The two passages of music below might be taken, by a musician who had not yet encountered them, to come not only from the pen of very different composers but from very different eras. The first (Example 16.1) seems to be from the early to middle part of the nineteenth century. Its theme – songlike in form but clearly instrumental in tessitura and technique – unfolds exuberantly upward against a cloud of oscillating strings, a sensuous texture retained by at least some of the instruments almost continually until the theme lands on a cadence at bar 16. This opening seems inspired byFelix Mendelssohn’s celebrated Octet Op. 20, whose beginning is remarkably similar, although Mendelssohn’s theme is presented by violin rather than cello Example 16.2). In both chamber pieces, too, the outer elements of the texture come to play off each other melodically as the theme unfurls.