Musikfest 4: Two Viennese Schools

Vienna can lay some legitimate claim to being the ancestral home of the string quartet. Haydn brought the form to maturity, Beethoven elevated it to perfection, and numerous other composers associated with the Austrian capital – notably Mozart and Schubert – produced exceptional contributions to the genre. After Beethoven, however, the string quartet went into something of a holding pattern. Brahms, Schumann and even Bruckner each composed a handful, while Mendelssohn and Dvorák wrote larger cycles; but it was not until the dawn of the twentieth century that the form was again embraced for its uncharted musical possibilities. Once more, it was Viennese composers who formed the vanguard. 

It was this implicit gap between Beethoven and the Second Viennese School – along with the relationship between the string quartet and the sung or spoken…