String Quartet No. 18 in A Major

Mozart wrote in the preface to the six quartets dedicated to Haydn that they were “the fruits of a long and laborious endeavor.” He didn’t take as naturally to the string quartet medium as Haydn—it took him more than two years to write this set of six—but nevertheless created in them a series of works that became a cornerstone of the 18th-century quartet repertoire. The A major quartet is the last but one of these six works, in which we witness Mozart’s growing mastery of the fusion between his operatically inspired vocal style of instrumental writing and the increasing demands of counterpoint. Listen, for example, to the way the opening violin theme soon becomes a topic for discussion, argument, and even obsession among the four instruments. Then comes a rather serious “Menuetto,” which contrasts with its glowing central “Trio,” while the following “Andante” is a set of variations; the tattoo played by the cello in the sixth of these led to the work’s occasional nickname, the “Drum” Quartet. The finale returns to conversational counterpoint as the four instruments muse on its drooping chromatic theme.