The Emotional Core of the String Quartet

Between the dynamic opening movements of Classical string quartets and the courtly dances and lighter finales with which they closed lay the emotional core of the genre: the slow movement. Here, unencumbered by goal-directed action or aristocratic convention, composers fashioned delicately poised musical landscapes that encouraged introspection from performers and listeners alike. The three lectures in this series explore these landscapes and the nuanced senses of personhood they created. We begin amid the endlessly inventive variety of Haydn’s slow movements and their myriad allusions to the world beyond the notes: the church, the theatre, the outdoors and its creatures, the interpersonal dynamics among string players. In the second lecture, we plumb the emotional depths of Mozart’s mature slow movements, with a focus on the Andante cantabile from the “Dissonance” Quartet, K. 465, and its dual capacity to confront and to console. Finally, we end with slow movements from Beethoven’s late quartets, especially the Cavatina from Op. 130 and the Heiliger Dankgesang from Op. 132, in which the composer’s sense of self, imagined in the act of performance, recalls to us our own selfhood and offers transformation.