Repetition or Redundancy: Introductions by Mendelssohn and Mussorgsky

The beginning of Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang” symphony is completely inert, and therefore alarmingly dull, if I am permitted the oxymoron.

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Do All Styles Become Historical? Or Just Those of the Nineteenth Century?

Can you imagine a textbook saying that Beethoven, or even Brahms, for heaven’s sake, was “extraordinarily gifted”? Of course not. That would be like saying water is wet. But when that phrase is applied to Mendelssohn, it either means 1)Mendelssohn really wasn’t that bad. His music is sort of good after all!” or, 2) Mendelssohn wasn’t really a great composer. He was just ‘exceptionally talented.’

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Do Composers Compose Out of a Need for "Personal Expression"? The Strange Case of Dr. Mendelssohn and Mr. Schumann

Obviously, any artist is de facto “expressing himself personally”. But to reduce the purpose of an artist to a need for self expression is so simple minded that the phrase “personal expression” becomes meaningless.

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What's So Wrong with Mendelssohn's op.44?

Great repertories, such as the mature work of Mendelssohn, the mature work of Hindemith, the mature work of Richard Strauss, almost anything by Rachmaninov, are slighted again and again by the imposition of a progressive narrative on musical history. What’s more old fashioned now, I ask you, Pierrot Lunaire or the Rachmaninov Etudes Tableaux? And I say this as a committed supporter of the aspirations of the so-called “avant garde”; at least where these aspirations are coupled with craftsmanship and sincerity, and as opposed to those composers who attempt facilely to gain a public by making their scores relevant, or as opposed especially to those composers who cynically employ the resources of the past without having been trained in the techniques of the past.

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Mendelssohn and "The Anxiety of Influence"

How did Beethoven’s successors respond to his overwhelming prestige, to his inescapable influence? Mendelssohn’s three great Beethoven glosses (Piano Sonata in E Major, op. 6, String Quartets Opp. 12 and 13) are early works. Mendelssohn appears to be more concerned with Bach, Handel and Mozart in most of his latter works, maybe because Beethoven seemed like too big an elephant in the room to the mature Mendelssohn. Is it coincidence that Mendelssohn’s two indisputably great symphonies are placed outside of the Germanic (Beethovenian) orbit, in Scotland and Italy? Is the “Lobegesang” weakened because Mendelssohn is Handelian grandiose, perhaps, but not Beethovenian grandiose?

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Caught Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Mendelssohn's Reputation

Felix Mendelssohn is the most underrated master in classical music history. Not as transcendant as Mozart, not as powerful as Beethoven, not as intimate as Schumann, not as poignant as Schubert, not as idiosyncratic as Chopin, not as quirky as Berlioz, Mendelssohn seems to fall between two stools…at least for many listeners. His technique alone qualifies him for the pantheon. And technique matters, and not just to musicians…

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A note on Mendelssohn's Symphonic Chronology

This is a headache because of revisions, publishing dates, numbering, and opus numbers which are tangled.  Larry Todd (the most eminent Mendelssohn scholar) assigns these dates as being most chronologically relevant:

Symphony Nr. 1, 1824
Symphony Nr. 2, “Lobegesang”, 1840
Symphony Nr. 3, “Scottish”, 1842
Symphony Nr. 4, “Italian” 1833
Symphony Nr. 5, “Reformation”, 1830

You Don't Have to Start at the Beginning: Mendelssohn and Beethoven

Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13, written at the age of 18, and his String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 12, written at the age of 20, are at once the most knowlegeable glosses on Beethoven in existence and yet at the same time deeply original works. Beethoven’s late style was not exactly terra incognita for the early romantics, but middle period works, especially the Fifth Symphony, exerted much more influence, generally. Mendelssohn is the exception. As he comments himself, “You don’t have to start at the beginning…”. Early Mendelssohn bends back only a year or two to embrace late Beethoven. These quartets are from 1827 and 1829, and therefore can properly be regarded as a sort of continuation of late Beethoven rather than works with a retrospective orientation. Consider a wildly different repertory that looks back to late Beethoven, the Rochberg quartets, especially the “Beethoven” movement in the Third, and you will understand the difference between the creator and the curator.

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