For today’s Sunday musical offering, here is the string quartet in C-minor by Friedrich Ernst Fesca (1789 – 1826), who deserves to be much, much better known. I only discovered him recently driving back from Mass with my Dad as I was visiting. As one commentator put it, It is a matter for investigation how come he is not known and familiar as the well known and familiar composers at least of his era if not of all time, and unbelievably beautiful. And the performance masterful. The most unbelievable is the unfamiliarity of this genius Fesca, the sentiments of which I agree.
Fesca was a child prodigy, like Mozart of a generation before, and one of the greatest violinists of his age, appointed by kings and dukes to high position. He was taken too young by consumption at the age of 37 – again, like Mozart (who died at 35), and who must have been an inspiration to Fesca’s own beautiful, delightful, harmonically complex melodies. Listen and peruse his work, and spread the word, and the music.
