Mendelssohn - String Quartet in F minor, Op. Post. 80 - Study Score

Mendelssohn‘s String Quartet op. posth. 80 is one of his few “autobiographical” works – a moving musical testimony to the grief he felt at the death of his sister Fanny and to his attempts to transform his suffering into art. He had just returned from a journey of several weeks to England, where he con-ducted six performances of his newly re-vised Elijah and appeared at several other concerts. Fully exhausted, he arrived home in Frankfurt on 12 May 1847, only to learn two days later that his beloved sister had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a stroke on 14 May. “God help us all!” he wrote on 19 May to his sister Rebecka. “Beyond that, I’ve been incapable of saying or thinking anything since yesterday, dear sister of mine. I’ve written to Paul and Hensel, but since yesterday and today, and for many, many days to come, I’ll be unable to write anything beyond – God help us, God help us!” The initials “H.d.m.” (for “Hilf du mir,” or “grant me thy aid”) that Men-delssohn, as was his wont, wrote on the first page of the autograph manuscript for op. 80 take on strange new significance in the con-text of this letter.