Target language: English
On October 27th, 1827, when 18-year-old Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy wrote the title page of the string quartet in A minor that he had composed in the preceding three months, it marked neither the completion of his first work of chamber music nor of his first string quartet. This quartet, published as opus 13, but already in existence before opus 12, was preceded by, among others, the three piano quartets opus 1, 2, and 3 (1822-1825), the string quartet opus 18 (1826), which was revised in 1832, and the octet opus 20 (1825), not to mention the compositions that Mendelssohn did not publish himself; included among these is the string quartet in E flat major (1823). The young composer had studied the musical development of the preceding decades assiduously, and his father even had a subscription to the new editions from the German-language music publishing houses. Thus, he was also familiar with Beethoven's string quartets opus 130, 132, 133 and 135, which appeared in print in the middle of 1827, when he composed his string quartet in A minor.
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