String Quartet in F major Op41 No2 [1842]

Bach was important to Schumann too. When he felt that the piano was “getting too restrictive” and seriously turned to chamber music for the first time Schumann prepared himself by making a thorough study of counterpoint in general and fugue in particular. Unlike Mozart, however, he also had a variety of string-quartet models to choose from, not just Haydn’s but Mozart’s and Beethoven’s too and Mendelssohn’s recently published Op.44. At the same time, although he was thinking on those classical lines, his deepest inspiration was still his relationship with Clara. Mendelssohn was to be the dedicatee of the Op41 Quartets but Clara was to receive the three scores as a 23rd birthday present in September 1842.

The intimate song-like quality of the first and only main theme of the opening Allegro vivace is one of the most attractive aspects of the work. Its apparently easy phrasing conceals the artful subtlety of its rhythms just as the spontaneous way in which it is extended through most of the exposition conceals the contrapuntal ingenuity of the textures that carry it. The development is more vigorous but only to offset its sometimes rustic charms.

The object of admiration in the Andante is neither Mendelssohn nor Clara Schumann but the slow movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in E flat, Op.127, which is also in variation form, also in A flat major and also in 12/8 time. Schumann’s theme is more complex than Beethoven’s, however, and is so extended on its introduction and its reprise that it also acts as the outer sections of a ternary construction. The Scherzo is a more original concept, not so much because of the awkwardly syncopated, somewhat pianistic arpeggio figuration in the C minor outer sections as because of the cheerful Trio section with its buffo bass line on cello and the return of that comedy episode to turn the modality to C major at the end.

The confirmation that the Quartet in F major is addressed to Clara is supplied by the Allegro molto vivace. The movement begins in the moto perpetuo manner of the of the recently completed finale of the First Symphony but just before the end of the exposition the key changes from F to C major for an echo of the phrase from Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte that Schumann had used in the past and would use again as a secret dedication to Clara. That phrase dominates the development until the cello offers a virtuoso challenge to the first violin to resume its moto perpetuo.