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Mendelssohn and the string quartet

Between Beethoven and Schubert on the one hand and Bartók on the other, Mendelssohn was the one great composer to devote himself over the whole length of his career to the string quartet. This is not to belittle the achievements of Schumann and Brahms, say, or Debussy and Ravel but their interest in the medium was confined to short periods and produced only single works or groups of two or three. Like Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, Mendelssohn was himself a string instrumentalist and, like them, preferred to play the viola, which was much the best way of getting to know the inner workings of the quartet texture. It was presumably his early experience of domestic music-making that inspired the String Quartet in E flat that he completed in a mere eleven days at the age of fourteen. Although he was wise enough to withhold that work during his lifetime - it was first published more than thirty years after his death and is not included in these concerts - alongside its echoes of Mozart and Haydn there are interesting anticipations of the miraculous Octet he was to write two years later.

The earliest of the mature quartets - and in Mendelssohn’s case maturity as a composer began in mid-teens, with the Octet and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream - was the one in A minor Op.13 written in 1827 under the stimulus of the recent and revelatory publication of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor Op.132. Although there is a distinctly personal side to both Op.13 and its successor in E flat major Op.12, Mendelssohn had reason to be embarrassed by the overt Beethoven influence in these works. ‘I was listening to a performance of my Quartet in A minor,’ he wrote to his sister Fanny from Paris in 1832, ‘and in the last movement my neighbour pulled my coat and said, “He has that in one of his symphonies.” “Who?” I asked, rather embarrassed. “Beethoven, the composer of this Quartet”… This was bitter sweet!’ Anyway, in the next group of string quartets - published in 1839 as Op.44 although they were not initially intended to form a coherent set - the Beethoven influence is so well absorbed that, while it is still there, it never makes its presence felt in such a way that one can detect its precise source in the Beethoven catalogue. Only one of these works, the earliest of them in E minor Op.44 No.2, is personal in inspiration but they are all pure Mendelssohn, highly attractive in personality and impeccable in craftsmanship.

What Mendelssohn might have achieved had he lived a few years longer can only be a matter for speculation. The astonishing expressive freedom of his last completed work, the String Quartet in F minor Op.80, might have been the beginning of a new development in his creativity or it might have been restricted to the traumatic period following his sister Fanny’s death. The posthumously published fragments (Op.81 Nos 1 and 2) of what would have been his next quartet suggest the latter but, as the work of a composer who tended to relax in his middle movements, which this Andante and Scherzo surely are, they are far from conclusive evidence either way.

String Quartet in E flat major Op.12 (1829)

Adagio non troppo - allegro non tardante

Canzonetta: allegretto

Andante espressivo -

Molto allegro e vivace

Although two eventful late-teen years passed between the composition of the Quartet in A minor Op.13 and that of its successor in E flat major Op.12, the two works were inspired by much the same passions. Mendelssohn was in love not only with Beethoven’s string quartets but also, it seems, with an amateur singer in Berlin called Betty Pistor. The Beethoven influence is unmistakable in both cases and, while there is no actual documentary evidence of Betty’s involvement in Op.13, the dedication of the manuscript of the present work to “B.P” (changed to “B.R.” when she got engaged to Adolf Rudorff) surely indicates that she was on his mind as he wrote it.

The dual inspiration of the Quartet in E flat - Beethoven on the one hand and apparently unrequited love on the other - is one of the factors that make it so distinctive. There is a clear thematic resemblance between the Adagio introduction and that of Beethoven’s Quartet in the same key Op.74, just as there is between the following Allegro non tardante and the Allegro of Beethoven’s Quartet in E flat Op.127. Mendelssohn’s Allegro non tardante departs from sonata-form regularity, however, by way of a romantic event that is to have far-reaching consequences. The exposition is classically authentic in every respect except that, as so often in Mendelssohn’s first movements, the first and second subjects are not very different in character. But at the beginning of the development section the first subject re-enters in its original key and, on a diminuendo to pp, a quite new theme appears on second violin in the alien key of F minor - which dramatic intervention, together with the reappearance of that theme in still unreconciled F minor at the end of the recapitulation, changes the shape of the movement and leaves a problem unresolved.

There is no precedent in Beethoven for the Canzonetta in G minor, which is thoroughly characteristic Mendelssohn, above all in the whispered scherzo-like figuration in the quicker middle section. The serious-minded Andante espressivo in B flat might owe something to late Beethoven but, as its passionate recitatives on first violin suggests, it might owe just as much to the composers’s feelings for Betty Pistor.

The Andante espressivo is connected directly to the finale, which is a remarkable movement by any standards. While pursuing its own urgent and texturally resourceful agenda in C minor, it finds time to halt its 12/8 impetus and incorporate an echo of the F minor theme from the first movement - in its original 4/4 metre and its original key and once more on a hushed second violin. As it becomes clear that the F minor theme and the first subject of the Molto allegro e vivace are related, the initial impulse is restored. But again 12/8 gives way to 4/4, this time to include a varied reminiscence of the Adagio introduction, another echo of the F minor theme and then a recall of the main theme of the first movement, which sweetly ends the work in E flat major.

String Quartet in A minor Op.13 (1827)

Adagio - allegro vivace

Adagio non lento - poco più animato - tempo 1

Intermezzo: allegretto con moto - allegro di molto

Presto - adagio come primo

In the summer of 1827 Mendelssohn wrote an amorous little song called Frage (Question) which meant so much to him that, like a fond memory, it haunts the String Quartet in A minor that he started a few days later. As he wrote to a friend, “You will hear its notes resound in the first and last movements and sense its feeling in all four.” Like its successor in E flat, the Quartet in A minor is a tribute to Beethoven and something very much more personal at the same time.

The Adagio introduction to the first movement is Mendelssohn’s answer to the Assai sostenuto beginning of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor Op.132 - with the difference that it is in A major and that it includes allusions to Frage, the most significant phrase of which is the three notes that go with the words “Ist es wahr?” (Is it true?) poised over a sustained viola note towards the end. A trill and a crescendo on the viola lead directly into the A minor Allegro vivace and a main theme that shares characteristics with both the “Ist es wahr?” motif and the equivalent material in Beethoven’s Op.132. Mendelssohn scarcely relaxes the pressure through two similarly urgent second-subject themes and a development section dominated by the salient three notes of the main theme. It is a masterfully sustained construction abundant in contrapuntal resource and crowned by a dramatic coda.

While the F major Adagio non lento has the thoughtfulness of a late-Beethoven slow movement, it betrays no direct model until the main theme gives way to a slow fugue which, beginning on a suddenly exposed viola, inevitably calls the Allegro ma non troppo of Beethoven’s Op.95 to mind. At the same time, however, that fugue reflects the personal side of Mendelssohn’s inspiration in that its subject derives, by a melodic inversion and a shift of rhythmic emphasis, from the “Ist es wahr?” motif.

The Intermezzo is just what it says, an entertaining diversion from the more serious issues represented by the rest of work. It features a faintly lugubrious serenade in A minor and a quintessentially Mendelssohnian scherzo in A major, the two elements presented in alternation and then most subtly combined just before the end.

The discussion is resumed in earnest in the final Presto, which begins with a violin recitative of positively operatic eloquence and which is motivated by a main theme as urgent as that of the last movement of Beethoven’s Op.132. With the entry of a second subject in characteristic staccato figuration and for the first half of the development section it seems that the movement will conform to the sonata-form pattern. On the entry of a suddenly exposed viola, however, and a recall of the fugue from the Adagio non lento such conventional expectations have to be discarded. Mendelssohn is working towards a recapitulation of the Presto material and at the same time towards a summation of the whole work - which, by way of another violin recitative and a last reminder of the fugue subject, he achieves in a conclusive recall of the Adagio introduction. It is again in A major but is now expanded to include, as well as the “Ist es wahr?” motif, a more extended reminiscence of the emotive melodic line of Frage.

String Quartet in D major Op.44 No.1 (1838)

Molto allegro vivace

Menuetto: un poco allegretto

Andante espressivo ma con moto

Presto con brio

By the time Mendelssohn came to write the three quartets published as Op.44 in 1839 Betty Pistor was history. He had had the good fortune to meet and marry Cécile Jeanreaud, another amateur singer, to whom he was initially attracted by her “luxurious golden-brown hair,” her complexion of “transparent delicacy” and her “most bewitching deep blue eyes.” Strangely, however, the earliest of these quartets, the one in E minor issued as Op.44 No.2, which was written on their honeymoon in the Black Forest in the spring of 1837, is far from being the most ecstatic. That distinction surely belongs to the last in order of composition, issued as Op.44 No.1, which was completed more than a year later in July 1838.

Certainly, there is nothing in any of the three works to compare with the outburst of joy represented by the irrepressible opening theme of the Quartet in D major. Introduced by an impetuous violin over a throbbing rhythm in the inner parts, it animates and dominates much of the rest of the movement. It is true that there is a more subdued second subject, a quiet little march tune in the minor, but it is excluded from the development and its formal recall is promptly thrust aside by the main theme in its impatience to get on with a vigorously extended and most resourcefully scored coda.

Mendelssohn’s decision to revert to the minuet at this stage, when he was such a master of the modern scherzo, has often been questioned. It seems likely, however, that after the restless activity of the first movement he felt the need for something more restrained than one of his characteristically hyper-active scherzos. His choice of the old-fashioned dance form does indeed secure a graceful kind of serenity while retaining something of the momentum generated by the preceding Molto allegro vivace. Interestingly enough, according to the metronome marks, the following Andante espressivo ma con moto should proceed at much the same tempo as the Menuetto: again, it seems, Mendelssohn is concerned to keep things moving. So instead of introducing a full-scale slow movement he offers a kind of song without words featuring not only the rueful opening theme in B minor but also two gently paced scherzo episodes and an imaginatively conceived if modest cadenza.

The last movement immediately picks up the momentum which has been preserved under the surface since the end of the Molto allegro vivace. A brilliantly sustained Presto con brio, it finds its energy in its restless main theme, its poetry in a rather more lyrical second subject and its structural strength in the opening four-note motif which echoes throughout the movement but most effectively of all in an emphatically articulated fugato shortly before the end.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

String Quartet in E minor, Op.44 No.2 (1837)

Allegro assai appassionato

Scherzo: allegro di molto

Andante

Presto agitato

Having written virtually no chamber music since the String Quartet in E flat eight years earlier - largely because of his involvement with his orchestras in Düsseldorf and Leipzig - Mendelssohn found the time and the inspiration to return to the medium when on honeymoon in the Black Forest in the spring of 1837. Strangely, however, the Quartet in E minor, which was begun at that time and completed in the summer, is beset by anxieties which it cannot shake off. Regularly compared to the Violin Concerto in the same key, it is actually denied the E-major happy ending accorded to the later work. If it had been intended from the first as one of a set of three, as a minor-key contrast between two more cheerful companions in the major, its unhappy mood could have been assumed for professional purposes. But, although it was eventually published in that way, as Op.42 No.2 between quartets in D major and E flat major, it was not conceived in that way.

The passionate opening theme - a close relative of the main theme of the finale of Mozart’s Symphony in G minor, itself a byword for anxiety - dominates the first movement. The consolatory second subject, introduced in G major by first violin after a transitional passage of prolonged turbulence, has no more than a passing influence: all that is heard of it is a promptly suppressed entry in the development section, a regulation recall in E major in the recapitulation and a brief tranquillo allusion before the firmly E minor ending.

Highly characteristic Mendelssohn material though they are, the two middle movements - a beautifully scored fairy-tale Scherzo in E major and a lyrical Andante in G major - are not so much contributions to the long-term argument as interludes within it. The Presto agitato resumes the drama in E minor as though nothing had happened in the meantime. While the positively elated second subject has more influence than its counterpart in the first movement - it even persuades the agitated main theme to put in an appearance in an extended passage in E major in the recapitulation - the outcome, confirmed by a con fuoco coda in E minor, is no less desperate for that.

String Quartet in E flat major, Op.44 No.3 (1838)

Allegro vivace

Scherzo: assai leggiero vivace

Adagio non troppo

Molto allegro con fuoco

The first movement of the Quartet in E flat, the second of the Op.44 set in order of composition, is one of the most subtle of all Mendelssohn’s constructions. Taking a hint from Haydn perhaps, he takes one tiny motif - the five-note flourish heard on a violin in the very first bar - and threads it through the texture in such a way that it is there most of the time on one instrument or another. Like Haydn again, he avoids a clearly defined second subject, introducing a variant of the ubiquitous flourish in its place. But then he has a different idea. Briefly, towards the end of the exposition, over quietly repeated quavers in the inner parts the first violin tentatively suggests a new theme as a kind of afterthought. Although no one gives it much attention at this point, that theme grows in importance in the development, where it is reintroduced and expanded by an eloquent cello, and it takes its due place in the recapitulation.

The least predictable of Mendelssohn’s first movements is followed by the most intricate of his scherzos. Although it depends for its consistency on the rapidly articulated staccato quavers of the main theme, it is held together by the repeated notes which introduce it and which echo throughout at every dynamic level and in a variety of instrumental colours. Two other themes are deftly worked in - one in detached phrases introduced by the viola and taken up by the others in canon, the other a contrastingly sustained melodic line drawn by first violin or by viola and cello against continuing quaver activity and repeated notes elsewhere in the texture.

In the superlative circumstances, it is fitting that the Adagio non troppo should be one of the most extended slow movements in the six quartets. While it does not amount to a confession like the Adagio of Op.80, it is intimately and anxiously expressive in the wayward harmonies of its opening theme and yet reassuring in the more open melody introduced as a second subject by second violin and viola over an undulating bass line on the cello. But what gives the movement its depth is a middle section based on a theme similar to (though not quite the same as) the personal motto theme used by Bach in his Art of Fugue and by countless other composers since then. It is given appropriate contrapuntal treatment here and recalled alongside the two other main themes at the end.

If there is a miscalculation in Op.44 No.3 it is in the proportions of the concluding Molto allegro con fuoco. Intended no doubt as a tribute to the composer’s favourite violinist, Ferdinand David, who was to take part in the first performance of the work in the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1838, it is an extraordinary test of stamina and agility - and not only in the first violin part. While exerting most of its pressure by through the hectic figuration, the rondo construction does two or three episodes of comparatively lyrical respite, the last of them just before a coda of surpassing virtuoso brilliance.

String Quartet in F minor Op.80 (1847)

Allegro vivace assai

Allegro assai

Adagio

Finale: allegro molto

The sudden death of his sister Fanny in May 1847, when she was 42 and he was 38, had a traumatic effect on Mendelssohn. A composer and accomplished musician herself, she had always been exceptionally close to her brother - “part of myself every moment of my life,” as he said to a friend a few days after her death. The String Quartet in F minor was written three or four months later at Interlaken in Switzerland, where his family had taken him to recover from the shock. It was the last major work Mendelssohn completed: he died in November of the same year.

As a requiem for Fanny, and perhaps an anticipation of the composer’s own death too, the Quartet in F minor is not a happy work. When he played it to his colleague Ignaz Moscheles shortly after it was written and Moscheles observed, wrongly, that all four movements were in F minor - the Adagio is actually in A flat major - Mendelssohn did not disagree: “Yes, that hadn’t occurred to me,” he said, implicitly acknowledging that, whatever the technical situation, all four movements carry the same emotional message.

From the dramatic beginning, marked by a painful stab on the cello and shuddering tremolandos in all four parts, the pressure is scarcely relaxed throughout the first movement. The comparatively lyrical second subject, quietly introduced in the relative major by first violin, is effectively undermined by the persistent syncopations on the cello underneath it. Far from finding peace or more than momentary consolation, the Allegro vivace assai proceeds inexorably to its despairing presto conclusion.

The second movement, the least Mendelssohnian of all Mendelssohn’s scherzos, is no joke either. If there is anything remotely playful here, alongside the obsessionally syncopated main theme, it is the eerie pizzicato cadences and, in the middle section, the sinister conspiracy between a ground bass on viola and cello and a stealthy counter-melody on the two violins. The Adagio offers only the illusion of a point of repose. Its harmonies, as Moscheles observed, persistently tend towards the minor. Melodic beauty is unsettled by disruptive rhythms and structural balance is upset by a recapitulation that starts too soon and is itself interrupted by a worrying development.

The persecuted Finale of this uniquely inspired string quartet confirms the desperate message: more disturbing even than the anxiously syncopated main theme and the disorientated textures it encounters is an ending which drives the first violin to expressive extremes far beyond the conventional chamber-music limitations.

Andante in E major Op81 No.1 (1847)

Scherzo in A minor Op.81 No.2 (1847)

Had Mendelssohn lived a few months or even a few weeks longer he might well have completed a seventh quartet, possibly in the key of A major. As it turned out, he had time to write only the two central movements, an Andante theme and variations in E major and a Scherzo in A minor. While neither of the two pieces touches on the expressive extremes of the preceding Quartet in F minor, the Andante develops unexpected passion in the last variation, a Presto in E minor, before the return of the theme in its original form. The Scherzo is nearest thing in the string quartets to the famously elfin example of the same form in the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Andante and Scherzo were published three years after the composer’s death together with two other quartet pieces, a Capriccio from 1843 and a Fugue from as early as 1827 - all of them clumsily lumped together as Op.81.

introduction and programme notes by Gerald Larner ©2005