The
Haydn Info Card is meant
to be printed and carried around with you, or perhaps stuck to your fridge.
It aims to to be a kind of
"periodic table of Haydn Quartets" and
each of the boxes with colored stripes will help remind you of:
- Various nicknames (both widely known and those used primarily by The Enthusiasts)
- What key each quartet is in
- Which quartets are in minor keys (with a few exceptions, each row in the table has exactly one minor quartet)
- How many movements are in each work, indicated by number of sides: The pentagons indicate 5 movements, the squares 4, and the sadly unfinished Opus 103 has but 2 movements completed
- Where the minuet is positioned (Haydn began by writing 2 minuets for all the Opus 1 and Opus 2 quartets, and began placing the minuet after the first movement but later composed more quartets where the minuet falls just before the final movement)
- Which volume of the 4-volume Peters Edition each quartet is found in
And more! The "Cell Anatomy" inset explains how the information is packed. The boxes to the left of each opus group contain the year, the patron/dedicatee/opus group nickname (if any), and Haydn's age at the time of composition (to save you from subtracting 1732 from the year). Here's a preview of the front of the card.
The rear of the card contains this timeline, which can help keep track of how important quartet dates in Haydn's life relates
to those in Mozart's and Beethoven's. Some interesting things leap out from this timeline:
- Haydn's first quartets were being produced around the same time Mozart was born
- Opus 17 was written around the same time Beethoven was born
- Haydn's substantial pause in quartet output after Mozart's dedication of 6 quartets to him
- Haydn's 6 "Prussian" quartets (Opus 50), followed 2 years later by Mozart's 3, all dedicated to the King of Prussia.
- Mozart's tragic death while Haydn was away on his first trip to London
- Haydn's production of Opus 71/74 perhaps as a response to his first trip to London and in preparation for his second
- Haydn's final, incomplete set of Opus 77 quartets, and Beethoven's first set of quartets, Opus 18, both dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz
- The fact that Haydn was alive during the time that his pupil, Beethoven, produced his fierce "Middle" quartets!
Here's preview of the timeline:
The latest version of the card, suitable for printing double-sided on letter-sized paper can be found
here.
The code and data that was used to generate the card can be found
on Github.
