The Quartettsatz (Quartet Movement) in C minor was composed by Franz Schubert in December of 1820. It is the first movement of a string quartet that Schubert never completed. It was listed as his String Quartet no. 12 when it was published after his death. In addition to the opening movement, Schubert also composed the first 40 bars of a second movement marked "Andante." The unfinished quartet is regarded as one of the first products of Schubert's mature phase of composition. As with the later "Unfinished" Symphony, there has been much speculation on why Schubert left the composition incomplete. One view is that Schubert put it aside to follow up several commissions and never got back to it. It has also been speculated that the work was abandoned because Schubert, having written such a powerful first movement, was unable at that stage in his development to come up with an effective following movement.
Following Schubert's death the manuscript eventually found its way into the ownership of Johannes Brahms. The Quartettsatz received its posthumous premiere on 1 March 1867 in Vienna, with publication of the score, edited by Brahms, following in 1870. The work’s importance was realized immediately, as a forerunner of the late quartets which are among Schubert´s greatest works. Four years after the "Quartettsatz," Schubert returned to the genre to write the Rosamunde Quartet, D 804, which was followed by the "Death and the Maiden" Quartet D 810 and the Fifteenth Quartet, D 887.
Ernest John Moeran (31 December 1894 – 1 December 1950) was an English composer who had strong associations with Ireland (his father was Irish, he spent much of his life there, and he died there). Moeran was born in Heston (now in the London Borough of Hounslow), the son of the Rev Joseph William Wright Moeran, an Irish-born clergyman, and his wife Ada Esther. The family moved around for several years as his father was appointed to various parishes but they eventually settled in Bacton, on the coast of Norfolk.
Moeran studied the violin and the piano as a child. He was taught composition by the church music director Robert Sterndale Bennett who greatly encouraged his talents. On leaving Uppingham in 1913, he studied piano and composition at the Royal College of Music with Charles Villiers Stanford and Stanford´s student, John Ireland. When war broke out, Moeran enlisted and went to France, where he was attached to the West Yorkshire Regiment, and wounded at Bullecourt on 3 May. After his recovery, he was reenlisted in the Bedfordshire Regiment, at this time on garrison duty in Ireland. It was here that Moeran came to be bewitched by the Irish landscape which would later inform many of his best compositions including the String Quartet, one of his best known works.
Mendelssohn composed six numbered string quartets which were all published in his lifetime. Tonight we play the final one, Number 6 in F minor Opus 80. Composed in 1847, it is the last composition that Mendelssohn completed before he died two months later on November 4, 1847. He composed the piece as an homage to his sister Fanny, who had died on May 17th of that year and it bears the title ¨Requiem for Fanny¨.
The quartet was first heard in a private house concert on 5 October 1847 with a few close friends in attendance, including Ignaz Moscheles, who later wrote that emotions were so high, that the performance broke down several times and had to stop. The first public performance was on November 4, 1848 in Leipzig with Mendelssohn´s friend Joseph Joachim playing the violin with the Joachim String Quartet. The original manuscript is in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków, Poland.
