Depending on what echos my reccent listening regime leaves in my mind, and how alert I am, and mostly, how well I have sat with Haydn and heard his voice, I am usually inclined to declare each Haydn quartet as his finest, each example of his art the pinnacle. But with more objective data at hand, and, taking a stance where I must defend my words beyond the vagaries of fleeting emotions, I can say that this quartet is among the few greatest masterpieces of his, if one feels compelled to choose at all.

The last quartet of Op. 76, Haydn's last completed set of classical string quartets, is a marvel of construction, and a bountiful journey for the heart as well as the mind. His music animates both thought and feeling, each dancing inseparably with each other in artful counterpoint. Just consider a hasty catalog of forms and devices Haydn employs within the "box" of a four-movement composition (roughly in order of their appearance):

There is a stunning quote in Ratner that expresses the heart of the matter, though not written about this quartet. Mozart writes to his father to describe some reccent piano concerti fresh from his own pen:

"These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being too vapid. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though not knowing why." [p. 3, Ratner].

But in the end, we are not talkingabout merely visual patterns, equations, key modulations, formal analysis, abstract constructs of the mind alone. This is music, sound in time in the presense of a listener: the most intimate and potent human communication interface ever realized. This quartet is a journey of the mind shot through with with the kinesthesia of the dancing body, and full of emotion, the far more intricate dance of the heart. These things are true, again, of most of Haydn's music. But in this very quartet, there are overflowing riches for both the mind and the heart, simultaneously. And as the greatest attribute of profund art, it is confoundingly and so entertainingly difficult to separate the boundaries. Is it that I "think" this is a masterpiece, or that I "feel" it is?

I hope you find something of the same earsense upon hearing this 20 minute song.