Preface
Visiting the Frans Hals exhibition in the National Gallery in late 2023, I was struck by the similarity in some respects between the great portraitist from Haarlem and the composer Josef Haydn. They are both often conceived of as the inferior member of arbitrarily constructed triumvirates. If Rembrandt is Beethoven, and Vermeer Mozart, Hals is Haydn – seen as less original, less profound and frequently cheerful to an unforgiveable degree. I am afraid that this is nonsense. Haydn remains gravely underrated. This may in large part be because he is best known through his symphonies and choral writing, whereas an even purer expression of his genius emerges from the string quartets and other chamber music. This essay was inspired by a performance by the Doric Quartet at the Wigmore Hall of the quartet in D, Op 20 no 4.