As a member of a string quartet, I hereby pledge to refer to this quartet only as the "Jack-in-the-box" Quartet in the future, with complete nonchalance, and act surprised when someone around me hasn't heard that name before.

Hey Richard, the nickname is a wonderful idea! I love it! But we cannot do it without a German equivalent for a Haydn composition. I would propose "Springteufel-Quartett" which is an appropriate word for Jack-in-the-box in German. Together we will rock Haydn !

You know, I'm not against people having fun. But you had way too much fun going through the Jack-in-the-Box ending. But I'm convinced, Jack-in-the-Box it is. Great video.

HES BACK AT IT WITH ANOTHER BANGER

more impressive than any of the musical material in the entire movement is that he managed to finish it on exactly the 200th measure

it's absolutely remarkable how each and every one of your videos is both entertaining and educational, giving me a much deeper appreciation for the music i previously would've considered "boring" or "generic". love this channel.

We’ve missed you Richard! Happy New Year and also, I like the new “Call to Action” feature! 😅

Another brilliant video that shows off Haydn's ingenuity and ways to have fun! Also yes, I will refer to this quartet now as "Der Springteufel"!

Just like Haydn's sense of humor matured over the years in his pieces, it's great to see your sense of humor maturing over the years in these videos. The part about the jack-in-the-box absolutely cracked me up!

Fabulous analysis. You've convinced me on the nickname; I've updated all the relevant Wikipedia pages accordingly (at least, the ones that weren't already updated by other viewers!)

This really is very good indeed, even judged by the consistent high-quality of your other Haydn videos; I watched and enjoyed this with great appreciation, and offer sincere thanks for all the work that went into making it.

When I looked on Wikipedia, someone had edited the op 76 page to include Jack in the Box - hopefully it stays!

What a great video! This is really beautifully done. I will prepare this quartet for our next amateur meeting, and I promise to call it the Jack-in-a-Box quartet. By the way, as an amateur composer of string chamber music I find your videos absolutely illuminating and inspiring, as Haydn’s quartets are a model to which I (hopelessly) aspire.

I, as a member of the United Grand Lodge of Haydn Fanatics, previously appointed by the Grand Master Himself for knowing the 68th Symphony by Haydn, hereby swear oath to spread among the People the new nickname for the string quartet op. 76 no. 1.

Wow just another great video with SO much depth into its subject...I especially liked the way you took the time towards the beginning to actually show all of the thematic transformations he achieves with the 3 ideas on the opening page; that helps you realize the unity involved in his craft and really helps it sink in later...also loved the jack in the box approach to demonstrate by the way

Well, I looked on Wikipedia, and there the entry says:- Quartet No. 60 in G major ("Jack-in-the-box"), Op. 76, No. 1, FHE No. 40, Hoboken No. III:75 Quick work by someone then!😁

YES! New Richard Atkinson dropped. This, along with Classical Nerd's recent video essay about the history of the Sonata, has slaked my beginning of week thirst for musical enlightenment.

A Haydn video!

thank you for your amazing work your videos have taught me a lot and often inspired me to compose by myself

Happy and musical 2023 and thanks for another fine video.

Love seeing a new video from you in my feed

Why was the jack-in-the-box feeling down? Because he was stuck in a rut.

8:14 That's a great chord, did not expect that from a Haydn quartet

I wish music lessons in the public school in the 90s in the Germany that I attended had been that interesting! I always loved music, but like art lessons, it would have been absolutely awesome if teachers would have talked about the music, the musicians, art styles, and of course jokes in music and paintings. Thank you, Richard!

9:14 We can't have it all, and I love the way you stretch the diversions into other compositions. But I must mention for anyone who likes when Haydn gets "spooky..." The Trio in Haydn's Symphony 58 in F Major has to be the bleakest and most startling "spooky" moment he ever did.

you are amazing!!!! I love your videos and happy new year!

By interesting coincidence Dave Hurwitz just put out a video on his YT channel about humor in music, also focusing on Haydn, specifically the Symphonies # 60, 93 and 94.

I see a Haydn video by Richard Atkinson, I click.

I'd never heard this piece before. I'm not fully through watching the video, but the thematic resemblance to the closing movement of Schubert's Symphony No. 9, "the Great," is striking to me.

Haydn’s “Jack in the box” String Quartet. Sounds great.

I played this very quartet last semester! If only...

Thank You for (as usual) great video! Great analyse of great movement! It's fun to invent new nicknames. I think they are allowed to be anachronistic (For example "Elvira Madigan" ;) ;) ;) - I don't like it, but it is as it is. ) I heard the diminution of secondary subject of Your speech at about 5:00 ;) Thank You also for mentioning Rossini! He was a great composer, showing sometimes great skills in counterpoint. He is very important for me for personal reasons - all my interest in classical music begin with him. Talking about nicknames. The "Timpani blow" comes from this jack-in-the-box or surprise in second movement of 94th symphony. But there is another remarkable timpani blow in this piece, or rather a series of timpani blows, near the end of the finale. I was wondering, why the nickname doesn't come from them. Timpani plays solo there, not just a note in a loud chord of whole orchestra, as it usual does. But I understand, that using this instrument in slow movement was also unusual at the time. From spooky music I recommend the third movement of Brahms Violin Sonata in D-minor (You probably know it) Thank You for great work!

great video!!

great as usual

A minor key finale to a major key piece in Haydn? Okay, that's new to me. I've seen minor key finales to major key pieces before, but it's always been in Romantic composers like Brahms where I see it.

Just a couple trivial additions to all the excellent points you made in the video: 1. As you correctly state about three minutes in, standard practice during the compositional lifetimes of Haydn and Mozart was indeed for sonata form movements in minor keys to modulate to the relative major rather than, as with comparable major key ones, to the dominant. An "exception that proves the rule" is the first movement of Hob. I:45, the "Farewell" symphony. There the F-sharp minor tonic music only feints toward the relative major key of A Major during the exposition, before swerving off and finally establishing the dominant key, C-sharp minor. 2. Besides the two string quartets with major key tonics you mention that have tonic minor fourth movements (although both eventually end in the tonic major), there are two symphonies that do the same. No. 70 starts and ends in D Major. However, in between the key of D minor takes it own strong turns at center stage, both beginning and ending the second movement, as well as starting/dominating most of the fourth movement/finale. The fourth movement of No 60, "Il Distratto," (roughly, "The Absent-minded Gentleman," with the entire symphony derived from the overture to and incidental music for a play of that name) also begins in C minor, despite the tonic of the symphony being C Major. Like the final movements of No. 70 and the two Op. 76 string quartets you mentioned, this one too eventually ends in the tonic major. Except...the fourth movement of No. 60 is, unlike those other works, not the finale for the symphony, but instead there are two more movements to go. The symphony as a whole has many, many examples of musical "absent-mindedness." Two of them are demonstrated via that fourth and succeeding pair of movements. The players have apparently "forgotten'" that the fourth movement of a symphony is "supposed" to be the last one, and that no other major composer would write a 6-movement symphony for many, many years to come (cf. Mahler's 3rd). And, more pertinent to this discussion, the fourth movement of a symphony in a major key was "supposed" to be in that key and not the tonic minor. Since this symphony predates the other three works in question, it actually represents Haydn's first use of that latter technique.

Do you know the Panocha quartet recording of this work ? Listening to it a week after watching your video, I am suddenly reminded of your analysis: their interpretation of the 3rd movement, the Menuetto, sounds very Jack-in-the-boxish. The Panocha quartet takes it really slow, it's almost boring, but by contract it makes the sforzando bits really stand out, very much like jumpscare.

Happy new year full of scherzandi

What a creative, entertaining, and insightful musical analysis! The preceding sentence applies to all your videos, but this one IMHO exceeds even your own typical high standard. A point you correctly stress is that, no matter how simple or complex his music sounds at a given time within a particular piece, in all but perhaps his very earliest works Haydn meticulously fashions his compositions so that everything hangs together superbly. The great musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon repeatedly called the composer “music’s greatest craftsman.” While a few other composers might possibly challenge him for that title (Bach and Beethoven come most immediately to mind), at best they could only be peers, sharing it with him, and not superiors. To cite one excellent source, James Webster’s “Haydn’s ‘Farewell Symphony’ and the Idea of Classical Style” gives a thorough discussion of how Haydn uses strategically placed notes, chords, motifs, themes, etc. as building blocks to create both individual movements (such as the one you analyzed), and how he integrates them into the work overall. A present-day analogy is that the composer makes his own custom set of musical Legos. Using a large number of total blocks but a deliberately limited set of sizes and colors, Haydn then locks them together in myriad combinations and orders, one way, then another, until finally he winds up with a monumental sonic structure forming a complete and impressive whole. But a more classic comparison for individual movements such as the one you spotlight is to an old-fashioned mechanical watch or clock. The inner workings of such devices seem at first sight to be a bewildering assortment of moving gears, powered by a wound spring or other energy source. Your breakdown of how Haydn uses his musical materials is analogous to taking apart such a mechanical clock, pointing out each of its different-sized gears and other components, then putting everything back together and showing how each individual part relates to and works with the others to make the clock keep time. And you make a convincing case for applying the nickname of “Jack-in-the-Box” to Op. 76 No. 1, based on its finale. An alternative might have the “Alarm Clock” string quartet, with the specific type of clock I am thinking of being the old mechanical wind-up nightstand variety fitted with a loud, clanging bell. With that kind, the comparison would be that Haydn sporadically startles his listeners unpredictably, like the clock’s alarm going off to suddenly awaken an early-morning sleeper (and as he may have literally done for the late-evening type in the second movement of Hob. I:94 at its premiere...). Or, as a modern update, and with appropriate (financial?) support by a certain technology company headquartered in Cupertino CA, this work could be (somewhat awkwardly) called instead the “iPhone Clock App Alarm Function” string quartet. However, any potential new nickname for this string quartet with the word “Clock” in it is doomed to failure. Hob. I:101 already has a lock (or is that tick-tock…) on that particular term. Thus, both on its own merits and a default concession by its most worthy competitors as a nickname, I support your christening of Op. 76 No. 1 as the “Jack-in-the-Box” string quartet. And, although the failure of the last potential nickname I mentioned in the prior paragraph meant losing the possible support of one major corporation, the alternative you originated might win it from a particular fast-food chain based in San Diego…

I love your videos, i have learned a lot from them. I am needing a program for the analyses required in my school and I would like to know what program do you use to highlight the lines and motives in the sheet music

While your evidence for Haydn intentionally evoking an existing machine in that section may be inconclusive, I think it's clear that he was keenly interested in machinery and how music could both function and dysfunction as machinery. From his palindromic minuet in Symphony #47 to the machine-like continuous pulse of #61/i, he constantly found ways to evoke the advantages and disadvantages of machines in his work -- a fixation he shared, IMO, with the later comic genius Buster Keaton. The "clock" symphony that you cite (and that symphony has several passages in other movements that make this case) is another example, as are the final bars of the fifth movement of #61 where a self-contained repeating pattern speeds up "on its own" as though a machine has gone haywire. Probably the most poignant example is #65/iii, where Haydn invents the "broken record" effect (deployed by Spike Jones many times) before there were records. So it's certainly believable that he would have consciously evoked another "problematic" machine, a jack-in-the-box, for this passage.

Thank you! I haven't been using my musical -analytic brain for awhile, and how better to get back into the groove than with Maestro "Papa" Haydn?

18:08 the ending of op. 33 no. 2 is the funniest in my opinion

Do you have any videos planned on Reger’s works? I find them the pinnacle of German form and counterpoint, which you cover so well

Haydn es siempre sorprendente, es uno de los grandes intelectos de la humanidad!! El tema final de la coda me recuerda también a la danza del glockenspiel de monostatos y sus esclavos en la Flauta Mágica de su amigo Mozart…

Ждём анализы симфоний Брукнера.

The way the silly quasi-mechanical major-key theme caps off what was a restless, urgent minor-key movement is reminiscent of one of Haydn's greatest symphony movements, the opening of #80, where again, a cutesy coda theme enters that is completely out of step with the highly serious and important minor-key music that has dominated up to that point. The further joke is that throughout the development and rest of the movement, Haydn keeps replaying this silly theme without developing it all (other than changing instrumentation) and the "important" music can barely get a word in edgewise!

The development section must've influenced and inspired the Charlotte's web theme song from the classic movie! Fantastic vid on a fantastic work! Jack quartet it is! 🤣💖🎊🎉🎶🎶

I can’t help noticing they are not playing the bowing as written in “The Rossini Moment”! They’re continuing to slur the triplets. I think their overall tempo is a bit too fast. (I seem to think this about almost all the recordings you choose to illustrate these otherwise excellent analysis videos. I agree with all the other positive comments!)

Jack-in-the-Box it is maestro - I love Haydn sort of Shostakovich if he'd been happy.

this coda is a common moment of grace in the classicism. Your interpretation is valid, but the composition there is nothing extraordinary, just a very good solution for the ending. Contrast is the main subject of classicism, and here he does this statement. Very minor, very major.... The analogy is valid, although i find not apropriated. But the classification as joke I find not apropriated and not valid. And the idea of giving a name to his quartet i find interesting for next attempts, if it done properly. Observe why and how the other symphonies got these names. Maybe atopic for a next of these very dedicated videos you do

Actual LOL

Academic paper? Why set your sights so low Rich, oh Grand Master?I’ll be impressed when “Schachtelteufel” appears in the next printing of the Norton Anthology. 😆

the name of this quartett has, of cours, to be "Springteufel-quartett"

Don't sell yourself short on nicknaming authority. You've appointed yourself Grandmaster of the United Grand Lodge of Haydn Fanatics. I happen to be the president of the International Society of Haydn Symphony Nicknames and have generated appropriate nicknames for all 104 symphonies. None have yet taken hold in the broader culture just yet, but these things take time. So go ahead and use whatever title you bestow on yourself to set Jack In The Box in stone as the requisite nickname for Op. 76 no. 1 - at least I will never call it anything else!

Where are the toy experts

It seems you are a music surgeon as well

The analysis is very good, but personally I prefer analysis of a piece 'as a whole' than analysis of excerpts here and there. Fragments of deep knowledge is good but understanding of great works as a whole would be much better and that is what I am searching for.

This was actually my least favourite of Haydn‘s op. 76. Looks like it has to be changed after watching this great video!

i will be Bach

No, his funniest joke is the bassoon going for the fart.

Yeah, the funniest jokes are those that require at least half an hour long explanations. Really, the thubnail of this video is just something if you take the perspective of a regular person

Haydn's silly, idiotic ending. And what about Bartok' as silly and idiotic transformation of the main theme at the end of his Fifth Quartet?

It’s really not that funny. God what a waste of everyone’s time, particularly your own.