Mendelssohn String Quintet in A major, Op. 18

Mendelssohn String Quintet in A Major, Op. 18
Allegro con moto
Intermezzo. Andante sostenuto
Scherzo. Allegro di molto
Allegro vivace

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was born at Hamburg, Germany on 3 February 1809 and died in Leipzig, Germany on 4 November 1847.  He completed the score of the quintet in spring 1826 in its first version consisting of four fast movements. Mendelssohn revised the work in 1832, removing the Minuetto of the 1826 version and inserting an Intermezzo that he subtitled Nachruf (“In Memoriam“) to honor his friend and mentor Eduard Rietz who had taken part in the original performances of the quintet.  The piece was published as Mendelssohn’s Op. 18 by Simrock in 1833. The discarded Minuetto was later published in 1978.

Whenever one considers the young Felix Mendelssohn, comparisons are often made with the other “M” composer who exhibited prodigious talent in childhood: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Examining their biographies reveals many similarities, including the incredible rate at which they were able to write music as well as their skills as keyboard players. So it comes as no surprise that as a young composer Mendelssohn decided to explore two genres of chamber music where Mozart basically provided precedent-setting examples: the piano quartet and the string quintet.  Like Beethoven before him, Mendelssohn felt that in order to write a string quartet he first needed to explore chamber textures by writing in other genres. Beethoven’s genre choices before writing his Op. 18 string quartets were the string trio and piano trio, two genres that Mozart had also helped establish and which Beethoven brought to new levels of ingenuity. These may have provided additional sources of an anxiety of influence for Mendelssohn, which could help explain his choice to work in genres that Beethoven did not extensively explore.  

Mendelssohn chose three piano quartets, written between 1822-1825, to be his first published works.  After writing these he immediately decided to go in a completely novel direction and started work on his Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20, combining the instrumental forces of two string quartets and offering many opportunities to explore textural possibilities in a chamber setting.  This piece was written as a birthday gift for Mendelssohn’s friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz, who was only seven years older than Felix. The florid first violin part of the Octet is a testament to his skill on the instrument. While the reason for the genesis of the Op. 18 quintet in the spring of 1826 is unknown, we do know that Rietz was involved in the first performances of the piece and the virtuosic violin writing featured in the quintet provides definitive proof.  Many of the textures and compositional devices explored in the 1825 octet can be found in the 1826 quintet, including clever use of counterpoint which may be a nod to Mendelssohn’s increasing preoccupation with the music of J.S. Bach.

Eduard Rietz was instrumental in encouraging Felix’s connection to the music of Bach.  The copy of the St. Matthew Passion given to Felix by his grandmother Bella Solomon was made by Rietz from a manuscript owned by Felix’s composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter.  Rietz would later copy out the performance parts from this score and serve as concertmaster of the 1829 revival performance of the St. Matthew Passion that Mendelssohn conducted from the piano.  A few years after this performance Rietz would influence the Op. 18 quintet in a tragic manner.  “[L]anky old Rietz”, as Mendelssohn sometimes called him, died of tuberculosis in 1832, and shortly after Franz Liszt broke the news to Felix he decided to revisit the Op. 20 octet and the Op. 18 quintet, two works intimately connected to Rietz, and prepare them for publication.  Mendelssohn chose to strike the original Minuetto from the quintet, and to help him work through the terrible grief he felt because of Rietz’s death he composed a new slow movement, an Intermezzo that he subtitled Nachruf (“In Memoriam”).

During this period Mendelssohn was not only preoccupied with writing music but also with his studies of Classical languages, philosophy, and literature.  The list of visitors to the Mendelssohn estate at 3 Leipzigerstrasse in 1825 and onwards is a veritable who’s-who of 19th-century intellectual life, including the likes of poet Heinrich Heine and philosopher Frierich Hegel.  The young Felix and his sister Fanny voraciously read Shakespeare and Jean Paul; these literary explorations are the source of the fantasy-like qualities in much of Felix’s music. The chronological proximity of the Op. 18 quintet to the Overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in August 1826, is another clue into the character of the quintet.

-program notes by Daniel Doña