The involved circumstances that seem to have attended the Op. 50 string quartets at each stage of their history are remarkable enough in themselves, and few parallels can be found elsewhere in Haydn's output. It is all the more appropriate, therefore, that an extraordinary new chapter should have been added to this story within the past ten years. In the absence of any surviving contemporary or near-contemporary criticism of the works and in the context of the comparative neglect of the set, the reappearance in 1982 of the autographs of Nos. 3 to 6 has allowed the opus to reassert itself with a vengeance; the four works concerned can boast a tale whose richness and improbability are second to none. Not only do these autographs show many substantial differences from the standard editions, but, just as importantly, their recent reappearance provides for us a vivid and direct link with the past. At the same time, from both a musical and a documentary point of view, the works have also now acquired a new freshness and relevance to the present.

The beginning of this story suggests that the celebration of composers' anniversaries may after all have its positive side. Thus the fact that in 1982 Haydn turned two hundred and fifty years old, as it were, prompted the organization of a Haydn Festival in Melbourne to which the conductor Christopher Hogwood was invited.