1. If all time is eternally present

2. All time is unredeemable.

3. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, ‘Burnt Norton’, I

The E♭ Quartet Op. 12, Mendelssohn's second numbered quartet, was composed two years after the A minor Quartet, in 1829. Work on the composition had started in the spring of 1829, but completion was delayed over Mendelssohn's first visit to England in the summer, and it was finally completed only in September of that year in London. Ostensibly the E♭ Quartet is a more relaxed and predominantly sunny work, though the closer it is examined the more ambivalent the balance held in this piece becomes between the youthful lyricism of its immediately apparent lighter side and the darker memories that at times break through. Like its earlier companion, the quartet presents a thorough working-out of cyclic procedures. Unlike the A minor work, though, its composer left little by way of a hermeneutic clue as to its underlying inspiration or to provide an extramusical key for its understanding. Yet an initialled dedication on the title page – ‘B.P.’ – gives some indication as to a similar inspiration and concern as the A minor Quartet.