Music in Heaven: Understanding Haydn String Quartets as a Twenty-First Century Performer

Music of the European classical tradition is frequently viewed by performers and audiences through the lens of the standard concert repertoire established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, the application of nineteenth-century aesthetic ideals to eighteenth-century music may yield anachronistic misunderstandings about the music. As modern-day instrumentalists often perform eighteenth-century music, comparative anthropology of Romanticism and eighteenth-century European cultures may aid performers in bringing to life authentic, resonant, and meaningful communication between composers and audiences. This article explores how string players can better understand the cultural context in which Joseph Haydn composed string quartets.