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TALICH QUARTET 13
Haydn took up this form almost by chance, or so he declared. However that
may be, it was certainly his achievement to lay the foundations for a new
musical discourse in the 1750s and 1760s, with the result that by the end of
the century the quartet had become the most refined and stimulating form of
musical expression.
The string quartet, reborn as it were from its banality as a form, accomplished
a synthesis of popular music with the sonic experimentation of art music. It
became the torch-bearer of the pre-Romantic generations, the sonic ideal of
the Enlightenment.
In the 1780s, Haydn was regarded – even more than Mozart – as the greatest and
mostfamouscomposerinEurope.Publishers,concertpromotersandnoblepatrons
in the German-speaking countries, England, and France regularly commissioned
him to write works in the most varied of genres, from chamber music to oratorio
by way of the symphony.
It was during the year 1786 that he received one of themost surprising propositions
of his career: the composition of a work of instrumental music on the Seven Last
Words of Christ on the Cross. He could hardly have imagined then that it would
become successively a quartet, then a solo piano work, and finally an oratorio
in two parts for soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists, four-part chorus, and
orchestra. Amutation unique in its period, which is not explained only by the fame
of the original version.