Music is the universal language of nature… it appeals directly to the senses and imagination.

The Lady’s Monthly Museum   (A popular British women’s magazine published in 1826)

What a year 1826 was. Franz Schubert composed his Rondo in b minor for Violin and Piano, D. 895 that year. It is a virtuosic, singing piece that shows Schubert at his most outwardly brilliant. Beethoven completed his String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 in the same month as the Schubert Rondo. The Op. 135 quartet, Beethoven’s final major work, is signed with the cryptic inscription “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss” (The difficult decision), and the haunting question-and-answer motto “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!” (Must it be? It must be!). A seventeen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn wrote his String Quintet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 18 in March 1826, a work of astonishing freshness and confidence.