Andante from String Quartet in F major, Op. 77, No. 2 (Haydn)

From the artists: Josh and I first encountered this quartet in a music history class, and we were immediately charmed by several aspects: the laid-back melody, the surprising creativity of the structure which does not follow a traditional minuet or a sonata form, and perhaps most importantly the groove of the dotted sixteenth notes above the walking bass-line. We decided to arrange it for our duo, and we were happy to discover that the distribution of the four parts was very intuitive - in general, we distributed the voices equally, except in the presence of continuous 32nd notes, in which case one guitar would take three voices to allow as much expressive freedom as possible to the one with the faster scales. We are very happy to share this piece in which Haydn's characteristic mastery of form meets a lighthearted freedom, manifested in the nonchalance of its catchy melody whose continual evolution gives credit to Haydn’s genius.