FLINDERS QUARTET
Elizabeth Sellars • violin
Wilma Smith • violin
Helen Ireland • viola
Zoe Knighton • cello

AGATHA YIM, POLYPHONIC PICTURES filming and editing
THOMAS GRUBB, MANO MUSICA sound engineering, editing and mastering

Filmed March 2024 in the Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Wurundjeri Country/Southbank

This project was made possible through support from Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne, Creative Australia, and Robert Salzer Foundation

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART 1756-1791
String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K.465 ‘Dissonance’ (composed 1785)

I. Adagio-Allegro
II. Andante cantabile
III. Menuetto. Allegretto.
IV. Molto allegro

This quartet comes from a set of six dedicated to one of Mozart’s closest friends, mentors, and confidants - Joseph Haydn. Inspired by Haydn’s Op. 33 quartets, which had just been performed and published in Vienna, Mozart composed the six “Haydn” quartets without commission, meaning there was obviously a burning passion to explore the unending possibilities that lie within the string quartet medium.

This quartet is the last of the six and is nicknamed the “Dissonance” because of its monumentally original opening which lasts for 22 bars. We’ve tried analysing the harmonic progressions and it's almost impossible. Apparently the first musicians gave the scores back because they were convinced that Mozart had made some errors. Even Haydn was flummoxed, but in the end he conceded, “If Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it.”

We asked our six Emerge composer participants what a lesser composer would have done with the opening, and one said with incredible insight, “Made it longer.”

After the initial 22 bars, the comparative lightness of the ensuing Allegro is made all the more pertinent by omitting the grounding bass of the cello. We are in the familiar realm of a sonata-form first movement which is not without its tricks and trademark Mozart genius, but we never again return to the extra-terrestrial, other worldliness of the opening.

The second theme in the Adagio second movement encases another section of suspension and harmonic ingenuity, but a little more earthbound in its conception. This same strangeness occurs three times, the third time breaking free into a glorious sequence of harmonies.

After the third movement Menuetto with tumultuous C minor trio, Mozart invokes the spirit of his mentor Haydn in a playful Rondo which is complete with his joyful, hiccupping rests.

We love imagining the scene of this quartet’s first outing, with Haydn playing second violin and Mozart playing viola - of course.