren Kirkendale and Margaret Bent. 2nd
ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979).
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn at Esterhaza 1766–1790. (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1978).
Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.
Expanded ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997).
Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 2. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Walker, Paul M. “Fugue.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/
music/51678 (accessed 07/05/11)
Webster, James. Haydn's “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical
Style. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Webster, James, and Georg Feder. “Haydn, Joseph.” Grove Music
Online. Oxford Music Online.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/
music/44593pg2 (accessed 07/05/11).
Wyn Jones, David. (ed.) Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Musical scores
Haydn, Joseph. Streichquartette Opus 20. HN 9208. Munich: Henle
Verlag, 2009.
Score examples for Handel and Mozart based on online editions,
available at International Music Score Library Project (imslp.org) 
66 SUJM vol. 1, December 2011

ABSTRACT
Haydn’s Op. 20 has often been viewed as representing some sort of
“crisis” later resolved in the Op. 33 quartets, which is often defined
as the first work of Haydn’s “maturity,” and thus confining Op. 20
to the “Early Period.” The traditional view of the Op. 20, one that
is expressed even by such distinguished scholars as Charles Rosen,
is that these earlier quartets are somehow less coherent in terms of
musical logic. This essay will focus on the fugal quartets (Op. 20
Nos. 5, 6 and 2), often seen as unsuccessful attempts to enrich the
galant idiom with Baroque counterpoint. However, I will argue that
there is good evidence to suggest a greater unity in these quartets,
and that such evidence falls into two main categories. Bringing to
attention James Webster’s 1991 work on through-composition and
“cyclic integration” in the contemporaneous Farewell Symphony, I
will suggest a reading of these works guided by inter-movement
links, and based on the idea that, in each quartet, the fugues serve
as appropriate “culminations” (to borrow Webster’s terminology)
of their respective works. I will then make reference to James
Grier’s discussions in his 2010 article on invertible counterpoint in
these quartets (Journal of Musicology, vol. 27), a technique that I
interpret to be a successful solution to the issue of the
“incompatibility” of Baroque and galant procedures. In combining
these two aspects, Haydn’s fugal quartets are presented in a more
optimistic light, and a case is made for the removal of labels
pertaining to any notion of “immaturity.”

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Violinist Jonathan Mui was born in Hong Kong in 1991 and moved
to Sydney in 2002 to continue his studies in music. His past
teachers have included Peter Zhang and Charmian Gadd, and is
currently a Bachelor student at the Sydney Conservatorium of
Music, studying with Norwegian violinist Ole Bøhn. In 2007,
Jonathan was the winner of the Kendall National Violin
Competition and the Queensland National Youth Concerto
Competition, and in 2011, the winner of the Gisborne International
 J. Mui, Fuga in Joseph Haydn’s Op. 20 String Quartets 67

Competition in New Zealand. He is equally active as a chamber and

orchestral musician, having given solo and string quartet concerts
in Lausanne, Oslo and Rio de Janeiro, and has performed in New
York and San Francisco as part of the Sydney Conservatorium
Chamber Orchestra.