Haydn: String Quartets Op 3 Nos 3-6

"A useful adjunct to the Kodály Quartet's budget Haydn series, the disputed Op. 3 works attributed to Pater Romanus Hoffstetter plug one of the last remaining gaps, with attractive readings of Quartets Nos. 3-6. The playing is very fine indeed; outer movements, such as No. 3's brilliant concluding Presto, display tremendous verve and enthusiasm. First violinist Attila Falvay plays with imagination, accuracy, and panache, even in complex passagework above the staff, as in No. 5's Presto. The players also get comic moments totally right (such as the minuet of the same work), letting the music make the jokes obvious, without the need for exaggeration. But they also play with utmost finesse and tonal beauty, the best moments of all coming in the Largo of No. 3 and in the Adagio of No. 4. The famous Serenade from No. 5 has been very widely recorded, but apart from the mono 1951/52 Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet recordings of Nos. 1, 4, 5, and 6 (reissued by Preiser), there are no modern alternatives to this admirable Naxos production. Truthful, well-balanced sound and faultless musicianship makes this another winner."
- Michael Jameson, classicstoday.com

The question of the authenticty of Haydn's so-called Op. 3 Quartets has engaged the attention of scholars since the mid-nineteenth century. Nearly every leading Haydn specialist from C.F.Pohl to H.C.Robbins Landon has published an opinion on the subject and it says something for the intractable nature of the problem that there is still no common agreement. Haydn himself is not a great deal of help in the matter. The works were omitted from the Entwurf-Katalog, the running catalogue of his works he kept from 1765 until after the London visits, but found their way into the Haydn-Verzeichnis prepared in 1805 under the composer's direct supervision by his faithful factotum Joseph Elssler. Haydn also accepted the six works as genuine in the edition of his complete string quartets published by Ignaz Pleyel. Unfortunately, both strands of evidence are not beyond questioning. The inclusion of the quartets in the Haydn-Verzeichnis may have been based on their appearance three years earlier in the Pleyel edition. Pleyel claimed in his accompanying catalogue of the complete quartets that all the works had been avowed by the author but László Somfai thinks it very unlikely that Haydn ever saw the words 'avoués par l'autheur'. The meagre bibliographical evidence has been painstakingly sifted and the works themselves subjected to every kind of analytical technique known to musicology. Haydn's authorship still remains doubtful but so too does that of Pater Romanus Hoffstetter the most commonly favoured alternative. The jury is still out and likely to remain out unless a sensational discovery is made which settles the matter once and for all.

The six quartets which comprise Op. 3 were published in Paris by Bailleux in 1777. If Haydn were the author it is extremely unlikely that the works were composed much later than 1764 although at least one scholar has suggested a composition date in the early 1770s, which seems highly unlikely. Unusually for Haydn, the works survive in the printed edition only, which casts additional doubt on their authenticity. Furthermore, Robbins Landon and Alan Tyson discovered traces of an inscription on the parts which clearly indicated that the plates originally bore an attribution to 'Signor Hofstetter'. From this they drew the not unreasonable conclusion, given the dubious business ethics of many eighteenth-century publishers, that Bailleux replaced Hoffstetter's name with Haydn's in order to boost potential sales. Thus, the real composer of the Op. 3 quartets was undoubtedly 'Signor Hofstetter' - Pater Romanus Hoffstetter. Neat though this solution, is it is not entirely unassailable. Neither does it prove beyond reasonable doubt that the quartets really are by Hoffstetter. To do so it would be necessary to prove that they could not possibly be by anyone else, a difficult if not impossible task to achieve given the external and internal evidence. In short, we are faced with a set of works which may be by Haydn, or Hoffstetter or neither.

The quartets themselves, in terms of internal stylistic evidence, also pose problems since there is music within them that is both typical and atypical of Haydn. The same can be said for Hoffstetter, whose string quartets have been studied closely in the light of his possible authorship of Op. 3. Reginald Barrett-Ayres, one of the scholars who has examined Hoffstetter's quartets, has found little stylistic similarity between his extant string quartets and the works of Op. 3. They bear a certain stylistic kinship with Haydn's earliest quartets but then so too do those of a number of other composers active during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. They are competent enough works to suggest that their composer might have been capable of writing Op. 3 but the fact remains that none of the authentic quartets possesses the melodic charm and sureness of touch of movements like the famous 'Serenade' from Op. 3, No. 5. On the evidence we possess, Op. 3, if indeed it is the work of Hoffstetter, represents his finest set of quartets.

Not a great deal is known about the life of Father Roman Hoffstetter. He was born on 24th April 1742 and took his vows in the Benedictine monastery in Amorbach in 1763. He was ordained as a priest in 1766 and remained at Amorbach until the monastery's dissolution in 1803, serving variously as Prior, Prior Culinaris and, from 1783, Master of the Kitchens. He was also appointed Regens Chori at some uncertain date and found time to write a considerable body of instrumental music including several viola concertos. He was a close friend of the brilliant composer Johann Martin Kraus, which suggests that he was a man of some wit, charm and erudition. Hoffstetter moved to Miltenberg in 1803 and died there on 21st May 1815.