Louise Farrenc – String Quartet

We don’t actually know for sure if this is a Farrenc piece at all. The piece was not published during her lifetime; this in and of itself is not wholly unusual, and some works only reached publication posthumously for most composers. However, it was unusual for her not to sign her name on her manuscripts, and there is scant evidence that she wrote a string quartet in the first place. That said, this piece is typically included in her catalog, and the handwriting in the manuscript is a near-exact match for Farrenc’s handwriting in other pieces. If she didn’t compose this herself, she definitely at least physically wrote the music on the page. Furthermore, the articles and papers that dispute Farrenc’s authorship here all seem to cite each other, almost as if this idea that Farrenc didn’t compose this piece was handed down from high on stone tablets with no earthly source.