Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

's Viola Sonata in C minor was composed when he was only 15 years old. The autograph score is dated 14 February 1824. The work was not published in Mendelssohn's lifetime and it was not assigned an opus number

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

. For the time, a viola sonata

Viola sonata

The viola sonata is a sonata for viola, sometimes with other instruments, usually piano. The earliest viola sonatas are difficult to date for a number of reasons:...

 was a rare genre of chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 and there are still few Classical

Classical period (music)

The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...

 or early Romantic

Romantic music

Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....

 viola sonatas. However, despite the dearth of solo music for the viola from this period, this sonata is not relatively well-known.

Mendelssohn himself was an accomplished violinist and violist

Violist

-Notable violists:A* Julia Rebekka Adler * Sir Hugh Allen , conductor* Kris Allen * Johann Andreas Amon * Paul Angerer , composer* Steven Ansell * Atar Arad * Cecil Aronowitz...

, playing one of the viola parts in an early performance of his own String Octet in E flat major

Octet (Mendelssohn)

Felix Mendelssohn's Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20 was composed in the autumn of 1825 , when the composer was aged 16. He wrote it as a birthday gift for his friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz ; it was slightly revised in 1832 before the first public performance on 30 January 1836 at the...

, and was fully aware of the difficulties of writing for the viola. The music for the piano is light and transparent allowing the viola to shine through at any time.

Movements

The sonata has three movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Menuetto - Allegro molto
3. Andante con variazioni
   Variation (music)
   In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.-Variation form:...
   
   

A typical performance lasts just under 25 minutes.