[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHj_eV6WSdg]
Song without words in D major, Op.109 Jacqueline du Pré
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqsFvz1bWFk]
Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic period best-known for his Wedding March from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.
The conservative strain in Mendelssohn, which set him apart from some of his more flamboyant contemporaries, bred a similar condescension on their part toward his music. His success, his popularity and his Jewish origins irked Richard Wagner sufficiently to damn Mendelssohn with faint praise, three years after his death, in an anti-Jewish pamphlet Das Judenthum in der Musik. This was the start of a movement to denigrate Mendelssohn’s achievements which lasted almost a century, the remnants of which can still be discerned today amongst some writers. The Nazi regime was to cite Mendelssohn’s Jewish origin in banning performance and publication of his works as degenerate music. Charles Rosen, in his book The Romantic Generation, disparages Mendelssohn’s style as “religious kitsch”, such opinion reflecting a continuation of the aesthetic contempt of Wagner and his musical followers.
An encore?
Mendelssohn in The Abominable Dr. Phibes:
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nJ40F8MLjc]
War March of the Priests (is it?)
Speaking of reputations rehabilitated and otherwise, I think that it was FM who did a favor for J.S. Bach, regarded in his day as old fashioned and boring. He orchestrated some of his fugues, I think…or that’s what I recall being told by a teacher.
If so, I wonder if his renditions of Bach’s work are now regarded as examples of Romantic excess in interpretation..? Vagaries of taste…