Haydn String Quartet Op. 103 - Program Notes

Note by Vibha Janakiraman

Date of Composition: 1803

“To live in this world

you must be able to

do three things:


to love what is mortal;


to hold it

against your bones knowing


your own life depends on it;


and, when the time comes to let it go,


to let it go.”

Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods”

Objects of our creation, upon entering the world,  surpass our will and outlast our mortality—in giving them form, they are no longer “ours.” And yet, in the infinite paradox of creation, our identity is inevitably enmeshed with what we lovingly produce. Our Herculean task becomes that of graceful renunciation of our work, recognizing, as Mary Oliver puts it, “when the time comes to let it go.” 

Haydn’s renunciation is one of deep reverence. Now granted the superlative, “the father of the string quartet,” he wrote a staggering 68 works in the genre. His final quartet, Op. 103, was written alongside his famed Op.77 quartets to be published as part of the same set. In failing health, and preoccupied with the demands of his symphonic and choral obligations, Haydn agreed to publish Op. 103 as a standalone, incomplete work. Down a few Viennese streets, perhaps, Beethoven was making his first venture into the string quartet with his six Op.18 quartets, already ripe with formal and rhetorical transformation of the genre. Did the frail Haydn, likely having heard these Op. 18s, recognize his beloved string quartet as emerging from the chrysalis of his hand, flying of its own volition into the arms of an ingenious Beethoven? The unconventional structure of the slow movement of Op. 103, written in 3 short sections with little transition or tonal relation, points to a reverent bequeathing of sorts. It is the final outpouring of a man who, in accepting his own limits, makes the selfless choice to delegate onward the gift of creation. 

We are left with only two completed movements of Op. 103, the slow movement, and a minuet and trio.  The slow movement, Andante Grazioso, is remarkably forward looking in its expressive weight. Dissonances pulsate, and we find ourselves falling through the looking glass into distant keys, wandering into uncertainty. Yet, there is a deep certainty within, as the movement’s larger structure seems to convey a wise acquiescence to the inevitable tides of life. Where we expect Haydn to adhere to the harmonic grammar of the classical period, navigating between a set of closely related keys, he instead plunges repeatedly into uncommon territory. Haydn begins the first section in Bb Major, and in the unfolding of the rest of the movement, travels downwards by major thirds (giving us equal divisions of the octave!), to Gb Major and eventually, D Major. After the emphatic arrival at D Major, we quietly awake to find ourselves back home in Bb Major thanks to the pure inevitability of equal division. Perhaps this is Haydn’s reminiscence on the life cycle, the simultaneity of looking backwards and looking ahead with gratitude for the string quartet. We feel Haydn grappling with the limitations of form, texture, and tonality as he knows them—the music seems to beg to express something that his language falls just short of. Haydn stands, keenly aware, at the precipice of transformation, holding on to a genre whose identity was a product of his own life-giving breath. In passing the sacred baton of the string quartet to Beethoven, Haydn relinquishes a love that holds on in favor of a love that lets go.