String Quartet No. 6

At a glance

• What it isthe first movement of String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, marked Allegro vivace assai, very fast and lively.
• Who, when, whywritten in the summer of 1847 by the thirty-eight-year-old Mendelssohn, resting in Switzerland after the death of his sister Fanny.
• What to listen forthe trembling notes at the start, and the breathless tension that lasts to the end of the movement.

Listen for

• Tremblingthe four instruments keep up finely trembling notes, and the first violin soars sharply above.
• A wavering songa soft melody appears briefly in between, but it is soon swept away by the trembling.
• The endnearing the close it grows faster still and ends fiercely, with no time to catch a breath.

When it was written

In May 1847, just after returning from a concert tour in England, Mendelssohn learned that his sister Fanny had died suddenly. It is said he collapsed from the shock. That summer, staying with his family near Interlaken in Switzerland, he painted mountains and lakes in watercolor and wrote this quartet.

Mendelssohn himself died in Leipzig that November, at thirty-eight. This quartet became the last large chamber work he completed. People sometimes call it a 'Requiem for Fanny'.