MENDELSSOHN STRING QUARTETS

Mendelssohn was fourteen years old when he composed his E flat major String Quartet in 1823 – two years before Beethoven completed the first of his ‘late’ quartets, and two years before Mendelssohn himself wrote the first version of his Octet. It was published posthumously (in 1879) but is much less well-known than Mendelssohn’s mature quartets. Prodigiously gifted though he was, Mendelssohn was still finding his way stylistically so this work owes much to the models of Haydn and Mozart and, in the finale, to Bach. The Mendelssohn authority R. Larry Todd wrote that the music of the composer’s earliest attempt at writing a full-length string quartet was ‘firmly grounded in the classical tradition’ – but Todd also noted that it was completed in just eleven days: the first page of the autograph manuscript is dated 25 March 1823 and the last page 5 April. The opening Allegro moderato is an elegant, rather Mozartian movement in sonata form, but the Adagio non troppo, in C minor, is darker, with more adventurous chromatic harmony. The Minuet and Trio has distinct echoes of Haydn while the finale is a contrapuntal tour de force: a double fugue which was probably modelled on the fugal finales in three of Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024 

The four pieces for string quartet published in 1850 as Mendelssohn’s Op. 81 were assembled from music written over a twenty-year period: the earliest dates from 1827 while the Scherzo was composed in 1847, the year of Mendelssohn’s death. The gossamer lightness of his scherzos was already apparent in the early Octet, and perhaps the most celebrated example was composed in 1842 for the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Marked Allegro leggiero, the same inspired lightness of touch and dazzling flair for the most delicate instrumental writing are both apparent in this late example of a stand-alone Scherzo for string quartet. 

Nigel Simeone © 2024