String Quartet in F Minor

Although flickers of Haydn’s habitually optimistic outlook remain discernible in the opening movement of his String Quartet No. 23 (Op.20/5), the F minor tonality of the music and its nervously pulsing rhythms constantly suggest emotional unrest. Much of this unease persists in the “Minuetto” second movement, which flits uncertainly from shadows to light, never quite establishing a solid dance rhythm. Relief comes in the elegant slow movement, where the comparative freedom from strain and stress is celebrated in the chirping commentaries of the first violin. The finale is cast by Haydn as a two-part fugue whose first theme strongly recalls the chorus “And with his stripes we are healed” in Handel’s Messiah. There is healing of a sort in Haydn’s music, too, as darker elements from the quartet’s opening two movements finally find more stable expression in the carefully calculated echoes and imitations of his fugal writing.