String Symphonies Complete

Abstract

One of the second group of six string symphonies written by the fourteen year old budding genius, the Sinfonia No. 9 in C, is brilliant and in every respect an early symphony. Its immediate predecessor, the Sinfonia No. 8 in D, combines Mendelssohn's nascent originality with a healthy leavening of the influence of Mozart. Rather than paying further tribute to Mozart, Mendelssohn opens this work in Haydn-esque fashion, with a great ponderous introduction which then bursts into a marvelous, animated first theme. It quickly becomes something Haydn could never have written, with much greater harmonic and rhythmic range and technical sophistications including a divided part for the violas and a sudden shift to a marvelously effective fugal passage at the seam between the exposition and development sections of the first movement. It leaps a generation beyond Haydn and is brilliant far beyond anything of Mozart's at the same age. The piece also features a wondrous, pensive andante second movement and a sparkling, thoroughly Mendelssohnian scherzo. The allegro vivace with which the work concludes once again features brilliant counterpoint, delightful wit, and thoroughly original melodic lines.

The work is significant as part of a set of thirteen early string symphonies which the composer wrote, partly as exercises and partly as an effort to spread his wings in the symphonic form. He had crafted the first six of these as early as 1821 - when he was all of twelve years of age - and at first they were purposefully patterned after the Empfindsamkeit style of works by C.P.E. Bach. This was at the direction of his first music tutor, Carl Freidrich Zelter. While the first six were both derivative and imitative, the second group, including this work, show signs of Mendelssohn kicking over the rote mimicry in favor of a more modern and personal style. That the youthful work seems influenced by Haydn in no way dims its brilliance.

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