Mendelssohn String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13
Mendelssohn String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13
Adagio–Allegro vivace
Adagio non lento
Intermezzo
Presto
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born at Hamburg, Germany on 3 February 1809 and died in Leipzig, Germany on 4 November 1847. He began the score of the quartet in July 1827 and completed it on 27 October 1827. The piece was published as Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 in 1830. On 14 February 1832 the work was premiered in Paris by violinists Pierre Baillot and Eugène Sauzay, violist Chrétien Uhran, and cellist Louis Norblin.
“Ist Es Wahr?” (Is it true?) The adolescent Mendelssohn poses this question in a song setting, composed in 1827, of his friend Johann Gustav Droyson’s poem “Frage”. Mendelssohn was desperately in love, possibly with Betty Pistor, a singer in the choir he accompanied on Friday nights in Berlin. Material from the song would serve as the thematic backbone of the A minor string quartet that Mendelssohn would start composing later that year.
The Mendelssohn family made sure to keep up with the latest musical trends, and in the 1820s this meant being familiar with the works of Beethoven, who by this time was well into his late period. Mendelssohn’s father Abraham was not terribly fond of Beethoven’s music but he made sure to purchase all of his works directly after they were published for the study purposes of his children. This would prove to be crucial to Mendelssohn’s development as a composer (along with his grandmother’s gift of the score to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1824). The young Mendelssohn’s fascination with the late quartets of Beethoven is evident in a letter he wrote to his friend, the Swedish composer Adolf Frederick Linbad:
Have you seen his new quartet in Bb major [Op. 130]? And that in C# minor [Op. 131]? Get to know them, please. The piece in Bb contains a cavatina in Eb where the first violin sings the whole time, and the world sings along… The piece in C# has another one of these transitions, the introduction is a fugue!!
Beethoven’s death in early 1827 may have pushed Mendelssohn past the anxiety of influence that most composers after Haydn suffered when it came to writing string quartets. Up until this point Mendelssohn’s chamber music output included the three piano quartets Opp. 1-3, Octet Op. 20 and Viola Quintet Op. 18; all masterworks in their own right but also genres that did not have as much precedence.
References abound to Beethoven’s quartets in Op. 13 (which is Mendelssohn’s first, written slightly before the String Quartet in Eb major Op. 12). The work begins very similarly to Beethoven’s Op. 132 (also in A minor), featuring a slow lyrical introduction followed by a swirl of sixteenth notes and then a declamation of the main theme. The viola’s arpeggiated passage at the end of the first movement make reference to Beethoven’s Op. 74. The second movement mixture of lyrical song and fugato is a direct reference to Beethoven’s Op. 95.
Mendelssohn uses Beethoven’s method of providing unity throughout a composition by linking all four movements through motivic references to the “Ist Es Wahr” theme taken from the “Frage” setting. He wrote that “[y]ou will hear its notes resound in the first and last movements, and sense its feeling in all four.” His extensive use of counterpoint in the quartet reveals an indebtedness not only to Beethoven but also to Bach.
The introduction of “poetic meaning” into Op. 13 also pays homage to Beethoven’s use of recitative in Op. 132 and the Ninth Symphony as well as the “Muß es sein?” (Must it be?) question posed in Op. 135. Mendelssohn’s use of his “Frage” setting propels us fully into the Romantic era. Direct quotations occur in the introduction of the first movement as well as in the closing coda of the last movement, an extended restatement of the first-movement intro. Only the question is asked in the first movement: “Is it true that you’ll always be waiting for me beneath the arbor?” This propels us into a dramatic narrative spanning all four movements of the quartet, where the transformation of the “Ist Es War?” theme conveys a wide range of emotions brought about by posing that question. We finally arrive at an answer at the close of the fourth movement when the answer from the “Frage” setting is quoted: “What I am feeling is only understood by her who feels with me and who always remains true to me.”
Mendelssohn wrote to his sister about a “very dubious compliment” that he received from one Abbé Bernardin at the 1832 premiere of the work in Paris. The Abbé was sitting next to Mendelssohn at the performance and whispered to Mendelssohn after the recitative section starting the fourth movement, “He has that in one of his symphonies.” The confused Mendelssohn proceeded to ask who the Abbé was referring to and he responded, “Why, Beethoven, the composer of this quartet.”
-program notes by Daniel Doña