Talk:String Quartet No. 21 (Mozart)

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written in a similar style to Haydn?

This statement surprised me, as generally the critical pattern tends to be to say this of the Haydn Quartets op. 10. The usual critical opinion of the Prussian Quartets op. 18 tends to be 'poor Mozart, who had to compromise himself for the fat Prussian king; how amazing that the quartets are still not bad!' in an air of polite condescension, clearly showing the characteristic lack of understanding of the late works. (See for example Eric Blom's appraisal for the series The Master Musicians, or that of the epitome of pompous unmusical ultracrepidarians, Hans Keller in The Mozart Companion.) Haydn's Prussian set does not do the cello many soloistic favours; while the first violin does get these in the Tost sets, the other instruments do not. This is rather unlike Mozart's practice in KV 575. If the intent is the monothematicism and latent cyclicism in this quartet, I am markedly unimpressed when these can already be found in KV 570 (the former) and KV 516 (the latter). To paraphrase Charles Rosen, then, it is easy to believe in Haydn and Mozart influencing each other in the 1780s, but it is difficult to identify this influence precisely. At best they were working in "parallel lines that occasionally converged". I think we should remove this sentence, therefore, as uncited and unciteable. Double sharp (talk) 07:13, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]