Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edited by R. Larry Todd

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

MENDELSSOHN AND HIS WORLD

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface...............................................................................................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments.......................................................................................................................................................................................xiiiThe Aesthetics of Assimilation and Affirmation: Reconstructing the Career of Felix Mendelssohn LEON BOTSTEIN.........................................................................................5Some Notes on an Anthem by Mendelssohn DAVID BRODBECK................................................................................................................................................43Mendelssohn and the Berlin Singakademie: The Composer at the Crossroads WM. A. LITTLE................................................................................................................65The Power of Class: Fanny Hensel NANCY B. REICH......................................................................................................................................................86Samplings CLAUDIO SPIES..............................................................................................................................................................................100Elijah, Johann Sebastian Bach, and the New Covenant: On the Aria "Es ist genug" in Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Oratorio Elijah MARTIN STAEHELIN TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE.....................121The Incidental Politics to Mendelssohn's Antigone MICHAEL P. STEINBERG...............................................................................................................................137The Unfinished Mendelssohn R. LARRY TODD.............................................................................................................................................................158From the Memoirs of Adolf Bernhard Marx TRANSLATED BV SUSAN GILLESPIE................................................................................................................................206Reminiscences of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy JULIUSS CHUBRING........................................................................................................................................221Reminiscences of Mendelssohn by His English Pupil CHARLES EDWARD HORSLEY.............................................................................................................................237From the Memoirs of F. Max Muller.....................................................................................................................................................................252From the Memoirs of Ernst Rudorff TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY NANCY B. REICH.........................................................................................................................259Letters from Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to Aloys Fuchs EDUARD HANSLICK TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE...............................................................................................275Mendelssohn as Teacher, with Previously Unpublished Letters from Mendelssohn to Wilhelm v. Boguslawski BRUNO HAKE TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE.....................................................310Robert Schumann with Reference to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the Development of Modern Music in General FRANZ BRENDEL TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE..................................................341Heinrich Heine on Mendelssohn SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY LEON BOTSTEIN TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE................................................................................................352On F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Oratorio Elijah OTTO JAHN TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE...............................................................................................................364On Mendelssohn and Some of His Contemporary Critics FRIEDRICH NIECKS.................................................................................................................................382Felix Mendelssohn HANS VON BÜLOW TRANSLATED BY SUSAN GILLESPIE.................................................................................................................................390Index of Names and Compositions.......................................................................................................................................................................395List of Contributors..................................................................................................................................................................................403

Chapter One

LEON BOTSTEIN

The Mendelssohn Problem

Since the end of World War II, attempts to restore the stature of Felix Mendelssohn and bring more of his music onto the concert stage have become increasingly frequent. Among the reasons for this phenomenon is the postwar German guilt about the Nazis who sought to desecrate Mendelssohn's memory, suppress his music, and falsify his role in history in accordance with theories concerning race and art. The postwar reaction to the Nazi campaign was significant, considering the extent of collusion by the musicological community in these efforts. Interest in Mendelssohn since 1945 has spurred significant research and discoveries, which in turn have helped to strengthen Mendelssohn's reputation, particularly in view of the vitality and novelty of the early musical works that have entered the repertoire.

The Nazi interpretation of Mendelssohn was not exactly novel. It culminated a long history of antipathy, particularly in Germany. Even though some contemporaries, including Schumann and Berlioz, maintained certain doubts about much of Mendelssohn's output, the anti-Mendelssohn campaign began in earnest in 1850 with the publication of Wagner's essay "Judaism in Music." The success of the contemptuous Wagnerian view of Mendelssohn the man, his music, and its social and cultural influence was profound. Wagner's aesthetics were framed in explicit opposition to Mendelssohn. Wagner even succeeded in obscuring the extent to which he, as a composer, was indebted to Mendelssohn's musical work.

The triumph of Wagnerianism by the end of the century created a barrier to wide-ranging appreciation of Mendelssohn's music. By the early twentieth century, much of the music had vanished from the repertory. Some—the piano music in particular—had been relegated to the category of well-written music adequate for amateur performance but lacking in profundity. The concert canon circa 1900 included a few overtures, the Third and Fourth Symphonies, the Octet, and the E-minor Violin Concerto. The programs conducted by Gustav Mahler in his career from 1870 to 1911 and performed by the Rosé Quartet in the years 1883-1932 exemplify this phenomenon.

The transformation of aesthetic taste during the second half of the nineteenth century lent Mendelssohn's music an undeserved and pejorative symbolic meaning. After the 1880s, in England, Germany, and also America, the tenets of cultural modernism were linked to a generational revolt...