Notes for: July 16, 2013
By the time he reached his 30th birthday, Mendelssohn was arguably the busiest musician in Europe. He had already served four years as the conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus – then as now one of Europe’s foremost orchestras – and had revived the choral and orchestral music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He had made five successful concert visits to London as a conductor and concert pianist. And he had written and published, to wide acclaim, his “Reformation” and “Italian” Symphonies, oratorio St. Paul, two piano concertos, five string quartets and 18 Songs Without Words.
Not many of the other great composers had won such broad recognition in so few years. And to top it all, he was happily married and in good health, and he had every reason to look forward to a long career of continuing musical success and public adulation. In retrospect, of course, there was a tragic irony in all this. His fragile health faltered under the strain, and he lived only eight more years.
Mendelssohn’s life became even more hectic in 1844, the year of this work’s composition. His services were now in demand all over Western Europe. In addition to the Leipzig orchestra and his repeated visits to England, he served as a guest conductor in Berlin. He taught piano and composition at the new Leipzig Conservatory of which he was the founder. And he somehow found time to compose his Violin Concerto, now one of the treasures of the violin repertory.
By the year’s end, he was exhausted from all this activity, and was showing the first signs of the declining health that was to end in his death two years later. Consequently at the start of 1845, his family persuaded him to take a long sabbatical before resuming his conducting duties in Leipzig the following September.
For this respite, Mendelssohn and his wife settled in Frankfort, the residence of Felix’s brother and sisters, and in the nearby resort town of Bad Soden, a favorite spot for his composition. Without the pressure of outside commitments, Mendelssohn returned to composing chamber music, for which his career had left little time. The result was two major works – his second Piano Trio and his second String Quintet. In the case of the String Quintet, he was reverting to a form that he had not used for nearly 20 years – the string quartet with an extra viola.
Independently wealthy, Mendelssohn was in no hurry to publish his music, and he left at his death some 250 works. This quintet was not published until three years after his death, and then at the instigation of his family.
In the quintet’s first movement, allegro vivace, the first violin announces an impetuous and muscular theme over tremolos in the other instruments. A triplet figure interrupts the melody, returns to accompany the more flowing second theme, and is to become a recurring feature of the movement. The development section is long and complex, ending with an exciting buildup to the return of the opening theme.
The second movement is a scherzo, though at an andante pace and in 6/8 rather than 3/4 time. It has the playfulness and delicacy characteristic of Mendelssohn’s scherzos, but is slower than usual. The movement is seasoned by the use of pizzicato and staccato bowing, displaced accents, fugal treatment of its themes, and fluctuations between the major and minor modes.
The slow movement – marked adagio and lento to emphasize the point - offers some of Mendelssohn’s most passionate music. The structure is free and rhapsodic, and the mood verges on the operatic in its emotional expression, dramatic harmonies, and varied dynamics. The second theme, over an agitated rhythm, is surely one of Mendelssohn’s most poignant statements.
After the third movement’s intensity, the finale, allegro molto vivace, ends the quintet on a more light-hearted note. As in the first movement, the first violin states the vigorous main theme, and the more lyrical second theme is introduced by the two violas. The development introduces a third theme – six accented quarter notes that descend chromatically (in half-steps). After extensive development of all three themes, the third theme returns with renewed force.