I always feel a certain obligation to defend Mendelssohn simply because his creative work is so similar to mine: plenty of technical skill, lots of references to composers of the past, a preference for formulas, and almost no originality. He is definitely one of those composers who wrote music because he wanted to create things similar to things he already knew and liked, rather than someone who wrote music in order to discover new things he didn't know he liked; and since I'm one of those composers as well and can say in my case it's basically just a lack of talent and imagination, I feel like I "understand" his frustration as it were, poring over late Beethoven and imitating it carefully only to end up with results that sound much less forward-looking and interesting. >.>
The truth is though, apart from the A minor quartet, A major quintet, some of the early string symphonies, the Midsummer Night's Dream overture & incidental music, and possibly a few other early works there's very little Mendelssohn I would consider essential to my continued survival. I can understand Schumann's great admiration for him but not feel it myself. Perhaps someday I'll appreciate his music more but at the moment a lot of it just feels like background music.
The truth is though, apart from the A minor quartet, A major quintet, some of the early string symphonies, the Midsummer Night's Dream overture & incidental music, and possibly a few other early works there's very little Mendelssohn I would consider essential to my continued survival. I can understand Schumann's great admiration for him but not feel it myself. Perhaps someday I'll appreciate his music more but at the moment a lot of it just feels like background music.
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