By the time he came to write the string quartets published as Opus 76 and Opus 77, Haydn was undoubtedly the most famous living composer in the whole of Europe . He had recently returned from the highly successful second visitEngland, for which he had composed his last six symphonies, culminating in the brilliant and festive Drum Roll Symphony (No. 103) and London Symphony (No. 104). This is public music, full of high spirits, expensive gestures and orchestral surprise. Haydn knew how to please his audience. And in 1796, following his return toVienna, he began work on his largest and most famous choral work, the oratorio, ‘The Creation’. In the succeeding years, till 1802, he was write a series of other large scale religious choral works, including several masses. The oratorios and masses were also public work, employing large forces for dramatic effect, but warm and full of apparently spontaneous religious feeling. Yet at the same time he composed these 8 quartets, in terms of technical mastery and sheer musical invention the equal of the symphonies and choral works, but in their mood and emotional impact far removed, by turns introspective and detached, or full of passionate intensity.Once again as in the early 1770s when he appears to have been going through some kind of spiritual crisis, Haydn returned to the string quartet as a mean to accomplish a twofold aim: firstly to innovate musically in a genre free from public performance requirements or religious convention; secondly to express personal emotions or philosophy in a musical from that is intimate yet capable of great subtlety and complexity of meaning. The result is a series of quartets of astonishing structural, melodic, rhythmicand harmonic variety, inhabiting a shifting emotional world, where tension underlies surface brilliance and calm gives way to unease.The six quartets of Opus 76 differ widely in character. The opening movement of No. 2 is tense and dramatic, while that of No. 4 begins with the soaring long-breathed melody that has earned it the nickname of ‘The Sunrise’. The minutes too have moved a long way from the stately court dance of the mid-eighteenth century. The so-called ‘Witches Minuet’ of No. 2 is a strident canon, that of No. 6 is a fast one in-a-bar movement anticipating the scherzos of Beethoven, while at the heart of No. 5 is a contrasting trio section which, far from being the customary relaxed variant of the surrounding minuet, flings itself into frenetic action and is gone. The finales are full of energy and grace we associate with Haydn, but with far less conscious humour and more detachment than in earlier quartets.

But it is in the slow movements that Haydn is most innovative and most unsettling. In No. 1 the cello and the first violin embark on a series of brusque dialogues. No. 4 is a subdued meditation based on the hushed opening chords. The slow movements of No. 5 and No. 6 are much looser in structure, the cello and viola setting off on solitary episodes of melodic and harmonic uncertainly. But there the similarity ends, for while No. 5 is enigmatic and predominantly dark in tone, the overlapping textures of its sister are full of light filled intensity.

The Opus 76 quartets were published in 1799, when Haydn was well over 60 years old. Almost immediately he was commissioned to write another set by Prince Lobkowitz, a wealthy patron, who was later to become an important figure in Beethoven’s life. Two quartets only were completed and published as Opus 77 Nos 1 & 2 in 1802. but these are not the works of an old man whose powers are fading, or who simply consolidates ground already covered. Once again Haydn innovates. The opening movement of Opus 77 No. 2 is as structurally complex and emotionally unsettling as anything he ever wrote, alternating between a laconic opening theme and a tense and threatening counter theme which comes to dominate the whole movement. Both quartets have fast scherzo-like ‘minutes’. The slow movement of No. 1 is in traditional variation form, but stretches the form to the limit in order to accommodate widely contrasting textures and moods. The finale of No. 2 is swept along by a seemingly inexhaustible stream of energy and inventiveness.

In fact, Haydn began a third quartet in this set, but never finished it, and the two completed movements were published in 1806 as Opus 103, his last published work. He was over 70, and clearly lacked the strength to continue composition. The two existing movements are a slow followed by a minuet. The slow movement has a quiet warmth, but it is the minuet that is remarkable. It is in true dance time, unlike the fast quasi-scherzos of the earlier quartets. But what a dance! In a somber D minor Haydn unfolds an angular, ruthless, sweeping on relentlessly to the final sudden uprush of sound. And then, after more than 40 years of composition the master falls silent.