Frage

Everyone remembers the feeling — that early, dizzy, burning question you couldn't stop asking yourself: is it true? Does she feel it too? In the summer of 1827, the eighteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn put that question into a song, "Frage" (Question): "Is it true that you always wait for me there in the leafy path by the grape arbor, and ask the moonlight and the little stars about me?" We don't know who the girl was. History kept that secret.

Shortly after he wrote the song, he composed the String Quartet No.2, Op.13. The first movement is deeply intertwined with the song, and especially, posing the "Frage". The movement opens with a slow Adagio — three instruments posing the question together in music spelling out "Ist es wahr?" almost exactly as those words sound when spoken: a short, gentle turn, then a long, held note of anticipation. Asked once — a hesitant response. Asked again — even less convinced. The tension mounts until something finally gives, and the Allegro vivace breaks open: a high-tension, repeating semiquaver motif erupts through, passed along the instruments restless and unresolved, and will continue to weave in and out for the rest of the movement. Alongside it, the main theme gradually emerges. Intense and searching, but never quite losing its composure.