Felix Mendelssohn's Four Pieces for String Quartet were originally composed at various times in the composer's career. The earliest of the Pieces, the Fugue in E flat major (1827), demonstrates both the young composer's contrapuntal mastery and his extraordinary understanding of the string quartet as an ensemble. The Capriccio (1843) exhibits the essential characteristics of Mendelssohn's writing for the medium: balance among the voices and tone coloring which adds luster and memorability even to fleeting musical ideas.

The remaining two Pieces began as movements for a projected string quartet. Posthumously published in 1849, the two movements are powerful, complex musical statements. The first movement opens in a reflective, questing mood; the main theme, appearing also as a haunting viola solo, suggests uncertainty, perhaps reflecting the a feeling of despondency. This initial atmosphere eventually yields to a more serene mood with the introduction of a theme expressing subdued hope, strengthened by a fine tonal balance between the upper voices and the cello. At the climax, the four voices conspire to create a scherzando atmosphere, which also includes much drama, emotional abandon, and melodic eloquence. A shift of mood follows, though the initial musical idea is not abandoned: the haunting, questioning mode reappears to conclude the movement, which thus ends somewhat enigmatically.

The second movement starts as a somewhat subdued scherzando; the writing is brilliant, making virtuosic demands upon all four players, who engage in intricate musical conversations. The cello, for example, both provides a sort of accompaniment and echoes the characteristic themes. The work brilliantly exemplifies Mendelssohn's outstanding ability to realize the full expressive potential of the string quartet, a genre he repeatedly essayed with much success.



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1.Tema con Variazioni: Andante sostenuto. Un poco più animato

Composed during the summer of 1847, this Andante in E major was selected, after Mendelssohn's death, to serve as the opening piece of the ad-hoc Andante, Scherzo, Capriccio and Fugue, Op. 81 (published 1850). The Andante—or Andante sostenuto, as its full tempo marking reads—is really a theme and variations, though Mendelssohn didn't take the trouble to mark the individual variations by number. The 20-bar theme itself is all grace and lightness; it is presented by the first violin with homophonic support, all in airy, connected staccato eighth notes; twice it swells up from its quiet dynamic to draw up a nice, round tone; and one should enjoy the nice echo effect two-thirds of the way through.

In the first variation, the viola takes over the tune and the violins play offbeats. An Un poco più animato second variation is carried out in more aggressive triplets. This process of acceleration continues: the next variation, a flamboyant outburst of the first violin, is full of sixteenths, which are thrown down to the cello for variation 4. A move to E minor is made, coincident with a switch to 6/8 time, for a vehement Presto variation, which ultimately breaks down into a declamatory passage for the first violin, inviting thereby a reprise of the theme in something like its original form—now, however, assuming the role of coda.

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2.Scherzo: Allegro leggiero

Composed, like the Andante in E major that precedes it in the posthumously published Op. 81, in 1847, Felix Mendelssohn's Scherzo in A minor for string quartet, Op. 81, No. 2, is the kind of Mendelssohn piece that, however overused the image is in regard to Mendelssohn and his music, immediately calls a magical, unreal world of fairies and pixie-dust to mind. The very first rhythm of the piece, in fact, mirrors the start of the famous scherzo from Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, so right from the start one is thinking along the elfish lines. One might even say that this fleet-of-foot Allegro leggiero does not seem even really to ever "begin" in the usual sense—Mendelssohn starts it up, nicely, not on a tonic chord but on a dominant seventh, which makes it sound almost as if the music has been going along for some while now, and that we the listeners are just now catching up with it. More elfish influence, the fantasy-minded musicologist might decide.

The scherzo moves in a steady 6/8 meter, occasionally punctured by the same kind of sforzandi that populate the Midsummer Night's Dream scherzo. The virtuosic show-off stuff is distributed more or less evenly throughout the instruments, though the first violin is of course somewhat favored—normal in music of the day, and even more common in Mendelssohn's music than most composers'. The piece is not long, nor is there a contrasting section (like a trio or some such). But, despite such brevity, the ending is still magical and brilliant—the sixteenth notes disintegrate into eighths, which then themselves gradually disappear until finally only a pair of pizzicati remain as solid evidence that the piece was actually ever there. Our elves have all wandered off.

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3.Capriccio: Andante con moto. Allegro fugato, assai vivace

One might worry that a scherzo and a capriccio would be too similar in nature to be placed comfortably next to one another in a multi-piece work like Mendelssohn's Opus 81 (posthumously published in 1850); but the Capriccio in E minor for string quartet, Op. 81, No. 3, is so different from the preceding scherzo that there is never a hint of trouble. The capriccio has two separate sections of music, utterly contrasted to one another, and not at all of equal duration. First is lugubriously melodic Andante con moto, its melody sung out by the first violin with rich, gooey bass support of the cello and the offbeat filler from the viola and second violin. But 28 bars later we realize, if we perhaps hadn't yet, that this has all been just a preparation for the real meat of the capriccio, which, after a tiny quasi-cadenza for the first violin, arrives in the shape of an Allegro fugato, assai vivace. True to its name, this music is quite fugal, using a subject built from two outbursts of sixteenth notes and a slowly rising follow-up idea.

Listen to the wonderful way that Mendelssohn uses the head gesture of the subject as a counterpoint to the next subject statements, simply throwing it over by half a bar so that within the fugal exposition itself there is already something very like stretto! Mendelssohn indeed finds this fertile ground—again and again he finds new ways of playing out the "burst" idea against itself, extending it, varying it, turning it upside down. Finally, a fortissimo climax pits the idea in all four voices against one another and, as a last passionate gasp, the once restrained follow-up idea is played as a series of slam-bang sforzandi. Three chords, as traditional a cadence as one might write, bring an end to this most overtly passionate fugue.

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4.Fugue in Eb

The final piece in the set of four originally unconnected but now eternally associated pieces for string quartet published posthumously as Felix Mendelssohn's Op. 81 (called Andante, Scherzo, Capriccio und Fuge when Breitkopf und Härtel published it in 1850) was actually the earliest of the bunch to be composed, and by quite a margin. Two of the Op. 81 pieces date from 1847, and one from 1843; the Fugue for string quartet in E flat major, Op. 81, No. 4, on the other hand, was written all the way back in fall of 1827—the manuscript bears the specific date November 1, 1827.

The capriccio that precedes this fugue in Opus 81 is itself a thoroughly fugal piece (which makes for back-to-back fugues: something that Mendelssohn himself is unlikely to have found desirable); but there any resemblance between the two pieces ends. Op. 81, No. 4 is a much more introverted piece than Op. 81, No. 3, even to the point of sometimes sounding perhaps dry and academic by comparison. The fugal dialogue (or quadralogue) is allowed to unfold slowly and without overt drama, the goal being to impress the listener solely with mechanical grace and restrained puzzle-working, not to hit them over the head with a loud imitative hammer, as in the capriccio (fun though that can certainly be!). Night and day, these fugues.

The subject of the E flat major fugue might almost have been extracted from a Baroque counterpoint text, so lean, rhythmically simple, and unadorned is it. Viola - Violin 2 - Violin 1 - Cello is the order in which the voices enter. The entrance order actually parallels, in an expanded way, the interval pattern laid out in half notes at the beginning of the subject: begin, rise, rise, and then fall back down again! Soon we learn that the piece is a double fugue. A comparably florid second subject (all eighth notes, same voice order) is exposed, developed, and ultimately combined with the first.

As the fugue reaches its climax in the second half, Mendelssohn allows himself to move away from academism a bit and into some warmer, less purely contrapuntal textures; the final bars are certainly quite Romantic sounding, as the players oscillate their way down into a rich, satisfied and satisfying E flat sonority.

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