Felix Mendelssohn / String Quartet No. 2
A hushed hymn of devotion from a young composer navigating his first journey through love and heartbreak.
Some music unveils new pathways of enchantment from the moment we first sit down to listen. Such was my experience, at 14 years old, with Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture. Conjured by the four faint chords that begin the work, a portal opened that beckoned me into Shakespeare's world of fairies and forest magic, brought to life by skittering strings, foot-stomping country dances, and melodies perfumed with love's sweet scent.
Offering boundless joy with each listen, Mendelssohn's overture became an obsession for me — even more so after I learned he was only 16 years old when he composed the score. Here I was, struggling to perfect simple scales for my weekly clarinet lessons, while Mendelssohn, just a few years older than me — and still a minor, even by 19th-century standards — was already producing music of dazzling color and beauty. How could that be? What kind of upbringing allowed Mendelssohn to flourish at such a young age?
As it turns out, our childhoods couldn't have been more different. Unlike my middle-class upbringing in a family that prized football and muscle cars, Felix Mendelssohn was born into a household that cherished music — and had the finances to make it a fixture of daily life. Felix's father, Abraham, was a successful banker who co-founded the Berlin Singakademie, a music-appreciation society that produced concerts in the German capital, and his mother, Lea, was a talented pianist. Both parents considered the arts a means for unlocking humanity's fullest potential, a belief they passed down to their four children.
Abraham and Lea not only introduced Felix and his siblings to the music of Mozart, Handel, and Beethoven, but also opened their doors to the most admired musicians, poets, and writers of the day, who congregated in the Mendelssohn home on Sunday afternoons for musical performances and spirited conversation. One frequent guest of the Mendelssohns' salons remarked that "all of Europe came to their living room."
Given that family dynamic, it's unsurprising that Felix's musical abilities developed at lightning speed. He made his concert debut as a pianist at 9 years old and began composing at 11, completing nearly 60 works in his first year. By the time he turned 17, his body of work already included 12 symphonies for string orchestra, concertos for piano and violin, and, of course, his overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Although Felix was painfully shy in social situations, he proved fearless as a composer, hungry to create music that matched the technical wizardry and emotional depth achieved by his idols.
But when Felix was 18, something happened that none of his studies and successes could have prepared him for: He fell in love for the first time. The object of his affection was Friederika Dorothea Elisabeth Pistor — better known as Betty — a neighbor of the Mendelssohns and a close friend of Felix's sister Rebecka. As a tongue-tied boy unable to express his feelings to Betty directly, Felix turned to music as a means of manifesting the love blossoming in his heart.
First, he composed a song in the spring of 1827. Barely 90 seconds long, "Frage" (Question) sets to music a text of the composer's own creation, allowing Felix to remain hidden behind the poem's blushing speaker.
Is it true? Is it true that there in the arcade's walkway, you wait for me against the vine-covered wall? And ask questions about me to the moonlight and the twinkling stars? Is it true? Speak! What I feel, only she understands, She who feels this love, And who remains forever loyal. English translation: Michael Cirigliano II
Peter Schreier, tenor Walter Olbertz, piano
Alas, Betty remained unaware of Felix's feelings after hearing the song. To her, the young composer was just the shy brother of one of her best girlfriends, and no signs of mutual affection ever appeared. Now fearing his love would be forever unrequited, Felix began drafting another work to express his passion (and increasing heartache): a quartet for two violins, viola, and cello.
To make perfectly clear the connective tissue between his new composition and his longing for Betty's love, Felix incorporated the opening phrase of "Frage" into each of the quartet's four movements, and even arranged for the song to be performed before the work's premiere at one of the Mendelssohns' Sunday salons.
Although each movement of the quartet offers moments of love and longing, passion and playfulness, to me the heart and soul of the work lies in the slow second movement. Here Felix showcases his talent for spinning heartrending melodies of effortless lyricism, a genre of instrumental music he titled Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words). In the warm tones of the four stringed instruments, the music offers immediate repose, with all four voices moving together like a close-knit choir. Love is a balm and a supreme comfort, Felix seems to be showing us here, as the quartet sings its hushed hymn of devotion.
This peaceful atmosphere doesn't last long, however. A mysterious moment of silence follows the opening chorale, after which the quartet embarks on a four-part fugue — a musical form Felix learned from J.S. Bach and Beethoven's towering examples, in which each voice sings the same melody but at different times and starting on different pitches, resulting in an intricate mosaic of sound.
Departing from the shimmering major key of the opening chorale, Felix centers his fugue on a minor-key melody teeming with sighs, stutters, and silences. Each voice moves in its own direction, as if to mirror the cascading thoughts that flood the mind when experiencing the rush of new love: an aching desire for the beloved mixed with the fear they may not return our affection. As the drama slowly intensifies, we can imagine Felix slumped over his desk, thinking: She loves me? She loves me not …
Against an obsessive rhythm in the viola and cello, the principal violin ushers in a new tune that seems to mirror the complexity and desperation of Felix's spiraling thoughts. Just as the violin's turbulent melody reaches its agonizing peak, the emotional storm clouds part and return us, ever so gently and seamlessly, to the tranquil mood with which the movement began.
The opening hymn blossoms once more in the stringed instruments' deepest, most burnished register, Felix's wordless song taking on an even more expressive pitch after the turmoil we've endured. The fugue's melancholy melody attempts to invade the scene once more, but the serenity of the chorale remains intact — each voice slowly, confidently ascending to ethereal heights until the movement's radiant final harmony gives way to an imperceptible silence.
Felix was never able to win Betty's affection through his music, his feelings forever unreciprocated. But while the fleeting infatuations of an 18-year-old are destined to be swept away by the passage of time, this music endures. Nearly 200 years after putting pen to paper to convey intimate thoughts he could never speak into existence, Felix's quartet connects us to the rush of joy and possibility love ignites within us, despite knowing it may not be shared in the ways we hope.
For in our coarse, imperfect world, offering love to another is an act of devotion — both to the beloved and to ourselves. Every time we experience the elation, the questioning, the bravery that comes with expressing love, we're reminded not only of our red-blooded, human desire for companionship in this life, but also the sparkling divinity residing in each of us that longs for a taste of the eternal bliss love provides.
Take a listen …
Tetzlaff Quartet Christian Tetzlaff and Elisabeth Kufferath, violin Hanna Weinmeister, viola Tanja Tetzlaff, cello
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe compared listening to a string quartet to "eavesdropping on a conversation among four intelligent people," and I couldn't agree more.
So when it's time to get to know a quartet for the first time, I prefer to experience a live performance (or one captured on video) before listening to an audio recording. Since members of a string quartet oftentimes spend decades performing together, there's much to be discovered about the music through each player's body language — how the group moves as one, the ways the principal violin will swiftly signal a new tempo or change in texture, the eye contact made as melodies are passed from one member to another.
For Mendelssohn's Second Quartet, I recommend taking in this live performance from the Tetzlaff Quartet before moving on to their studio recording. (Longtime readers of Shades of Blue may remember violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his cellist sister Tanja from our exploration of Schubert's First Piano Trio last fall.) As you'll quickly note, performing in a small ensemble like a quartet is one of the most intimate and delightful experiences a musician can have — and we get to enjoy that sense of kinship and mutual exploration as a member of their rapt audience.
What was your experience listening to Mendelssohn's expression of young love? I'd love to know! Be sure to leave a comment here or reply to this email. (And if you enjoyed your time here today, would you ever so kindly tap that little heart below? 👇🏼)
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I know nothing about music but I rely on voices like yours. I just finished a play that is partly about Delius and I had to read theses and dissertations to cobble together some semblance of remote authority on the subject of composition. Good music writing like yours (“obsessive strings”) really makes a difference.
Speaking of watching a quartet live: I was in Hobart, Tasmania recently at the wonderful MONA gallery. There is an “exhibit” called 4PM, where every day a composer writes something new, and at 4PM a string quartet arrive to play it - unseen until that moment. Was a fantastic insight into the intimate connection between the musicians, rehearsing on the spot how to put a piece of music together. All done in front of the audience - the process laid bare. (https://mona.net.au/stuff-to-do/dean-stevenson).