Greetings. The Aizuri string quartet and I
are going to discuss
Felix Mendelssohn's very last string quartet, Opus 80
in F minor. Now, this quartet has
a very special and very sad story
behind it, and so it places
kind of a special burden on a string quartet.
You know, obviously the music, the notes,
speak for themselves. But this one
has the following abbreviated story, and that is that
Felix Mendelssohn's sister
Fanny, who he loved dearly,
had just died. It was a shock, and I think he was in shock,
and his his way of grieving
was Opus 80, the F minor
quartet. And so the question is,
for a string quartet sitting down to play
this piece, yes, you learn the notes. You you learn how
to work together. You
obey all Mendelssohn's markings. But then
what else is there? How do you convey
the sadness that Mendelssohn felt at this moment?
Well, in the slow movement
the rest of the quartet I think is quite turbulent, musically.
But the slow movement is the heart of the piece.
And we're trying to-- we're
kind of going on a journey with Mendelssohn as he struggles emotionally
with the death of his sister,
and he really tries to come to terms with it.
And so there are passages where
you hear crying, and sighing,
breathlessness. Also, really
Also you know really missing a sister in reaching and hoping to
to kind of connect with her again but then it slips from him.
And then on the other side, there
are passages that are warmer,
and maybe he's really trying to be more at peace. There might be something
hopeful. And so we're trying to kind of straddle these two
different kinds of grieving and coping.
But I mean, as he's experiencing these things,
it's not calculated emotion. It's spontaneous emotion and is changing a
emotion. Of course you feel that in
the movement. But to to capture this change,
how do you deal with with different elements? For example,
how do you deal with the sense of moving forward
or moving back? Just the kind of freedom in in the music?
I think where he marks
either a crescendo,
which is growing in sound, or a diminuendo,
which is coming away in sound, kind of shows us
the parts of the music where he wants you to feel like
his emotions are almost about to burst out of his body,
or are increasing in intensity. And then in the diminuendoes, it's
either kind of a decay, of resignation?
A feeling of resignation, or just, like, sorrow,
or feeling kind of like coming back inside
of yourself because you're so sad.
And he marks that, that spontaneity in the music.
And I think it's up to us to make it come to life between
just playing together, and kind of
seeing, watching each other's signals.
And one additional tool that we have, I guess as a quartet, the goal is to
sort of be storytellers together. And one of the tools
that we use is our vibrato.
And the vibrato will evolve,
because it's tapped into our hearts. It's tapped into our emotions.
So when the music is very lonely or bleak,
that might be a moment where we use very minimal
or zero vibrato, to convey a feeling of coldness
and loneliness. But when we're being overtaken by emotion, whether it's
hopeful or overwhelmingly sad,
those are moments where the vibrato really can support that feeling.
So, you have these powerful
elements. You have the sense of motion of a wave
moving forward slightly, or moving back slightly,
and these are the things that Mendelssohn can't write. And he can't
write, necessarily use a little bit more vibrato, or less,
wider or narrower. But these things are
what make the music, and what make you your personality as a string quartet.
Well, this movement is one of the most
exquisitely beautiful, and emotional,
deeply touching and moving movements that I know.
Would you play it for us now?
Arnold SteinhardtPerformance Faculty
Dr. Mia ChungInstructor of Interpretive Analysis
