ABSTRACT
By 1785, Joseph Haydn was firmly established as the most celebrated living composer of instrumental music, a reputation based principally on his symphonies and string quartets. It is no coincidence that the first and only opus Leopold Mozart chose to dedicate to Haydn should have been a set of string quartets. Haydn had opted for a relatively brief development section after the varied reprise; Mozart, in turn, blurs the distinction between recapitulation and development by interpolating secondary developmental sections into the recapitulation. The technique of the varied reprise is of course not unique to Haydn; indeed, it is most closely associated with C. P. E. Bach. The idea of transforming an earlier model is certainly not unique to Op. 10. Imitatio was still a basic element of musical pedagogy and poetics in the late eighteenth century, and Mozart, like many other composers, based new works on specific models throughout his career, even beyond his early youth.
