String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80

Born in Hamburg in 1809, Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy spent much of his childhood in Berlin, where his wealthy parents became well-known arts patrons. Professional musicians often came to the house to perform for and with the family, and as a result, Mendelssohn got to know Rossini and Goethe, among others. They also ensured that their talented son, who excelled as a composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and visual artist, had the best possible instruction.

During one of their family Sunday musicals in 1847, Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny collapsed at the piano and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Felix was too distraught to attend her funeral, and on doctor’s orders, he headed to Switzerland to recover. It was during this trip that he composed the F-minor Quartet. He wrote to his younger sister Rebecca, “I force myself to be industrious in the hope that later on I may feel like working and enjoying it.” After returning home and then to Berlin for a performance of Elijah, however, he saw the room in which his sister had collapsed. An observer wrote,

One of his Walpurgisnacht Choruses still remained at the piano open at the very page she had been playing. Nothing had been moved since her death, either in this room or the one where she died. They showed him both. He was excessively agitated, his grief burst out afresh, or more even than before. He told the King that it was impossible for him to superintend Elijah, and he returned to Leipzig.

Mendelssohn died two months later of a paralytic stroke at the age of 38. Published after his death, the F-minor Quartet illustrates the composer’s anguish. The first movement is full of bittersweet anger, while the ensuing Allegro is frantic and anguished. The third movement begins in a reflective mood, but gives way in the finale to the quartet’s opening despair.